Local Travel Plan Groups : are these the way forward for travel plans?

Travel plans are attractive to local government because they are quick and cheap to introduce and are politically uncontroversial. They are thus an ‘easy win’, in marked contrast to most other transport improvement schemes. But, travel plans are dependent on other organisations being motivated to participate in helping to solve something that ‘is not their problem’ – a major obstacle to their widespread adoption. One possible way of overcoming some of the barriers eg company self interest, internal organisational barriers, poor quality alternatives to the car etc, is to form some kind of ‘Local Travel Plan Group’ (LTPG). This paper examines some examples of how such groups operate.