Travel and transport

About a third of journeys in London are work related, a third are for leisure and a quarter are for shopping or personal business.

Traffic congestion costs UK businesses £22 billion a year (Source: CBI).

Transport for London (TfL) offers sound advice on workplace travel planning to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Providing sustainable travel options for individuals and companies makes good business sense.

One of the quickest ways to reduce emissions is to encourage staff to change from using their cars to alternative methods to get to work. Cycling to Work Schemes and the Pool Bikes initiative are designed to encourage cycling. If you want to find out more about these schemes and other means of transport visit the TfL website

The incentives for alternative transport routes are clear for all employees.

For every 1,000 miles travelled in the average car, you will generate around 330kg of CO2. But if you travelled those 1,000 miles by:

• London Underground – you would generate 90kg of CO2, saving 240kg
• bus – you would generate 165kg of CO2, saving 165kg
• walking – you would generate 0kg of CO2, saving 330kg

Workplace travel plan

Many organisations don’t realise that a sizable proportion of their CO2 emissions can come from transport – whether that be from staff commuting or through transportation of goods.

Working with specific company needs and requirements, maybe reducing the need to travel through home and flexible working the Tfl will help you set up a ‘workplace travel plan’ – a business management tool that develops and promotes sustainable travel options for your staff saving your organisation and employees time and money.

Tfl also identify sources of funding and provide advice, information and support, tailored to strategic business needs.

For small and medium sized organisations, the Tfl operates a work based travel planning service called ‘Enterprise’. For more information on this service, visit: www.anewwaytowork.co.uk

Corporate

This scheme is designed for larger organisations with more than 250 staff at one site. The corporate package is project managed and delivered through Tfl’s Workplace Travel Planning Relationship Managers.

To find out more about the corporate offering, contact the Workplace Travel Planning team at the Tfl website.

Car sharing

Another idea is to encourage staff to use a car share scheme. This could either be set up specifically for your company (for example on the company intranet) or you could use existing national schemes – for example: National CarShare.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) carry out free green fleet reviews, to provide organisations with tailored fleet management advice to help lower running costs. Visit the EST green fleet website