Background
Take the Right Route (TTRR), is a locally adopted brand promoting sustainable transport under the Government's wider "Smarter Choices, Smarter Places" initiative. TTRR's aim is to encourage higher levels of active travel and public transport usage within specific areas of Falkirk in order to achieve both environmental and health benefits for local communities. The initiative will involve measures such as:
- improving public transport services
- upgrades in walking and cycling infrastructures
- personal travel planning; marketing and awareness campaigns
- practical support for those wishing to take up active/sustainable travel
Take the Right Route was launched in May 2009 and is running for three years thereafter.
The Brief
Progressive was commissioned by GRP to conduct a three year evaluation of the initiative. The research programme involves quantitative and qualitative research throughout the three years to evaluate the campaign over this period. With the overarching objective being to assess and evaluate the impact of TTRR, the research will explore and define transport and travel patterns in the area and determine the effect the initiative has on changing attitudes and behaviour relating to travel.
Our Research Approach
The first stage of research, completed in November 2009, involved focus groups followed by 500 in-street interviews with Falkirk residents. Progressive recently completed the second quantitative phase towards the end of 2010, repeating the initial phase with a further 500 interviews with Falkirk residents. Following this qualitative research was completed to explore further the attitudes of key audiences; those that were considering changing their behaviour but had as yet not taken any steps to do so and those that had begun to take active steps to change their travel behaviour to inform the campaign's development moving into 2011. A third stage of research will be undertaken on completion of the initiative.
The Output
This initial phase of research concluded that even in the early days, the campaign was showing encouraging signs. Awareness was relatively high and people generally thought the initiative was beneficial for the community. However, to make the campaign a reality for people, it was concluded that messages needed drilled down into specific journey types and reqyuired a focus on personal benefits in order to encourage gradual behaviour change. The second stage identified that although at a general level, behaviour had not yet shifted to a measurable degree, encouragingly, some attitudinal shifts were apparent, demonstrating that residents were at least beginning to actively thinking about their travel choices.