Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

2005-2006 Travel Plan Site: The A45 Corridor: Northampton

Background

Northampton General Hospital and Barclaycard are major traffic generating sites off the congested A45 Barns Meadow Interchange in SW Northampton. Some 8,000 workers commute daily to these sites, many by single occupancy vehicle.

Problems/Opportunities

Our task here was to build on the travel plan work already done by these organisations. The aim was to produce an area travel plan to reduce traffic at the interchange whilst taking into account everyone's travel needs.

Our approach involved working in partnership with Northamptonshire County Council, transport operating companies in the locality, as well as the Hospital & Barclaycard to deliver common objectives. Work to date has included:

• Developing good working relationships with individual site travel plan co-ordinators;
• Commissioning a travel plan opportunities report. This highlighted the potential to cut 936 trips in the peak hour at the Barns Meadow interchange;
• Working with travel plan co-ordinators, prioritising those travel plan measures most likely to deliver the desired outcome;
• The collection and analysis of mapped postcode data from the Hospital and Barclaycard, as a prelude to informing their travel plans; and
• The development of the plans.

Measures introduced at Barclaycard involved:

• Rigourous marketing and publicity events;
• Intranet promotion to communicate jouney plan facilities, promotions, discounts, staff travel surveys, suggestion/comment forms and details of benefits of sustainable travel for the individual;
• A car park management system;
• Car sharing initiatives; and
• Personalised journey planning techniques.

At Northampton Hospital, publicity events have also taken place. Measures to be implemented in April 2006 include:

• The promotion and implementation of a car sharing scheme (e.g. on car share posters);
• An imaginative scheme to encourage staff to surrender their parking permits in favour of free access to pool bikes;
• Packages designed to encourage greater walking & cycling;
• The promotion of all transport modes via the Hospital's travel plan website; and the distribution of travel guides and personalised journey planning (MAST).

Next Steps

In the longer term, the area travel plan will be open to involvement from other local companies and organisations (recruited via the Northamptonshire Travel Forum). This will inform the case for future sustainable transport projects. Separately, we are assessing the feasibility of introducing a dedicated HOV lane at the Interchange to promote the uptake of car sharing and bus usage.