Transport

Active Travel is using physical activity methods to get to your destination, employers can encourage their employees to switch out the car for walking or cycling to work when possible. Not only will this benefit your employees by helping them be more active, improving their physical and mental health, it will also benefit your company as it could reduce the need for large amounts of land for car parking spaces and will make your company greener.

In order for employees to be able to actively travel to work, you must ensure that your business has the necessary infrastructure in place, for example, secure bike storage, changing facilities, lockers to store equipment, safe lighting around the building, etc.

You could also consider some of the following methods to encourage active travel in your organisation:

• A salary sacrifice scheme for employees to be able to purchase bikes 
• Bikeability/cycling proficiency training sessions to support those less confident riding a bike
• Incentives/competitions for those who actively travel to work, for example step challenges
• A regular bike repair workshop where staff can bring in their bikes and have them fixed. Dr Bike can help with this
• Walking clubs for those uncomfortable walking alone- it could be those living in certain areas all walk together
• Providing access to safety equipment such as high vis clothing, bike lights, helmets, etc, to your employees Sustrans have maps of cycle routes that you could distribute to your employees to help with route planning to and from work.

Active travel may not be possible for all employees for a variety of reasons, in this case you can still encourage employees to use public transport instead of private vehicles to get to and from work. Furthermore, if your organisation requires employees to travel to events, encourage them to use public transport such as trains or buses. Similarly, if your organisation is hosting an event outside of your usual work location, try to have it somewhere easily accessible by public transport and provide attendees with clear, easily accessible information of how to reach the venue by public transport. For more information on public transport in Doncaster, click here for bus timetables and here for rail information.

Switching any fleet vehicles you have to electric ones will have a significant positive impact on the climate by reducing carbon emissions from combustion engines. In order to make your business EV friendly, you must ensure you have the proper infrastructure in place for EVs. This includes charging points accessible for staff, visitors and fleet vehicles. Furthermore, if you currently have a salary sacrifice scheme for employees to get vehicles, consider adding EVs as an option on this or only have EVs available on the scheme.

Encourage your employees to car share on their journeys to and from work or when travelling to events by car. You could facilitate the creation of car clubs for people who live in the same neighbourhoods and have similar working hours/patterns. Not only is this good for the environment, it will reduce the number of parking spaces needed by employees and will save employees money by using their cars less.

Route optimisation is another great way to reduce your organisation's impact on the environment whilst saving money and time.

Examples include:

• Looking at deliveries and scheduling drop-offs based on the least consumptive travel route (Google now offers this option in its GPS mode- it considers live traffic problems aswell which increase idling times).
• Companies who visit customers/service users can do the same as above and visit all those in one area in one go when possible instead of travelling to different locations and then back again.