Getting Around Wellington

This blog was submitted by Lee of "Getting Around Wellington - reducing kilometres travelled by private cars"

"Getting Around Wellington" – the city's first voluntary travel behaviour change programme is shifting into top gear for its fifth month of engagement.

Since our last update in January we've been out and about enjoying the city's glorious summer weather, chatting to people and gathering commitments to change travel habits. We've had over 475 conversations so far during various events and lunch hours.

The Round the Bays Fun Run, One Love concert at Hataitai, and events at Lyall Bay have been a great success in getting people engaged about changing the way they travel. We had a particularly fantastic morning at Bike to Work Day in Civic Square. You might think that's preaching to the converted, but no, plenty of folk there admitted they don't bike regularly, or only bike to work. There's room to work here as these people are already kitted up to use their bikes for trips they do in their cars.

We continue to visit other community places such as libraries and swimming pools. The Kilbirnie Aquatic centre is a great venue to chat with parents while the kids are messing about in the pool. One woman we met there had a bit of a revelation about taking her kids on the bus after our conversation;

"...the other day I went into town via the bus with a friend. Fortunately she knows about her bus fares - and we took a day tripper. I had my 3 year old with me - so for $5 we went into town. There were no hassles with parking, no panic about getting back to the car to avoid a parking ticket. It was cheaper – parking is $4 an hour, and there were no problems with getting from one end of town to the other with a toddler – just had to jump on a bus. Lulu loved the adventure and it was fun to watch her interact with the rest of the passengers (don't know how they took it!) It was fun, easy, and cheap! So why hadn't I done it before - because no-one had given me the information on the fare rates or marketed the scenario."

It's great to hear the intention of the project coming true – getting relevant information to people about car trips they can positively change to another form of transport such as public transport or cycling.

Our conversations have found that supermarket trips are a popular target for car trip reduction. We have found that 7% of active participants have identified these trips as the ones they can reduce or combine with other car trips.

We have also found that the most popular car trip to target has been the work commute. 17% of active participants have suggested they could walk, cycle or take public transport to work a few days a week instead of driving. This is great news and we are looking forward to more feedback from people we’ve spoken to during the project.

To find out more, or get involved with “Getting Around Wellington” see www.gettingaround.co.nz

Or email me - lee@sustaintrust.org.nz