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National Competition for Smarter Travel Areas
To support the Governments Sustainable Travel Policy Smarter Travel, a national competition has been established to deliver outstanding and innovative examples of sustainable travel in urban and rural areas.
The competition is being run by the Department of Transport and is open to Local Authorities to submit proposals for developing travel systems in rural areas or towns.
The purpose of this competition is to help people to leave their cars at home when they can and for them to opt instead to walk, cycle or use other more sustainable forms of transport, particularly for short journeys.
Limerick County Council and Limerick City Council in partnership with University of Limerick have been successful at Stage 1 and are now submitting their Stage 2 application. The partnership is competing for the Smarter Travel Fund with 10 other local authorities.
The successful local authorities are now submitting their Stage 2 applications providing data under four category headings - Project Ambition; Design of Project; Information and Behavioural Change Campaigns; Delivery and Implementation Plan.
The deadline for receipt of the Stage 2 submission is Friday April 30th 2010
www.smartertravel.ie
Smarter travel
Smarter Travel is a new government policy which sets out a long-term plan to achieve a sustainable transport system for Ireland. The plan outlines how this can be achieved through a range of actions such as encouraging modal shift away from the car, promoting fuel efficiency and new technology, and improved planning.
The plan recognises that current transport and travel trends in Ireland are unsustainable, and that if we continue with present policies, congestion will get worse, transport emissions will continue to grow, economic competitiveness will suffer and quality of life will decline.
The goals of Smarter Travel are to:
Improve the quality of life and accessibility to transport for all and, in particular, for people with reduced mobility and those who may experience isolation due to lack of transport
Improve economic competitiveness through maximising the efficiency of the transport system and alleviating congestion and infrastructural bottlenecks
Minimise the negative impacts of transport on the local and global environment through reducing localised air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions
Reduce overall travel demand and commuting distances travelled by the private car
Improve security of energy supply by reducing dependency on imported fossil fuels.
The key targets of smarter travel are to reduce work-related commuting by car from 65% to 45%, and increase other modes such as walking, cycling, public transport and car to 55%.
Smarter Travel includes 49 actions which can be grouped into:
Actions to encourage smarter travel
Actions to deliver alternative forms of travel
Actions to improve the efficiency of motorised transport
Actions to ensure integrated delivery of policy
Actions to encourage smarter travel include aligning spatial planning and transport, aligning employment policy with transport planning, mobility management, encouraging efficient movements of goods and introducing fiscal measures to influence travel behaviour .
Actions to deliver alternative forms of travel include bus priority measures, high frequency services, investment in the national cycle network, integration of cycling and public transport, establishing car sharing websites, integrated ticketing.
Actions to improve the efficiency of motorised transport includes encouraging plug in and hydrogen field vehicles, promotion of efficient driving,
Actions to ensure integrated delivery of policy include the introduction of a sustainable transport and travel bill, establishment of a national sustainable transport office, empower local authorities to prepare transport plans to complement their development plans, establish and support a national competition to deliver sustainable transport towns and rural areas.
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