My Green Travel Plan

The Green Travel Plan was our next assignment for our course for Learning for Sustainable Development. The idea was to asses the ways in which the University of Northampton managed its travel systems around the University’s Park Campus. This included all forms of transport, car, bus, bike and walking. With this information we had to conduct other data that could hinder the results for example the number of cars entering Park Campus’ car park, whether they were university students or staff or if they were visitors, we had to check to see if they were car sharing as well as asking students if we could take up their time to answer our questionnaires.

It was a very interesting topic particularly looking at the results from the questionnaires, specifically people’s opinions of what they thought of the current methods of transport onto the campus premises and their views of general public transport and the usage of cars. Some tasks were much harder to carry out then others. Where half of the group counted the number of cars and the number of people within them indicating the number of people car sharing which was a relatively easy task to carry out, conducting the questionnaires and asking people for a short moment of their time proved difficult, as they did not want to be stopped as it was cold and windy due to the time of year (October), they were probably tired from the time of day and the sun going in or they had a lecture to attend or they were very keen to go home. But eventually we managed to get enough of the results that we required to present our findings to show how green the University is and if not how it could be improved by the suggestions that we had considered.

Below it shows a bird’s eye view of the area of Park Campus.

Our findings we not so surprising, our results had showed us that people much preferred to come to the university by car and not so much by the other means of transport. Also people would have liked the idea to park their cars nearer to the accusation (accommodation parking as this would reduce the congestion in the car park and also make it easier for the students).

The overall views of students appeared to have a fairly keen perspective on greener methods of travel and would happily use public transport if it benefits their pockets and benefits the environment too. For the people that need to park (those with permits) on the campus they would like there to be less hassle in terms of congestion and favour the parking fines for those without permits as they feel that this would make the system fairer.

People liked the idea of the use of their own car as they said it was more practical with the amount of shopping that they purchase, it goes where they need to and is faster then public transport, (i.e. less stops/more direct). Some people may also may feel insecure on the bus as all kinds of people may unsettle others particularly if they are loud or aggressive.

Next time, if I could go back and change anything I would perhaps be more confident and more forceful to ensure that people will answer out questionnaires. I would chose another time of year so it is warmer and people are less likely to avoid you, and the time of day as it was not particularly busy as it was at the end of the day, so I would chose a time where there would be more people and it will be warmer, so people don’t have the excuse to say its cold or that they have to go home.