Tools- of Changes

The Greater Vancouver Regional District's (GVRD's) Employee Trip Reduction Program took an integrated, multi-modal approach. By supporting the use of all modes of alternative transportation, a higher rate of employee buy-in could be...

In Southeast Michigan, the Clean Air Coalition runs a program to help reduce the formation of ground level ozone, which is a threat to environmental and human health and is one of the primary contributors to smog. The Ozone Action Program...

When air pollution concentrations approach unhealthy levels, people living and working within the San Francisco Bay Area are notified, and encouraged to avoid activities that pollute the air. Partnerships with local businesses and public...

The Green Communities Active and Safe Routes to School program encourages families to reduce automobile use and increase physical activity for children as they travel to and from school. This case study covers pilot implementation by...

Ottawa's Commuter Challenge is a week long event that encourages people of legal driving age (16+) to reduce air pollution by using active or sustainable transportation to get to and from work or school. People are asked to walk, cycle,...

U-PASS is a comprehensive, flexible program designed to encourage University of Washington students, staff and faculty to use alternative modes of transportation and thereby reduce the volume of traffic in Seattle's University District. The...

In 1998, Nortel Networks initiated GreenCommute, a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program for its campus expansion in Ottawa, Ontario, that has grown into one of the most comprehensive TDM programs in Canada. Nortel Networks has...

TransLink’s TravelSmart program helps businesses and residents of Metro Vancouver make smart travel choices and reduce the number of trips made by driving alone. It includes an Employer Pass Program, ridesharing, car share (including...

This case study involves two boroughs in London England, and illustrates the use of integrated marketing. For each target audience, this approach integrates common messaging and synergistic interventions across multiple communication...

How can municipal and regional governments best promote telework? This case study highlights the telework program that originated in the Washington DC area in 1996, and the state-wide program that was subsequently established in the...

The Bicycle Friendly Communities (BFC) program provides municipalities with advice and feedback, goal setting assistance, training programs and recognition awards to create more bike-friendly communities. It is a results-oriented program...

This innovative green purchasing program engaged hundreds of event planners and over 18,000 event participants to build a new county culture of sustainable and healthy gatherings in Alameda County, California. In only six weeks, its...

Community Commutes Day used game-based competition, community based social marketing techniques, crowd-sourced graphic design to save costs, and peer-to-peer information sharing via trained “Clean Commute Champions” to get employees to...

Playa Vista's Ability2Change program is a great example of a targeted, strategic approach to transport behavior change. It features careful market segmentation and barrier removal, with different initiatives for different people. In just...

Capitol Hill In Motion is a recent evolution of the individualized marketing approach used by King County, Washington State, USA. It illustrates how to further engage communities where most trips are already not drive-alone. With...

Chicago’s Go Program is an Individualized Marketing program that helps residents walk, bike, ride transit, and use bike share more frequently, while driving alone less often. Compared with past Individualized Marketing efforts in other...

The C-pass pilot program aimeds to alleviate the growing demand for parking in the downtown area by providing unlimited use of transit to employees working within downtown at no cost to themselves. The pilot provided transit passes to...

Bologna’s Bella Mossa program awarded participants points for walking, cycling or using public transport. Points could be redeemed for discounts or payment towards merchandise and services from 85 retailers, including supermarkets,...

The most effective approach to-date at shifting air travel to train travel, and also at promoting the sale of carbon offsets for airplane travel, this approach could also work well for other behaviors that are perceived by the audience as...

Several policies / incentives, in place over an extended period, have made Norwegians more likely to purchase electric vehicles (EVs) than people in any other country. These incentives have included: exemption from vehicle registration...

Travel Blending(R) is a bottom up Travel Demand Management tool developed by Steer Davies Gleave, an international transport management consultancy group. It enables individuals and households to record then consciously change their current...

Just One Trip Phase II illustrates the use of Propensity Modelling / Predictive Analysis, Street Ambassadors, Quality Online User Experience (UX), and trip planning to reduce the proportion of single-occupant car trips in Seattle WA, USA....

The City of Austin reduced employee commute travel by one million vehicle miles within six months of making its Leave Time Reward (LTR) a permanent incentive. During this period, the percentage of drive-alone trips fell from 53% to 41%....

This case study covers the formative research and pilot testing of the City of Durham’s Way to Go program with City staff and local university students. It illustrates the value of A/B testing and Randomized Control Trials for evaluating...

Seattle Children’s Hospital has operated a widely recognized trip reduction program since 1995. This program is an early and successful example of providing drivers with cash incentives to offset losing free parking (“parking cash out”). It...

What makes a great cycling city? How did the medium-sized City of Copenhagen get its citizens to cycle to work / school 49% of the time? While topography and climate are significant influencers, safety, supportive infrastructure, and...

Paris is an inspiration for large cities around the world, having reduced car traffic in its core (Ile de France) from a mode share of 12.8% in 2010 to 6% in 2020. How did Paris get to be one of the cities in the world with the lowest...

Smart Trips Austin encourages residents of Austin Texas, USA to take multi-modal transportation options (walk, bike, ride transit, and share rides) more often, rather than drive alone. The program focuses on personal interactions —...

This program promotes carpooling and vanpooling instead of driving alone during peak commute periods, using advertising (online, video, and display), challenges, and prize-based campaigns to attract and retain its target audience. It also...

Liftshare is a social enterprise that has worked with over 700 of the UK’s largest employers to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicle trips using carsharing, active transportation and public transit when commuting for work. With...

France provides financial incentives to local travel authorities (LTAs), employers and employees to promote carpooling. It also funds the development of carpooling infrastructure, ridesharing platforms that make it much easier to carpool,...

Fairfax County established Transportation Demand Management (TDM) requirements (“proffers”) for new development that would have significant traffic impacts. For buildings within the urban centre of Tysons, trips had to be reduced between 25...

The Bike Smarts program was introduced in Lochside Elementary School to educate students about bicycle safety and to encourage them to travel by bicycle. As part of the program, parents of the students became involved in cycling to school...

Pollution Probe hosts an annual, month-long Clean Air Campaign to raise awareness about smog, vehicle emissions and related respiratory problems. The main event of this campaign is The Clean Air Commute, a one-day event in which employees...

As of 1996, over 8,000 households in 15 countries had participated in GAP's EcoTeam program which revolves around an easy-to-use workbook and peer support groups. The program focuses on waste reduction, water and energy efficiency,...

To promote a shift from single-occupant vehicle use to more sustainable modes of transportation, the City of Boulder uses several synergistic approaches. It offers transit passes to entire workplaces, schools and neighbourhoods, with...

This pilot used simple signs to promote health and weight control by encouraging the use of stairs instead of escalators.The program was set-up at a site in the mall where escalators sat adjacent to a stairway, all of which led from the...

The region of Greater Cincinnati implemented an episode day program to deal with the problem of smog and air quality. When smog levels were particularly high, citizens were notified and encouraged to change their behaviours to less...

The Cambie Corridor Consortium (CCC) was the first transportation management association (TMA) established in Canada. A TMA is an alliance of business, government, and other groups that aims to reduce traffic in a particular area by pooling...

Many prizes have been won by employees at Fondaction and the other institutions at Carrefour financier solidaire, for adopting sustainable transportation habits. Carrefour, based in Montreal, has approximately 130 employees. Carbopoint is...

This ongoing program educates the public and provides incentives to improve air quality in Portland. It uses non-regulatory approaches that target vehicles, lawnmowers, paints and certain consumer products - to reduce emissions from...

This case study illustrates the successful engagement of a large organization (Environment Canada) in a broad-scale staff participation program. That program, the Commuter Challenge, is a Canada-wide NGO-led event that challenges commuters...

Off ramp was an out-of-class initiative that encouraged secondary school students to walk, cycle or take transit to school more often, thereby reducing car use. It increased awareness of transportation and climate change issues, provided...

The AT&T Employee Telework Initiative provides information and support to all staff and management, corporate-wide, who would like to telework either part-time or full-time. Since 1992, AT&T has succeeded in developing not only a...

Over a one-year period more than 150 people in the City of Århus, Denmark were actively encouraged to use bicycles or public transit for their daily commute. One of the goals of Bike Busters was to assess the extent to which motorists would...

Smart Commute is a multi-pronged commuter options program in the Greater Toronto, Oshawa and Hamilton Area (GTHA). Two levels of government (municipal and provincial) fund local delivery agents (Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce and...

A tiny pilot project in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) that got families out of their cars and onto the street has grown into a burgeoning, province-wide, active transportation program. Between December, 1998, and spring,...

The ‘Workplace Cycle Challenge’ is a three-week long intervention to encourage people to take up and continue cycling; encourage people who are already cycling to cycle more often; and encourage people to cycle to work.The Workplace Cycle...

Turn it Off is a community-based initiative to encourage individuals to avoid idling their vehicles while waiting at such places as school pick-up areas and transit Kiss and Ride parking lots. Replicability: high.The five stages involved in...

The University Rideshare Project provides universities and colleges across Canada with the information, training, tools and encouragement needed to easily set up their own car pooling programs, free of charge.The project was implemented at...

Want to encourage more people to cycle to special events instead of taking their cars? Here's a great way to make it easier for them to do so. BEST's Bicycle Valet, operating in Metro Vancouver, provides free and safe special-event parking...

The Auto$mart Student Driver Education Program provides driving educators across Canada with a classroom kit that helps them teach student drivers how to drive more safely while saving money and protecting the environment. The kit includes...

Unprecedented steps were taken by the Town of Okotoks, Alberta to ensure its long-term sustainability. The community devised a sustainable development plan that rests on four guiding principles: environmental stewardship, economic...

In the City of Ottawa, EnviroCentre developed and implemented community-based social marketing (CBSM) techniques designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through transportation demand management (TDM) initiatives linked to Green Home...

The Calgary Commuter Challenge is an annual, weeklong event designed to encourage commuters to use cleaner and healthier forms of transportation. Participating organizations compete with each other for the highest rates of employee...

Green Communities Canada’s EcoDriver program promotes fuel-saving behaviours in three core areas: fuel-efficient driving, purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles, and driving less. Participants attend driver-to-driver-format workshops, indicate...

This project demonstrates how a sustained transportation demand management program can have greater impact when coupled with infrastructure improvements. By investing £10M over a five-year period, three towns in England have decreased car...

Edmonton’s LocalMotion project encouraged residents to drive less and consider other modes of transportation. LocalMotion used a combination of special community events, a challenge, and opportunities for hands-on experience of alternate...

The Action By Canadians (ABC) and Count Me In! programs were designed to communicate the issue of climate change to the Canadian public through workshops delivered to individuals at their place of work. The climate change workshop focused...

Everyday Kyoto is a program for educating Bell Canada employees on climate change and inviting them to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses released at work and at home.Bell set up an Everyday Kyoto Intranet site, and offered road shows...

Schoolpool is a dynamic program that gets students to and from school in a safer, more social and environmentally sustainable fashion,using carpools, transit and finding buddies for walking and cycling. Parents and guardians can locate...

Seattle’s In Motion program uses tantalizing neighborhood prompts followed by direct outreach to engage residents in learning about and trying travel options. King County Metro (KCM) has completed demonstrations in three neighborhoods, and...

20/20 The Way to Clean Air involved individuals in the Greater Toronto Area in reducing home energy use and vehicle use by 20%. It asked participants to make a small commitment (some easy-to-do activities done for a period of two weeks),...

Here's a good illustration of how much and how quickly transportation habits can change through elementary school programs. Bear Creek is the recipient of the James L. Oberstar Safe Routes to School Award for 2008 awarded by the (U.S.)...

This case study picks up from our previous one on the early years of Green Communities Canada's national Active and Safe Routes to School Program. It covers the launch of the "school travel planning" approach. Viewpoints are...

British Columbia’s TransLink introduced Compass, a travel pass payment system that replaced 150 different tickets and passes. To ensure positive adoption, TransLink brought customers through a series of messaging that generated awareness,...

It has been said that one of the greatest untapped transportation resources is the empty seats in private automobiles. This case study illustrates how a unique casual carpooling program in Washington, D.C. fills those empty seats while...

WORKshift is Calgary regional initiative to promote, educate and accelerate the adoption of telecommuting. WORKshift works with businesses to implement telework programs for their employees.Launched in May 2009, WORKshift was a 3-year,...

The “Bonus/Malus écologique,” or Feebate program, is a nation-wide initiative of the French government. It is intended to shift the car market by encouraging consumers and manufacturers to purchase and make vehicles that are more energy...

With an average of 15% of the U.S. population moving each year, new residents represent a significant portion of urban dwellers. In response, Portland has refocused its Individualized Marketing efforts and incorporated an innovative and...

BIXI Montreal is a great example of how to make  urban cycling a more practical and attractive transportation option. BIXI makes it convenient for commuters to cycle rather than drive, especially for frequent, short trips. The system was...

This is a rare, well-documented model for promoting walking and cycling in a small or rural community.Given Haliburton County's large geography, the CIA focused a multi-pronged planning and promotion effort on the two hubs: the villages of...

Stepping It Up, led by the regional transportation authority Metrolinx, illustrates a coordinated, highly replicable, and institutionalized approach for reducing car traffic and increase walking and cycling to school. The program worked...

The Stockholm congestion charge is a tax levied on vehicles entering and exiting the inner city. After a seven-month trial, followed by a referendum, the charges were made permanent and the traffic reductions of 20% have held constant ever...

CAC's HSBC Clean Air Achievers programs provides youth with a chance to meet high profile athletes and be inspired by personal messages to adopt healthier, more active and sustainable lifestyles. The program has dual goals of reducing air...

Love to Ride provides tailored resources and support for increasing commuter cycling, staff fitness, and reducing traffic congestion at work. It uses 'stage of change' to segment participants and cost-effectively tailor communications to...

In Motion participants pledge to shift two drive-alone trips per week to transit, ridesharing, biking or walking. The program uses motivational interviewing, commitments, rewards, engaging materials and norm appeals tailored to each target...

New York City’s Citi Bike is the largest bike share program in North America, and a key element in the city’s transportation network, providing a last mile solution. A similar approach is replicable in the downtown cores of other major...

The Girls Learning Energy and Environment Program (GLEE) was designed to reduce home energy consumption as well as energy use related to food and transportation, among targeted Junior Girls Scouts (ages 9-10) and their families. It was...

This large scale bicycle safety training program from the UK has been particularly well evaluated and shows impressive results, adding to the evidence of the value of such trainings. Designated a Landmark case study in 2016.Bikeability and...

A temporary network of cycling lanes convinced the community of Macon GA to create permanent protected lanes. One-block sections of street that had previously been made more bike-friendly had not been used much and there was concern that...

By the end of 2017, Brisbane’s Active Schools Travel Program had engaged over 157 primary schools to reduce single car trips by up to 35% and increase walking trips correspondingly. Half of the students at participating schools travel...

BART Perks Phase II used a Smartphone-based platform to incentivize shifts in public transit trips that reduced peak demand. The approach proved cost-effective relative to the average fare associated with each freed-up seat. At full-scale,...

Virgin Atlantic Airways (VAA) conducted an eight-month pilot in 2014 to test the potential roles and impacts of monitoring, performance information, personal targets, and prosocial incentives on the fuel-use behavior of their captains....

AutoShare, a car sharing company in Toronto, provides individuals with the freedom of driving without the hassles and high costs associated with owning a car. The company began in October of 1998, with 16 members sharing the use of 3 cars,...

Hampshire County's Transport Awareness Initiative (HEADSTART) encourages more sensible use of cars in order to reduce road traffic and environmental pollution, protect human health and minimize future infrastructure cost. Based on the...

CommuteSM is Santa Monica’s Transportation Management Association, formed pro bono in 2012 by RideAmigos. In collaboration with the City of Santa Monica, CommuteSM launched Santa Monica’s first-ever Commuter Challenge in 2015 (April 1 to...