The British Standard Institute (BSI) is to develop a national standard for travel plans to encourage more environmentally friendly transport.

The work was commissioned by the London European Partnership for Transport (LEPT), a body set up by the Mayor of London to co-ordinate transport issues between London and the European Union.

The standard will be used by private and public sector organisations as a basis on which to develop travel plans for their employees that promote safe, healthy and sustainable travel.

For example, by reducing unnecessary car travel, standardised travel plans can improve individual health and wellbeing, make more efficient use of car parking space, improve efficiencies and make a positive contribution to the community and environment.

The standard will establish a methodology for producing a workplace travel plan and for ensuring a consistently high quality result, said a statement from the BSI.

Key parts of the methodology will be:
• Defining the targets to be achieved by the workplace travel plan
• Measuring the baseline travel behaviour. This means surveying employees and other relevant groups to establish a clear understanding of the current travel situation and associated problems
• Selection of appropriate interventions to improve travel behaviour
• Articulation of the implementation strategy
• Periodic review of the workplace travel plan.

“We believe that the development of a national standard for this industry will improve the quality and effectiveness of travel plans, and provide a valuable resource that travel plan professionals can rely on,” said Paul Henderson, European project manager at LEPT.

The recently released King report, commissioned by the Treasury, recommends that all large public sector bodies have a workplace travel plan in place by 2010.

BSI will first draw up a Publicly Available Specification (PAS 500) for Travel Plans for publication in November 2008.

A PAS is a sponsored fast-track standard commissioned by a client organisation and developed according to guidelines set out by BSI. Key stakeholders are brought together to collaboratively produce a BSI-endorsed PAS that has all the functionality of a British Standard for the purposes of creating management systems, product benchmarks and codes of practice.

Organisations claiming conformity to PAS 500 will need to address all its provisions.

After two years the PAS is reviewed and a decision is made as to whether it should be taken forward to become a formal British Standard.

“The PAS will enable both public and private organisations to better understand the need for travel plans to support the green transport agenda,” said Mike Low, director of BSI.

An independent BSI steering group representing a cross-section of industry will provide feedback on the best practice specification before it goes through BSI’s two-stage stakeholder consultation process. Organisations on the steering group include LEPT, Department for Transport, National Business Travel Network, ACT Travelwise, Transport for London and an independent transport expert.