To deliver low carbon rural visitor destinations in the UK, we believe there are three areas for priority action in the UK.
Click on each to find out why these are priorities, what needs to be done and the benefits that will result.
It is worth emphasising that whilst good practice exists in all of the components (including in the UK), to deliver the scale and rate of decarbonisation required requires an ambition where all solutions need considering together.
Put another way, not doing these will significantly compromise the decarbonisation of visitor travel in the UK.
In addition, we offer a rapid visitor travel decarbonisation appraisal service for destinations.
Travel to…
Why?
The reasoning why working on travel to should be prioritised is outlined here.
In addition, there is a vacuum of responsibility for developing services that provide the scale of shift required for deacrbonising the visitor journey.
What needs doing and how?
There needs to be
- a significant increase in capacity in transport services that enable people to get from home to visitor destinations. This requires a clearer understanding of the capacity needed for the appropriate scale of shift required to deliver decarbonised journeys. The challenge to work out how to deliver such services will require considerable ambition, innovation and strategic planning into the medium term. There should be significant opportunity for new and enhanced commercial operations given the volumes of potential users.
- diversification of services so that they are relevant and appealing to a wide variety of types of visitors on their terms. The c.25% of households who currently don’t have access to a car is growing to include next generations of visitors. Add to this the wide variety of types of people who will need to travel differently in order to deliver decarbonised destinations, and the opportunities for new types of services are extensive.
- attention on cost to users. This does not (just) mean looking for cost reductions, but integrating costs to provide whole-journey propositions and making sure that there is an increased awareness of the full costs of car use. The diversification of service types should also help to deliver new lower cost services and expansion of those existing.
The opportunities could be realised by
- a clear narrative for the need and urgency to be unsderstood and endorsed by relevant bodies and those of influence. This would create legitimacy and momentum for the ambition required.
- strategic engagement with existing and potential transport service operators; creation of a nurturing environment for new and enhanced services to be developed.
- apply smart demand management: develop new services in partnership with destinations so that the service propositions (a) integrate with in-destination services and propositions and (b) are linked to appropriate traffic and parking restraint
- work with target visitor segment cohorts, transport service providers and destination representatives using progressive service design methods and expertise to develop meaningful and appealing business cases for services
- consider the role of ticketing and passes at different scales as part of & complementary to service design.
Place-based visitor access management
How visitors travel around destinations reveals “mobility catchments” – coherent areas in which transport systems need to work well. This is the scale that many best-practice destinations overseas are managed such as the Tirol valleys, or Saastal. How these work and feel as a visitor is described for Ghent, Werfenweng, Sasstal and Hydra/Spetses in these blogs.
How these are managed informs the governance section set out here. Whilst the components might be fairly straightforward to understand, how they are brought together in ways that lead to meaningful, transformational change has been elusive in the UK.
DeVAMS (Decarbonised Visitor Access Management System) brings together a coordinated set of methods that is informed by
- best practice of components that together would make for decarbonised place-based visitor access management
- required scales of decarbonisation
- acknowledgement and experience of the importance of local attitudes and opinions in local ownership and delivery
- pragmatic considerations of legislation & regulation, powers and abilities of partners – and how these are best harnessed, finances & funding and especially appropriate economic models that enable and facilitate ambitious change.
- Its six methods are:
Backcasting: focussing on the desirable endpoint and working backwards to identify first steps to delivery
- backcasting – focussing on the desirable endpoint and working backwards to identify first steps to delivery; builds-in focus on the big goal
- stakeholder mapping – who are the right people to include in development at which point?
- place-based decarbonised future mobility system design – describing possible futures so that engagement and debate is informed and meaningful
- co-benefits maximisation – making sure that even though ideas might be focussing on decarbonisation, other outcomes are important and should be optimised in parallel
- economic model development & appropriate local governance – what nature and scale of investment is required, what are appropriate sources, what instruments are required for the economics to work? what local governance is required? who should be involved and how?
- pathways to delivery & strategy – how does all of this translate back to delivery pathways?
- The blog Subsidy? Investment? Visitor levies? But for what? explores some ideas about informed visions leading to different approaches to economic models and investment.
Destination transport governance
Development of thinking on appropriate governance from locale (valley, coastal segment etc) to whole-destination (e.g. National Park / National Landscape) scales:
- further integration between and development of the Glover review and subsequent work focussing on UK needs with the valley-scale governance nested into sub/regional scale of Switzerland and Austria
- further consideration on how governance and economic models come together to create conditions for transformation and appropriate scales of investment
- the roles of existing UK structures and policy such as TBIDs, Bus Service Improvement Plans and the re-emergence of Local Transport Plans
- clarity in roles of different types of partners: public sector bodies using their powers and abilities for operators to take risk and reward – for the shared purposes of delivering decarbonised transport and better transport for all.
Visitor travel decarbonisation appraisal service
Organisations and partnerships within destinations need to know – and often spend time and significant resource – where to direct effort that results in meaningful pathways to decarbonisation. In reality, the effects of many well-intentioned interventions are small and ephemeral.
To help fast-track clarity and informed decision-making, the appraisal service
- audits a destination’s existing existence and scales of services against the six component model
- considers this against any carbon budget that exists for the destination
- identifies and prioritises interventions that would be (i) effective and meaningful for visitor travel decarbonisation and (ii) relatively easy to implement. This might mean that effort should be directed to developing capacity in coach and rideshare services to the destination (for carbon impact) and shifting the emphasis of marketing and communications to bring to the fore existing sustainable travel options ahead of car-based options (relative quick & easy).
This is meant to be a relatively rapid, high-level appraisal that helps to inform decision making at destination level about how to prioritise resources to determine in more detail decarbonisation strategies and pathways to delivery. This might help scope briefs for strategy development, inform management plan development, priorities for staffing and development of appropriate partnerships. It is not meant to be a substitute for the development of decarbonisation strategies.
