These components are described here individually. It needs to be recognised that whilst there are benefits of them in isolation, real transformation comes from them working together.
4. Traffic / parking restrictions
6. Destination marketing & governance
Description
“First mile” is getting from home to the start of the main approach travel journey – rail station, coach station, or (perhaps) rideshare meeting point.
Whilst not a significant carbon emitter in itself, it helps reduce the friction of using a sustainable mode for the main journey. In this respect, first mile solutions need to allow for appropriate luggage carriage (e.g. including bikes or SUPs etc), or work alongside baggage transfer services
Solutions & examples
This currently usually involves use of taxis, local buses or lifts from friends & family. In some cases, one-way car clubs or bike share might be used.
As of January 2024, LNER are trialling the 70 minute flex ticket that lets passengers “…travel on any LNER train up to 70 minutes before or after your originally booked journey”.
UK opportunities & needs
Description
“Last mile” is about linking the approach travel (rail station, coach station/stop, rideshare drop-off point – often at destination “gateway”) to either the visitor’s actual destination – accommodation, attraction, meeting point, start of walk etc or in-destination transport options.
Three aspects of integration are important:
A visitor’s final destination in a rural area is likely to be away from main transport corridors, and so effective last mile services need to allow for this by being flexible.
Solutions & examples
Established solutions are public transport and taxi services that serve the arrival gateways (rail/coach stations). An increasing number of accommodation providers offer some form of pick-up service.
Zermatt shuttle – train linking valley road-head at Tasch to Zermatt
Visp rail station (Switzerland): buses at station equipped to carry bikes; rail departure signage indicating capacity for bike carriage
UK opportunities & needs
Whilst last mile solutions are beneficial, a primary objective should be the integration of approach travel with in-destination transport services – such as illustrated by Seefeld.
Given existing conditions, the following should be prioritised
Description
The journey to rural visitor destinations is most commonly by private car (often >90%) and as a result is the most significant source of carbon emissions of the whole visitor journey, and often of a destination’s whole carbon budget (e.g. 43.5% for the Lake District).
Emissions per km by different modes are illustrated in the following graphic (although Lisa Hopkinson’s health warning on its over-simplistic interpretation is worth a read). With regard to reducing carbon from the journey to a visitor destination, this implies a prioritisation of mode based on least emissions per passenger km – i.e. coach, rail, high occupancy EV etc.
Solutions & examples
Lower carbon approach travel involves development of
This is one of the Low Carbon Destinations three priority action areas.
Map showing times by train from key visitor origins to Seefeld. Similar maps exist in key car parks to suggest to the many returning visitors to take the train next time.
There are an increasing number of UK travel companies specialising in organising travel and holidays that avoid flying such as Byway travel. Whilst they address directly concerns such as travel time and by providing a travel disruption service, they market confidently the benefits of the experience of travelling overland and by sea.
There is a boom in sleeper rail services in continental Europe with rumours of new connections into London . This is part of a much broader shift to and normalisation of rail travel being deliberately chosen over flying. The recent mainstreaming of this is evidenced by positive press across the media including
Visitor travel within rural visitor destinations – such as National Parks and National Landscapes (formerly AONBs) – is mainly done by car – typically over 90% of miles travelled. Whilst this normally emits less overall carbon than the journey to the destination:
Description
Across European destinations, widespread integrated public transport is regarded as an essential part of how destinations work and the visitor offer. It provides opportunities for destination information & marketing and products such as guestcards/travelcards as well as providing enhanced and more extensive services for residents – including access for people working in the visitor economy.
It is complemented and its effectiveness extended by active travel and micro/shared mobility.
Solutions & examples
World-class in-destination public transport can be characterised by:
Seefeld station. Cheek-to-cheek integration between mainline rail & local bus; Co-location of rail, bus, bike routes, information (maps, timetables) and Tourist Information Centre
Extract from Arrival and Mobility page of Seefeld.com
Both Seefeld and Werfenweng demonstrate really good, comprehensive information about arrival and getting around without a car.
Travel on foot, by bike, wheelchair or with pushchairs is ideal to make local journeys in-destination. Indeed, active travel is a key attraction for many visitors to rural destinations, and so there is an imperative to make it attractive and realistic for appropriate demands.
Solutions & examples
In-destination active travel requires:
Seefeld has extensive, well marked active travel routes with an array of support services
Signage providing easy entry into the extensive cycle network from Seefeld rail station
Variety of support services & information for cycling around Seefeld (Austria)
e-micro mobility means e-bikes, e-scooters, e-trikes/quads etc. Most do not require a driving licence but riders need to be over 14 to use them away from private land.
Werfenweng’s “Fun mobility” fleet of a variety of e-micro mobility options. Images courtesy Werfenweng Tourismus https://www.werfenweng.eu/en/holiday/werfenweng-card/fun-mobility/
They provide:
Solutions & examples
UK opportunities & needs
An norm in many destinations where sustainable visitor travel works well is some sort of travel card or guest card that includes travel. These roughly split as:
The benefits of such cards are:
Solutions & examples
For a personal experience of using the card, take a look at Saas Fee – could it be close to in-destination visitor travel perfection?.
Austria’s Tirol region offers over 30 guestcards, most for specific valleys (e.g. Stubai Card), or coherent visitor areas of linked settlements (e.g. Seefeld PlateauCard). Many areas offer free versions for staying guests and paid versions. Most are marketed as place-based (e.g.”Stubai card”) or as guest cards – notably not as travel cards but as part of a broader visitor experience.
The paid-for Werfenweng card provides access to its extensive “soft mobility” options, including the on-demand shuttles, their “fun e-mobility” options, public transport across the wider Salzburg region and to their fleet of EVs. Access is “charged” via a points system; this provides access to transport options of different per-mile costs – i.e. shuttle vs e-micromobilty vs EVs. It’s all part of Werfenweng’s “mobility guarantee” – i.e. an assurance to visitors that they will be able to get around easily using sustainable options.
UK opportunities & needs
Whilst providing extensive and appealing ways of getting to & around destinations works for some people (some of the time in some locations), the large majority continue to drive, driving being the main source of a destination’s emissions.
It should be noted that whilst there are many places that demonstrate great sustainable visitor travel activity, nowhere comes close to delivering on whole-journey decarbonised visitor travel. Furthermore, whilst “full-fat” UK visitor travel behaviour change programmes (such as the three DfT national park LSTF programmes) show significant potential for voluntary shift from car use (14% for the Lake District’s £4.7m investment over 3 years)
In these contexts, this section looks at the ways that car use can be restricted in ways that lead to better places, experiences and economies – and ultimately lower emissions.
“Traffic restrictions” here generally relates to the restriction of free access by visitor’s cars, but generally allowing other essential traffic (residents, businesses, public transport, active travel, emergency services, servicing).
Many popular mountain villages in Switzerland restrict car access. This mainly involves visitor traffic, but also resident and business traffic apart from for essential or occasional access. In most, in-destination access is provided by (often electric) shuttle buses, taxis or accommodation concierge services, although most people walk or cycle. This leads to a real sense of calm, as described in relation to Ghent in this blog and in the mainstream press here.
Many Swiss villages have never allowed unrestricted car access. Places such as Wengen and Murren have never been functionally connected to the road network. The visitor experiences in these villages contrast with the sense of overtourism in Lauterbrunnen – accessible by road and where the parking garage for Wengen and Murren is located. When Saas Fee was connected to the road network in the 1950s, its progressive residents decided that the village should remain car-free, both for their quality of life but also acknowledging its charm for visitors. Read a blog here of the experience as a visitor. Zermatt also chose to remain car-free.
Traffic access restrictions: approach road to Zermatt; entry to Murren; Lauterbrunnen valley “backroad”
Most of the Swiss traffic-free examples are at village scale rather than over a wider area.
Yosemite national park restricts car access at different times of the year. Visitors can pre-book access and extensive frequent shuttle buses from entry points are laid on to provide access.
Yosemite national park: seasonal approach to traffic management; peak-season shuttle
The two Greek islands of Hydra (Ydra) (c. 20 x 3km) and Spetses (c. 7 x 3.5km) restrict visitor cars completely as well as most resident car use. This is mainly due to the absence of roads stemming from a deliberate decision over many years to carefully manage development to preserve the unique sense of place. This has led to a unique and calm charm. The majority of travel in Hydra is in the central port areas where most people make journeys on foot; goods are moved via handcart, donkey or (rarely) by van. Travel further afield is by sea taxi. In Spetses, most residents (and many visitors) travel by moped, or by buses that ply the island’s ring road several times per day.
The visitor experiences of Hydra and Spetses are very different, at least partly due to the differences in options for getting around. These are described in a tale of two car free islands with an addendum here.
The main benefits of traffic restrictions with regard to decarbonisation are:
The lively hubbub of Zermatt’s traffic-free main street
Further benefits include
Unfortunately, apart from observations, there is no robust evidence from any of the Swiss or Greek destinations to further understand the carbon impacts of destinations being traffic-free. This would require as a minimum data on modal choice for visitors travelling to the destinations.
An inconvenient truth of most traffic-free destinations is their dependency on large gateway car parks.
Swiss gateway car parks a. Saas Fee b. Lauterbrunnen (for Murren & Wengen) and c. Tasch (for Zermatt)
Whilst this enables the in-destination benefits of being traffic-free to be realised:
In the absence of data on how visitors travel to these destinations, surveys were carried out of car nationalities and regions (from number plates) in the main car parks of various Swiss traffic-free destinations. Data analysis and interpretation relative to evidenced visitor origin data is ongoing.
The other main way to manage visitor car access – especially in places where car access is allowed or needed by some in the less popular visitor seasons – is via restrictions in car parking in destination. Indeed, media reports of excess and poor parking in many destinations at peak season are fairly common, with issues including bus services needing to be suspended and emergency services not being able to gain rapid access, as well as the inconvenience for residents and unpleasant visitor experiences.
There is a pressure in many areas for more car parking, as lack of supply is seen as a cause of the problems. Whilst data are scarce, it is generally acknowledged among transport practitioners that increasing parking supply exacerbates congestion problems; indeed in many rural destinations, traffic already outstrips (narrow) road capacity at busy times, so whilst extra parking might tackle an immediate local issue, it makes the larger problems – local traffic congestion and legitimising excessive car-based tourism – worse.
Pen y Pass in Yr Wyddfa / Snowdonia indicates how excessive car parking can be managed well. Like many places in the immediate relaxing of travel restrictions post-covid, Yr Wydffa saw huge numbers of car-based visitors. About 130,000 people start their walk up Snowdon from Pen y Pass. Whilst the Snowdonia National Park’s car park at Pen y Pass has capacity for 74 cars, some days in summer 2020 saw over 500 cars parked on the verges of the narrow road leading to the pass. In summer 2020, the Snowdonia National Park Authority with Gwynedd Council:
The number of illegally parked cars towed reduced to zero in three years. Perhaps more significantly:
Road user charging & demand pricing
Road user charging in increasing used for specific outcomes in urban areas. By charging for access across or within a cordon, RUC provides a mechanism to influence car access to an area. London’s original congestion charge was designed to dissuade car access for the purposes of congestion as part of a package of measures to promote non-car travel; various urban low & ultra-low emission zones (ULEZ) charge by vehicle tailpipe emission – as a way of improving air quality.
The idea of per-mile RUC is being considered as part of a reform of vehicle taxation in the UK replacement for existing Vehicle Excise Duty in the UK. This has been explored for its environmental benefits and more explicitly how it can work as part of integrated package of interventions to contribute to carbon reduction: “a pay-per-mile Eco Levy on driving plus free local buses and Swiss-style public
transport frequencies would meet our obligation to tackle the climate impacts of cars”.
It is notable that there are no rural visitor destinations where RUC is used as a demand management tool – apart from the standard use of car park charging. There is a risk that implementing RUC in visitor areas where the revenue funds sustainable transport leads to a financial dependency of car use – in a similar way that many Swiss car-free destinations are dependent on gateway car parking revenue. This need not be the case with careful and strategic economic planning, but the longer term implications do need considering from the outset.
Information & marketing
How travel and approach information is presented to visitors can have an impact on influencing travel choices. Destinations that highlight postcodes for satnavs bake-in car-based access IMAGE. Places like Seefeld and Werfenweng demonstrate how to
More details on the role of information for transport decarbonisation are set out here.
Observations relating to the UK
Unlike the car-free Swiss villages, most rural visitor destinations in the UK have road and lane networks that already accommodate cars, and for the majority of the year, traffic levels are generally low and do not cause problems.
“Carrots” alone will not deliver the scale a rate of decarbonisation required. The above shows that the “sticks” – especially when part of an integrated package of access and transport options – leads to better quality places and higher quality visitor experiences. All traffic-free visitor destinations have reputations for their success and prosperity.
The Lake District’s 4-year GoLakes Travel programme involved £5.7m investment and intensive coordinated delivery of interventions to change visitor travel behaviour – but without any traffic or parking restrictions. Whilst this led to an impressive 14% voluntary shift from in-destination car use by visitors
This means that car use needs to be restricted as part of the delivery of the right scale of sustainable travel options that provide attractive alternatives to private car use.
Furthermore, the grant dependency or marginal viability of sustaianble transport services can be shifted to stable viability if free car access is restricted. This transforms the economic model of providing visitor transport, with implications for changed roles and responsibilities of the public sector and transport operators. This is covered more in the Low Carbon Destination priority action on governance.
UK opportunities & needs
Culturally, we are not attuned to restricting traffic in the UK away from the centres of towns and cities. People generally accept the attraction and benefits of traffic-free urban areas, so the challenge is translate this to rural visitor destinations. Some reflections on how things might feel in a UK national park are set out in this blog.
Five “busyness” day types defined from high resolution visitor data for a large visitor attraction in the Lake District
The graphic shows five “busyness” categories based on data from a large visitor attraction in the Lake District. It indicates that there are fairly clear different types of busyness that may lend themselves to more than a binary high/low season split in transport services. This informs the economics and efficiencies of alternative transport services as well as clarity in public communications, information & marketing. The core message of “not everyone, everywhere all of the time” is useful in building trust with visitors.
The luggage that visitors want or need with them is often a reason for choosing to travel to a destination by car.
Whilst this includes suitcases or rucksacks, to rural destinations it often also includes larger items such as camping gear and “toys” – mountain bikes, paddle boards etc.
There are an increasing number of services offering visitor luggage to be picked up from the person’s house and delivering it to their destination, leaving them open to a far wider range of travel choices.
There are several well-established in-destination luggage services, though most target specific routes such as recognised walking, cycling or running routes (such as the Coast to Coast Packhorse “Creating hassle free holidays” and Sherpavan “Sherpa Van transfers your luggage whilst you walk the UK’s long distance footpaths” or Luggage Transfers). There are other companies that offer multi-day point-to-point tours with dedicated baggage services such as Cycling for Softies.
An increasing number of in-destination luggage services are emerging, such as Lake District Baggage Transfer as well as some more pioneering taxi companies such as for the Cairngorms and NE Scotland
Whilst many people want to use their own equipment – and indeed plan trips specifically to do so – the alternative to luggage transfer is in-destination rental. This is well established for equipment such as bikes, canoes, kayaks and skis, and is implicit in the growth of pre-pitched tents or glamping (replacing the need to bring camping gear). Most alpine villages provide rental services for a much wider variety of gear, from crampons to rucksacks.
There is a growth in camping gear rental, often as part of a wider range of rental services, by operators such as Outdoorhire, IBEX camping (offering tents sent to any UK address and with pitching service) and Campingpackhire (complete camping equipment package).
On-site equipment rental: a. mountaineering equipment in Zermatt, b. stand-up paddle boards in Dorset (from www.baypaddleboards.co.uk), c. Carvelo e-cargo bike in Saas Fee, d. ebike rental on the Monsal trail
UK opportunities & needs
This is a large and varied area covering a variety of sectors. Here, a summary of ideas and examples is presented.
Information tells people about the services. Marketing explains and interprets the benefits of using them, often developing experience-led visitor propositions. Ticketing – in its broadest sense – relates to how visitors pay for and access the services.
Information, marketing and ticketing are – for many – the gateway into using sustainable transport. whist their impact can only be as good as the transport services to which they refer, really good services without good information, marketing and ticketing simply do not effectively “exist” to many users.
Really good destinations provide information about all ways of travelling around plus advice and indications of ways to travel to a destination. Seefeld is probably the best example of this. For effective decarbonisation, this needs to become the norm.
Marketing low carbon travel – i.e. the services on offer locally and how to use them – is done by many destinations, but it is fairly common that visitors need to look for this – or be pointed to it by other sites – rather than it being presented as the norm. Low carbon travel needs to be marketed as the obvious & clear default option.
The graphic shows an auto-generated response from an accommodation booking for Saas Fee that explains the Saastal Card. As a visitor, this provides not only a great welcome, but a sense of a different type of social contract between the destination and visitor – that made me want to use the non-car options and build them in to my planning. This is described more fully in this blog.
In the UK, Good Journey has a comprehensive reach over many destinations and operators in terms of developing visitor marketing of low-carbon access. Whilst having a main focus on access and in-destination transport, their propositions also include: (a) comprehensive offers and discounted access to attractions, (b) suggestions for car-free adventures and (c) ideas for activities and excursions that are only possible without a car.
Visitors want clarity and a sense of fairness regarding ticketing and fares when travelling to and around destinations. whilst guest/travel cards are a norm for travel within many European destinations, there is an increasing use of rail passes being used by visitors to destinations.
Austria KlimaTicket Ö is reported to be a “game-changer” in terms of changing how Austrian residents travel as visitors. Costing about €1,000 per year, “KlimaTicket Ö allows you to use all scheduled services (public and private rail, city and public transport) in a specific area for a year: regional, cross-regional and nationwide”. Its aims are explicit in its marketing “It is also the ticket with which we aim to reach the Paris climate goals together. Public transport is the climate-friendly alternative to motorized individual transport”.In the UK, many people have car-based lifestyles and day-to-day routines, so annual or multi-month railcards or travel passes are not seen as relevant by many. There are a wide variety of rail Ranger (one day) and Rover (multi-day) tickets that offer integrated rail and bus access to localities. For instance, the Lake Day Ranger adult ticket costs £28.50 (£14.25 child, £56 family) and provides access to rail and bus services into the Lake District from nearby settlements, as well as access to Windermere Lake Cruises.
W
hilst many visitor attractions in rural areas of the UK offer discounts for visitors who arrive without a car, national operators still incentivise car parking. For instance, the National Trust – whilst being at the forefront at marketing access to properties locally – still provide “free” annual car parking passes to all of its standard members and still mainly only provides Satnav instructions to its sites in its member’s handbook (see graphic). Marketing for Forestry England’s £94/year national membership prominently promotes the perk of free parking at all of its sites.
In a decarbonising visitor travel world, such organisations should include discounted or free transport to their sites by local public transport and ensure that any car parking on site is charged to all at at least its real cost.
UK opportunities & needs
Information & marketing
Ticketing
Two significant differences between many of the overseas destinations included here and those in the UK are:
These together explain the impressive quality of visitor transport services in many overseas destinations.
In the UK, transport governance has been identified as a key barrier to transformation in visitor areas. For instance, proposal 19 of Julian Glover’s 2019 review of protected landscapes for DEFRA (pp 112-115) sets out clearly the inappropriateness of existing transport governance in national parks. How this translates to different models of governance has been considered in more detail separately.
Appropriate governance means the differrence between visitor transport that works well or doesn’t. Developing services or strategy without considering appropriate governance risks their viability and longevity.
This section attempts to interpret governance in places overseas that have great visitor transport with respect to UK contexts.
Solutions & examples
A general model of governance in Austrian and Swiss alpine destinations with impressive visitor transport is characterised by
local-scale governance nested into sub-regional or regional scale structures. This often involves nesting into sub-regional or regional marketing. Examples include Switzerland’s Murren, Lauterbrunnen, Wengen and Grindelwald being netsed into Jungfrau sub-regional destination marketing, and Austria’s Tirol region including dozens of valleys and unique destinations such as the Stubai valley or Seefeld plateauLocal scale partnerships – as well as informing transport services – have a key role in managing locally generated revenues. These areas all have revenue streams from compulsory overnight visitor levies coupled with local business levies, all of which are ring-fenced for investment in visitor-related infrastructure and services, including transport. The following graphic summarises the sorts of origins of revenues and areas of spend (see also Zermatt’s summary of spend from the visitor levy)
Summary of typical destination-scale sources of revenues and areas of spend
There is a blog here that explores the ideas of “Subsidies? Investment? Visitor levies? But for what?”.
UK opportunities & needs
The idea that Swiss and Austrian destinations sit within regional franchising and local partners often have control of €100,000s or €m of recurrent annual funding are often interpreted as these governance examples being irrelevant to the UK. This is not necessarily the case as there are structures and opportunities in the UK that are not alien to these types of opportunities, but they need recognising and acting upon.
Having the Transport authority as a partner opens opportunities to have meaningful and mutually beneficial influence on local transport powers and abilities (e.g. making the case for – and accessing – transport funding)
Summary Purpose, ambition and history of Transport for Cornwall (from https://www.transportforcornwall.co.uk/)
The skill would be to establish such partnerships so that teh constituent Authorities (and DfT) recognise the mutual benefits of doing so.
Though the DEFRA review related only to England, the ideas within it and the subsequent work on governance could be applied to the specific legislative contexts on the UKs other nations.
Perhaps a key blocker to transformation of visitor transport at destination level in the UK is a chicken-and-egg problem: The effort to develop attractive and costed visions for transport for a visitor destination is not done due to the lack of clear pathway to its delivery, and pathways to transformative delivery are not developed because of a lack of ambitious (and costed) visions. This exploration here of the opportunities for more progressive governance coupled with the recent innovations – such as the development of TfC, visitor levies etc – suggest that there are ways for transforming visitor travel at destination scale.