London Travel Planning

Fueled by the global economy, whereupon the vast wealth of the world circles the planet via Tokyo, New York and London, this historic cluster of villages is developing at an incredible rate. And this boom is putting our poor Victorian mass-transit system to breaking point. All credit to the Victorians for building a system that has lasted into the 21^st century!

Furthermore, we now have a Mayor of London who cares for the environment and our health. Thanks to his efforts, our city is receiving not only significant investment in our strategic transport infrastructure, but puts sustainable means of travel, such as walking and cycling at the top of the agenda. And this is so important for London – a city with a beautiful, leafy overground that can actually be navigated by pedestrians and cyclists, who can then enjoy everything London has to offer.

And so what is travel planning? Travel planning is about applying the field of marketing and innovation to improve the efficiency of the transport system, making environmental improvements, improving economic efficiency of activities reliant on transport, and most importantly improve the happiness of the people.

Travel planning combines the use of marketing techniques in combination with the development of new relevant products to make it possible for any individual to succeed in selecting the most harmonious mode of travel for him or herself.

In the context of London, we have discovered that the most effective means of travel planning has been to tap into suppressed demand for people wanting to change their ways of travelling. By understanding Londoner’s varied lifestyles, mindsets and desires, we have found deep pockets of people who both care for the environment but also desperately want to be able to enjoy their experience of London more. And a common negative amongst the people we talk to is their unhealthy dependency on the tube system.

So, we have actually identified a consumer need for better travel arrangements, and in doing so have identified a market. This, in our opinion is critical to achieving a sustainable travel planning solution. The solution needs to have a credible long-term business plan behind it.

In otherwords, define the product around consumer needs, then you have a solution that will organically grow through market economics. Any other initiative purely based on having well-intentioned aims, will simply consume capital, and represent woeful wasted efforts for our future generations.

This is where our understanding of Travel Planning can come in conflict with some ideas of travel planning prevalent within the public sector mindset. There are some transport professionals who purport that travel planning is about changing peoples behaviour, and who do not have any conscience in consuming tax-payers money to achieve this aim.

Unfortunately, such draconian concepts, whilst can appear to be effective, do not create harmony with all the desired outcomes of travel planning – and in particular conflicts with the most important of human pursuits – happiness. How will forcing changes in human behaviour, without empathy for improving that person’s happiness, ever result in a good outcome? Rather, successful travel plan initiatives should understand ways to make people happy through improving their travel choices, with a bias towards promoting those that are more sustainable. In London it is absolutely essential to do this, bearing in mind the low levels of happiness of its residents, and considering that in London the majority are without a car, for economic reasons, and therefore providing means of access is actually an over-riding agenda to restricting car-use.

And in cases where a firm hand is needed, then such initiatives require considerable effort placed on identifying ways for the solution to become a positive experience, often the only way to do this is to ensure the travel related solution is integrated with other aspects of that humans life.

In conclusion, we believe that travel planning can achieve real changes to people’s lives and the economic prosperity of London, through a compassionate and emphatic approach to understanding people’s needs. This article speaks in generalities, while the following associated articles discuss particular case examples of best practice in travel planning in London.