Joint paper on wider benefits of PTP wins award

East Renfrewshire Council and Steer Davies Gleave’s joint paper Beyond The Numbers: Exploring The Wider Benefits And Indicators Of Successful Personalised Travel Planning Through Real Life Case Studies was presented by Scott Gibson and Kirsty Davison at the 6th Annual Scottish Transport Applications Research (STAR) conference, held on 24 March. Scott Gibson went on to be awarded the “Best Paper Presented at the Conference by a Young Professional”.

Beyond the Numbers is co-authored by John Geelan and Kirsty Davison of Steer Davies Gleave and Scott Gibson of East Renfrewshire Council. The paper seeks to go “beyond the numbers” to explore the wider benefits of Personalised Travel Planning (PTP) observed amongst real life case studies. The authors developed a set of recommendations for supplementary indicators by which the success of PTP could and possibly should be measured in the future.

Steer Davies Gleave’s Kirsty Davison said: “the impetus for the paper came from a realisation that many of the case studies evaluated as part of the project were reporting much wider and profound personal, social and community benefits, outwith the scope of the traditional indicators of success for a PTP project. On this basis, we think PTP projects have a wider relevance to other policy areas such as health, social inclusion and community development and this is something we wanted to share with transport and other practitioners.”

The STAR conference is the key transport research, applications and planning event in Scotland providing an opportunity for transport researchers and practitioners to disseminate current transport research and practice that is relevant and applicable to the transport agenda within Scotland.

All papers submitted for the award were judged on three key criteria, including; relevance to the Conference and Scottish transport agenda; innovation or new ideas; and results/outputs/outcomes.