Travel Blending® involves in-depth analysis of people’s travel behaviour followed by detailed suggestions on how behaviour could be modified, with follow up monitoring and feedback.

The Travel Blending® Program was initially developed as part of a major public initiative called ‘Clean Air 2000’ which aimed to reduce pollution caused by car travel in Sydney prior to the 2000 Olympics. After the pilot study had been completed in Sydney, the Department of Transport in South Australia (TransportSA) initiated a trial which took place in Adelaide. Travel Blending® in Adelaide is known as ‘TravelSmart’ Adelaide.

Travel Blending® consists of two one week travel diaries completed by all members of participating households. Individual participants were recruited through the workplace; the individual then co-opted the rest of their household. The first travel diary allowed:

• the amount of travel to be quantified,
• the pollution generated to be calculated,
• consideration of household interactions which result in travel,
• generation of targeted suggestions about how to reduce car use.

The second diary:

• identified change in travel behaviour,
• facilitated feedback to participants,
• monitored the impact of Travel Blending®.

Where small sample size constrained the results of the Sydney pilot project, Rose and Ampt (2001) report details of the Adelaide study in quantitative terms. This report is available in full at right, and some findings are detailed below:

*Significant at a 5% significance level, critical Z value = -1.64.

Rose and Ampt (2001) produced aggregate results for the population as a whole (see Table A2) by including non-participants in the analysis. This was done by assuming “that each person who refused to participate in rounds one and two travelled in the same way as the average for all persons in diary one (i.e. before they had received feedback) in both rounds, and that any person who participated in dairy one and not diary two was assumed to have made no change between the two diaries” (Rose and Ampt, 2001).