New Travel Plan to support low-carbon journeys

Helping colleagues to choose greener commuting options to reduce our carbon emissions is a key objective in our newly-published Travel Plan.

The Travel Plan 2024-29 sets out the University’s commitments to supporting and encouraging more sustainable travel by staff, students and visitors to campus for the next five years.

Reducing the number of colleagues who drive to work – particularly in single-occupancy vehicles – is crucial to our efforts to reduce our institutional carbon emissions.

The Travel Plan was created using data from this year’s Travel Survey as well as workshops and input from our sustainability champions network.

Car travel reduction targets

The latest survey data shows that commutes are our biggest source of carbon emissions, producing nearly 8,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2023/24 – almost as much as produced by our entire Whiteknights estate.

Since 2012, single-occupancy vehicle travel by staff has reduced from 50% to 33.5%. This is hugely positive, but nearly half of colleagues who commute still travel by car alone.

To improve this, targets have been set to reduce staff single-occupancy vehicle commutes by a further 6.5% by 2029, by providing improved greener alternatives.

Student commutes by single-occupancy vehicle have reduced from 11.3% to 10.6% over the same period, and there is a separate target to reduce this by a further 1.1% by 2029.

Lower-carbon alternatives to driving include:

• Taking the train or bus. New bus services are due to be announced this summer to make it even easier to get to campus this way.
• Using the free Park and Ride service available to staff and students.
• Lift sharing, following the example of many of our colleagues who already do.
• Walking or cycling to campus if you’re able to. We will soon share details of upgrades being made to our cycle storage facilities to make them more secure.
• Travelling by electric car where possible and making use of the electric vehicle chargers on campus. There are also future plans to introduce an electric car club on our London Road campus
• Optimising travelling between campuses where possible, by holding meetings online or planning ahead to work on the same campus as other colleagues for the day.

Working from home can also partly support these aims. Those whose roles allow it can do this in accordance with our Smart Working framework and in agreement with line managers.

Although it is fully accepted that some colleagues drive out of necessity, providing additional and more convenient travel options, and providing incentives to choose green travel, is intended to help those who can to make the change needed for us to ultimately achieve a net zero carbon position.

Other plans

The Travel Plan sets out other objectives, including:

• Continuing to replace our remaining petrol vehicles used on campus with electric vehicles, as well as looking at alternatives such as cargo bikes or e-bikes.
• Looking at how we can positively influence how visitors travel to campus. Possible options include requiring contracted suppliers to use low-carbon vehicles for deliveries, consolidating deliveries across departments to reduce their frequency, or providing and better promoting public transport options and shuttle bus services.
• Using the greenest travel option available wherever possible when travelling on University business. Our new Business Travel Policy, published last year, prioritises lower-carbon travel over flying, including setting carbon budgets for Schools.