Who's backing Colchester Walk to Work? Colchester2020 Travel Plan Club

So who's behind this "Colchester Walk to Work" Campaign? Your blogmaster works part-time for Colchester2020 Travel Plan Club, part of the Colchester2020 Local Strategic Partnership.

What's Colchester2020? Colchester2020 is working with many partners to ensure our borough is a great place to live, work, study and visit. Colchester2020 wants Colchester to excel as a regional centre where there are opportunities for everyone to lead healthy lives and to achieve their full potential. To succeed we need to focus on making sure we have a strong local economy and that we continue to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint. For more information please look at http://www.colchester2020.com/ We have priorities for Business education and employment, Healthy lifestyles and affordable housing, Heritage culture and leisure, Safer neighbourhoods, and Transport. The key priorities for transport are reducing congestion, changing travel behaviour and improving the transport infrastructure. The website gives more detail in the Action Plan.

What is the Colchester2020 Travel Plan Club? The Travel Plan Club tackles congestion and reduces carbon emissions by helping Colchester businesses and organisations to reduce the amount their staff rely on the single occupant private car. It does this by offering Travel Plan Club members help and support to introduce a workplace travel plan for their organisation. There's more information about the Club if you follow "transport" links through the Colchester2020 website.

What's a Travel Plan? A Travel Plan offers staff information, incentives and support to encourage them to use sustainable travel options These can range from incentives to travel by bus or train to providing information on timetables, cycle and walking routes, offering cycle training and promoting other options such as car sharing, car clubs, and flexible working.

Who belongs? Membership of the Travel Plan Club is open to any organisation whether large, or small, private, public, academic, charitable or from the voluntary sector, who is interested in reducing its carbon footprint and supporting its staff in using sustainable transport. As well as receiving advice and support, they also benefit from collective negotiation and lobbying power with the transport providers and local/national authorities, and access to discounts, established incentive schemes and marketing material. Currently, Travel Plan Club members collectively employ and represent more than 11,000 staff in Colchester, and another 19,000 students.

What's all this got to do with walking to work? Put simply, walking covers many of the themes that our community has said is important. Wellbeing, traffic congestion, the environment, accessibility, neighbourhoods, leisure........ In the past, the Travel Plan Club have focussed on public transport, car sharing and cycling. Walking has lots to offer many of us, so for 2010, Colchester2020 is supporting the Colchester Walk to Work project. Come and join us.