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a road less travelled

Traffic congestion is an enduring and ongoing thorn in the flesh of North-east business and an increasing number of companies are looking for alternative travel solutions. Graeme Smith found out how Aberdeenshire Council is taking a lead on cutting staff travel time.

Will I jump in my car today to go to my meeting or could I achieve the same over the telephone or in a video conference?

If I must make the journey is it possible to take public transport or share with colleagues heading in the same direction?

These are the type of questions we should all be asking ourselves in a bid to ease traffic congestion, reduce our carbon footprint and save money.

Every little helps and although companies, councils and residents across the North-east are becoming more aware of the importance of protecting the environment much more could be done.

For example, if every commuter left the car at home just one day a week congestion would be reduced to school holiday levels.

Aberdeenshire Council is at the forefront of efforts to try to reduce the amount of travel its employees and residents undertake.

Ewan Wallace, the council's Head of Transportation, said that the overall thrust of council policy in terms of travel planning was first and foremost to reduce the need to travel.

He pointed out that by conducting our interview by telephone rather than face to face one of us had avoided a 22 mile round trip.

Aberdeenshire Council has a number of video conferencing facilities which save thousands of miles a year by enabling staff to have meetings within walking distance of their normal place of work.

However, he stressed that when evaluating the best way to travel value for money had also to be considered.

Four people travelling in a car might be less expensive than four travelling by train but discounted fares like "Family and Friends" can reduce the cost, and journey time on a train can be spent working.

"We do want to be able use the train because it is productive working time."

There are 14,500 staff working for Aberdeenshire Council in scores of locations across the area and Mr Wallace said it was a major exercise to try to encourage everyone to think carefully about their methods of travel and it was also extremely difficult to monitor the degree of improvement the council is achieving.

The council has two travel planning officers and one deals with travel plans for the council and provides advice to businesses while the other works exclusively to assist the 174 schools, including pupils, parents and teachers, to formulate travel plans.
The council has run a free car share scheme for the past five years with numbers increasing year on year and with significant surges at times of high fuel prices or severe weather.

However the numbers slip back again when these events pass.

One area which the council is looking at closely is workstyle transformation.

It has always operated a flexitime scheme but now has compressed working weeks so staff can work the same number of hours in four days or in a nine day fortnight.

There are also annualised hours for the workforce in areas like landscaping who work shorter hours in winter.

Efforts are being stepped up to reduce the need for staff to continually return to their bases.

"If someone lives in Fraserburgh and their place of work is Strichen but on a particular day they are going to be monitoring the road network between Fraserburgh and Banff we don't want them and their team to have to go to Strichen first," said Mr Wallace.

Now with handheld devices and wi-fi enabled laptops they can find out where to go or what the problem is without the need to go to their depot or office.

"We have a number of roads inspectors who go round the network assessing potholes and the standard of carriageway and they are linked back to squads who do the work."

Until now they have had to go back to the office to do reports but now they can do them from the scene which saves travel time and mileage and allows more use of his productive work time but less fuel and C02.

Neighbouring Aberdeen City Council is also looking at ways to improve its travel profile. It first introduced a travel plan in 2001 and is now redeveloping it as a matter of priority.