SWITCH

The goal? To support cities in developing and implementing local campaigns to reduce motorized traffic and CO2 levels and foster active travel behaviours.

SWITCH - Embracing Active Travel for Health - was a project that used information and communication technologies (ICT) and personalized travel planning advice to encourage people in a period of life change to switch from short car journeys to more walking and cycling.

The project stands for a personalised travel planning process; addressing people at points of change in their life to change their travel behaviour by substituting short car trips with active travel choices like walking and cycling. In addition to positive environmental effects, people individually and communities as a whole can benefit from positive health improvements.

The SWITCH project aimed to bridge the gap between potential and current mobility behaviour. It brought together five experienced cities Antwerp, Gdansk, London, Donostia-San Sebastián and Vienna, which combined and locally adapted approaches and developed them into their SWITCH campaigns.

The project’s innovation came from the combination of tried and tested behaviour change approaches and their application to specific target groups on a large scale. The added value of SWITCH lay in the combination of a common strategy based on experiences and locally adapted campaigns. Hence, the project was based on personalized travel planning using arguments for public health and mobility campaigning, and the use of one or more ICT solutions as well as local approaches. This mix is intended to carefully address the needs of the target groups. All SWITCH campaigns were applied to people in a period of life change.

The personalized approach was supported by the application of information and communication technologies for motivation, gaming and behavioural change measurement.

Additionally, to the elaboration and implementation of targeted local campaigns, SWITCH used lessons learnt to define guidelines and a clear methodology to help replicate such campaigns across Europe. Although all cities are different, a common framework can be defined for targeting particular groups of citizens, ensuring that the campaign is well delivered and followed by switchers, while effectively monitoring results.

SWITCH Final report

The Report sums up all of the project activities and highlights the results from the 5 city partners as:

• Total number of car trips saved for all the cities: 668 trips
• Total number of GHG emissions saved: 25796 kg
• Total number of primary energy consumption saved: 2318 litres
• Increase in several days with more than 30 minutes of physical activity overall cities: 2682 days.

The Final Report is available here 

The SWITCH Campaign guide, an easy-to-read and attractively illustrated document, covers the following aspects:

1. Key principles of a SWITCH campaign
2. How to prepare a campaign
3. Step-by-step implementation advice
4. Evaluation guidelines
5. Success stories from five pilot cities

Other related resources:

• SWITCH e-Course "Developing your behaviour change campaign"
• SWITCH Campaign Guide and Toolbox

• For further information, please visit the project website