3 ms·

London borough gamified to get fewer people travelling by car

1 points by samizdis 5y ago

samizdis 5y ago
The figures presented in this are encouraging: The data we collected showed that between the week before and the week following Beat the Street, 1199 fewer cars (a 53% reduction) and 130 fewer vans (also a 53% reduction) travelled along Cambridge Road between 07:00-09:30, and 705 fewer cars (a 34% reduction) and 36 fewer vans (a 20% reduction) travelled along the road between 14:00-16:30. I am puzzled, though, by the reduction in van journeys. I'd imagined that van traffic consists mostly of work journeys - deliveries, utility companies attending job sites/call-outs, builders, plumbers etc - undertaken by those who need to lug around equipment, or goods to drop off/pick up. How would those who usually travel in vans have done without them?
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Yes, I'm not sure that these raw stats tell the whole story, especially for vans like you wrote. We had this exact game locally, especially among primary schools, a few years in a row. My experience is that it does make more parents walk to and from school to make their children play the game (there might be a reduction in vans traffic there if people drive their children to school in their van (?) ), and that also make people walk around after school in order to score more. But that works only for as long as the game runs, and for a short period in any case. It also worked best the first year it ran, after that people were less enthusiastic (no 'hard' gain at the end of the gain and the top places on the leaderboard are always taken by the same few people who manage to cycle around [cycling means faster so more points per hour] hours every day). Frankly, parents were relieved when the game ended every year. So all in all this is an interesting experience that does make people participate and thus walk/cycle more but as a one off game, and I don't think it really changes habits.

3 ms·

London borough gamified to get fewer people travelling by car

1 points by samizdis 5y ago

samizdis 5y ago
The figures presented in this are encouraging: The data we collected showed that between the week before and the week following Beat the Street, 1199 fewer cars (a 53% reduction) and 130 fewer vans (also a 53% reduction) travelled along Cambridge Road between 07:00-09:30, and 705 fewer cars (a 34% reduction) and 36 fewer vans (a 20% reduction) travelled along the road between 14:00-16:30. I am puzzled, though, by the reduction in van journeys. I'd imagined that van traffic consists mostly of work journeys - deliveries, utility companies attending job sites/call-outs, builders, plumbers etc - undertaken by those who need to lug around equipment, or goods to drop off/pick up. How would those who usually travel in vans have done without them?
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Yes, I'm not sure that these raw stats tell the whole story, especially for vans like you wrote. We had this exact game locally, especially among primary schools, a few years in a row. My experience is that it does make more parents walk to and from school to make their children play the game (there might be a reduction in vans traffic there if people drive their children to school in their van (?) ), and that also make people walk around after school in order to score more. But that works only for as long as the game runs, and for a short period in any case. It also worked best the first year it ran, after that people were less enthusiastic (no 'hard' gain at the end of the gain and the top places on the leaderboard are always taken by the same few people who manage to cycle around [cycling means faster so more points per hour] hours every day). Frankly, parents were relieved when the game ended every year. So all in all this is an interesting experience that does make people participate and thus walk/cycle more but as a one off game, and I don't think it really changes habits.