Using data to understand and change travel behaviours

Stuart Lester of Transport for the West Midlands and Toby Bennett, Local Government Lead at Commonplace discuss how data is being used to manage the travelling public. Transport for the West Midlands is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority which brings together Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Sollihull, Dandwell, Dudley and Walsall to bring strategic transport planning to these footprints and to an even larger travel-to-work area that is home to 4.2 million. Commomnplace is an online engagement platform used by local government, developers and others to provide open community engagement to reduce risks arising from regeneration, housing, transport and infrastructure projects. This discussion reveals some of the work being done by TfWM to bring together huge quantities of data, some collected by traditional means as well as ‘high velocity data becoming available from mobile networks, CCTV and satnav, and projects carried out by Commonplace to dig deep into community sentiment around controversial projects. Issues also discussed include the problems of sharing data from private and public sectors (trust, commercial sensitivity, GDPR); how to give the travelling public the right amount of information at the right time, and how to persuade people to change travel behaviours that work for them but harm others who may be affected by eg poor air quality.