Working 9 to 5 to promote active travel in Belfast

Claire McLernon is our first full-time Active Travel Officer for Workplaces in Northern Ireland. She gives us an insight into the first year of this new programme 'Leading the Way with Active Travel' where she is tasked with getting a range of workplaces to travel actively.

My morning so far has been spent hosting an information stall at the staff canteen of one of my public sector workplaces. For now, there is a lull in the flow of employees queuing for their morning coffee and I’m allowing my voice to rest after all the chat at the stall before the lunch rush. I have my portable free gifts Christmas tree, and am in high demand!

Jackie, the legendary car park security guy, is sipping on his tea in the corner, probably wondering how to outwit this ‘girl with the bike’. The lull is giving me time to reflect on the year that has passed since I started this job - a year that began with the daunting task of conveying a message to these hundreds of employees with their busy jobs and hectic lives.

As a Sustrans newbie against a backdrop of a region who I didn’t think fully embraced the bicycle as a normal mode of transport, I felt like I was pedalling the wrong way up a one way street.

A year of behaviour change

Last December, a comprehensive baseline travel survey at the beginning of my project revealed that 10% of employees where I’m holding this morning’s stall travel actively to work as their main mode of travel (cycling 4%; walking 6%). After a full year of information stalls, led walks and cycles, Dr Bike sessions, turbo challenges, health fairs, Champion training, countless mail-outs, e-mails, and newsletters, I am hoping the follow-up survey will show I’ve made an impact.

All I can reveal so far is my gut feeling that attitudes towards active travel are quickly changing for the better, in no small part due to the superb leadership and vision from the people at the very top of this particular workplace.

Belfast Bikes

Furthermore, the timely introduction of the City Council’s Belfast Bikes that coincided with the start of this project has been somewhat of a godsend, critically making cycling accessible for those workers in the city who cannot travel the whole way to work by bicycle due to commuting distances.

To assume the project would not be a success without this access to bicycles would be pessimistic (it’s not just about bikes, after all). In truth, this incidental marriage of workplace policy and leadership and City Council initiative has created the perfect conditions for far greater acceptance of cycling as a normal and sought-after mode of transport for everyday use. 

Next steps?

I’m a very active person but I’m comfortable admitting that like the vast majority of the population, active travel is still not my default, but it has now become my choice. I still have one more rung up the ladder of behavioural change to go, where I’m a fully-fledged active traveller who doesn’t drive the one mile up the hill to the shop to get a litre of milk. I want to take those within my workplaces on that journey with me, because if there’s one thing that’s evident from my year’s experience, it’s that there are very few people who sit at a desk all day and wish they were more idle.

Surveys and data and reports are important on a population scale, but as an individual, all I need to keep me motivated in my job is to hear is the sweet sound of a bell on the next shiny, new bicycle entering the overflowing staff bicycle park.

Just a month ago, Jackie* the car park guy, offered himself up as keeper of a suite of bicycle tools in his hut. Although I know he still find cyclists annoying, I see his adopted role of jaunty authoritarian of the two-wheeled workers on his patch as a big jump in my own measure of progress. Jackie has taken one critical step up the rungs of the ladder of behavioural change and is, without realising it, taking so many others with him in the right direction.

With much more work still to be done, I can be grateful that Sustrans have the support of the project’s funder, the Public Health Agency, who realise that true behaviour change can take time but when given the right conditions, will happen.

*Jackie is now available for a While-U-Work check and pump of your bicycle tyres. He said so himself today after I told him he was getting a mention in my workplace blog…

Leading the Way with Active Travel is a 3-year programme that started in 2014.

It was commissioned by the Public Health Agency (PHA) to encourage and support staff in PHA, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast City Council, Health and Social Care Board, and Business Services Organisation to travel actively as part of their working day.

Find out more about how we can promote active travel in your workplace or download the Northern Ireland workplaces newsletter (pdf 1.15mb).