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ELIZABETH AMPT
DEVELOPER, TRAVEL BLENDING
After many years of work and prolific publication in the field of travel survey design and behavioural analysis applied to consumers choices in transport, Elizabeth Ampt has developed a pioneering technique called Travel Blending, which combines conventional travel surveys/travel diaries/behavioural monitoring of transport choices and constraints in a practical exercise that can lead individuals in their ordinary lives to reappraise their needs and rationale for travel. This is to their own advantage, as well as that of the community as a whole.
Having developed, tested and refined the technique in a wide range of practical and research studies, the Travel Blending technique has already been adopted by several local authorities in the UK, Australia, Chile and elsewhere. The most notable of the places to have adopted the Travel Blending idea is the city of Adelaide, where significant reductions in the demand for travel have been
achieved, without resort to coercion or price-restraint, but merely through the wide-scale application of the Travel Blending technique. One of the essential features of this technique, which should ensure its future success, is the unique degree of involvement it achieves by the people concerned. This is important because these are the people whose choices determine the overall demand for travel, especially that for "discretionary" car-use. Given the current global concerns about traffic congestion and air pollution, this gain in social efficiency at virtually no resource cost illustrates the kind of thinking that will be needed to achieve a more sustainable environment in future, without severe sacrifice of economic well-being.
Elizabeth Ampt, in conserving and developing the idea and promoting it as a practical technique, has made a unique and significant contribution to both theory and practice in transportation.
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