Background
Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester are all medium-sized, relatively free-standing towns, located in the north and middle of England. Following a competition, they were designated ‘Sustainable Travel Towns’, implementing a programme of measures from 2004 to 2009, intended to reduce car use. Taken together they spent £15 million, of which £10 million was special Government funding provided by the Department for Transport.
There were some differences in local conditions and problems, and each town made its own choice on how much to spend on each of a range of different measures. They all spent most on personal travel planning (from a third to nearly half of revenue spending), followed by travel awareness campaigns, promoting walking and cycling, and public transport marketing. Smaller amounts were spent on workplace and school travel plans. The programmes were implemented by teams of 6-10 staff in each town.
The main period for assessment of impacts was 2004 to 2008, taking care, as far as possible, to avoid confusion with the first impacts of recession at the end of 2008.

Trip-making by each mode
Taking all three towns together, the total number of trips per head made by residents reduced slightly. Car trips per person reduced and trips by more sustainable modes increased. The figures showed a similar overall pattern, but marked differences in detail, from town to town.
The analyses gave the following key results:
Car use: Car driver trips by residents fell by 9% per person, and car driver distance by 5%-7%, according to aggregated household survey results for the three towns. This compares with a fall of about 1% in medium-sized urban areas over the same period, based on NTS data.
Prior to the economic downturn, the volume of traffic observed on-street in all three towns reduced by approximately 2% across the whole urban areas, with reductions of 7-8% observed in the inner areas. Once the economic downturn began, there is evidence of further town-wide traffic reductions in the order of 0.5-1%, which were broadly in line with national trends. The difference between the household survey results and the traffic counts is mainly due to population increases (particularly in Peterborough), employment increases (particularly in Darlington), journeys in the towns by non-residents, differences in geographical coverage and definitions of the data, and, possibly, some induced traffic, though this was probably very small.
Bus use: Bus trips per person grew substantially, by 10%~22%, compared with a national fall of 0.5% in medium-sized towns. The bus growth primarily occurred in Peterborough and Worcester, with a less positive trend in Darlington (in part due to the nature of competition between two operators in that town).
Cycling: The number of cycle trips per head grew substantially in all three towns, by 26%-30%. Darlington (which was also a Cycling Demonstration Town) showed the greatest growth. Meanwhile, cycle trips declined in medium-sized towns elsewhere.
Walking: The number of walking trips per head grew substantially, by 10%~13%, compared to a national decline in similar towns.