BackLeeds Council lead the walking way
The Transport Policy team at Leeds City Council had been trying for several years to find a walking promotion to encourage their colleagues and people across the city to get out and about on foot. Three years ago, they came across Living Streets Walking Works Campaign who was running an annual Walk to Work Day in London and decided to take part in Leeds as well.
In 2009, the Living Streets Walk to Work Week was made national, which gave Leeds City Council the opportunity to get properly involved and engage with the local community as they did it. Ray Hill, Team Leader – Influencing Travel Behaviour at Leeds City Council said:
“We had been trying to find a way to promote walking for a while as we were already involved in things like Bike Week. When we saw Walk to Work Day was happening in London, we decided to take part as well. Last year when it was made national, we managed to buy some resources with a small budget and make a bigger event of the week.”
Investigating the angle of CO2 emissions, the transport team decided to organise an event to make people aware of how much CO2 they could save by walking all or part of their journey to work. On the launch day, they had balloons in varying sizes, representing how much CO2 staff members could save by walking to work . Despite it being one of the wettest days of the year, the team hit the streets, accompanied by Joint Leader of Leeds City Council Councillor Richard Brett. Ray Hill continued, “It was a shame about the weather, but we still managed to go ahead with our plans. We had to blow all the balloons up in the office so they didn’t blow away! One of the largest balloons was nearly 8 foot wide, but it was a great way of showing the amount of CO2 which could be saved by walking.”
This year, Leeds City Council are hoping to team up with the universities in the local area to encourage walking in the community and will be organising some healthy competition between colleagues internally using the Walk to Work Week online tool.
“We’re looking forward to making this year’s event even better. The activities and promotions planned around Walk to Work Week present an excellent opportunity to promote our on-line journey planner Walkit.com for the visitors and residents of Leeds.”
Published on: 04/03/2010
