It won’t reach as many people as a billboard on Bend Parkway, but Bend city officials are hoping for better results with a marketing campaign that individually works with 1,200 residents to cut down on car trips.

Spanning from a project in Portland, the Oregon Department of Transportation has given Bend, Eugene and Salem $150,000 each to implement the TravelSmart program. The cities also are making a $17,000 contribution to the program.

Through the program, the cities will contact residents individually and provide them with information on how to incorporate alternative modes of transportation into their lifestyles.

The goal is to have people stop driving and start walking, biking or taking public transit.

”What we are trying to do is make people aware those options are available for some of their trips,” said ODOT’s Transportation Options Program Manager Dan Kaempff.

Bend intends to first randomly survey 600 households, hoping to reach 1,200 residents, about their transportation patterns. As part of the survey, residents can indicate if they want to receive information about how to fit alternative modes of transportation into their everyday life.

If residents do not want information, the city will not make any further contact. If they are interested, then information packages will be sent. Kaempff said past programs have shown two-thirds of the residents contacted are interested in receiving more information.

Other successes

In fall of 2002, Portland was the first city in the United States to do a TravelSmart program. Targeting a neighborhood in southeast Portland, the city saw a 9 percent reduction in car travel and a 12 percent reduction in vehicle trips, which amounted to 640,000 fewer vehicle miles traveled per year, according to the city’s Web site.

The city’s Transportation Options division discovered online the successful TravelSmart program in Perth, Australia, where a 14 percent reduction in vehicle use was made.

”For those of us working in the business of transit, that is pretty remarkable,” said Linda Ginenthal, who is with Portland’s Transportation Options division.

Although successful abroad, Ginenthal said they were unsure how well the program would work in the United States. Portland’s results ended up being in the middle of results from cities around the world who have tried TravelSmart program.

”Those of us in the United States tend to think very differently. We are a very car-oriented culture and society. Many of our cities are built with the car in mind,” Ginenthal said. ”We were pleasantly surprised at how average (the results) were.”

Similar to the project in Bend, the initial phase of TravelSmart in Portland contacted 600 households. The program provided those residents interested in trying alternative modes of transportation with walking maps, bus schedules and bike routes.

The consultants doing the project made home visits – on bike or taking public transit – and personally worked with residents on how to avoid using automobiles.

They found residents the closest bus stops and what bus routes were the fastest to work or the store. Residents were given walking routes and distances to libraries or the store.

The city found that the number of work trips by car didn’t change all that much, Ginenthal said. But leisure trips to the store or coffee shop by car were greatly reduced.

Leisure trips were generally close to home and residents had flexible time schedules when making them, said Dan Bowers, who also works with the Portland’s Transportation Options division.

”People are more likely to ride a bike two miles to a coffee shop than six miles to work,” Bower said.

In Perth, once people made the change, they tended to continue using the alternative modes of transportation three years later, Ginenthal said.

”It’s not so much a radical shift in lifestyle. You can reduce car trips by 10 percent with one or two car trips a week,” she said.

Last year, Portland expanded the TravelSmart program. Working in conjunction with the extension of the light rail system in the northern part of the city, the program reached 14,000 households and preliminary data points to successful results.

Bower anticipated the Travel-Smart program will pay for itself in a few years with the increase in transit services, bringing in more revenue to the transportation department.

A mass marketing campaign – encouraging residents to take transit, walk or bike through billboards or television ads – would reach more people, but Ginenthal said it wouldn’t have the lasting changes as the person-to-person contact does. And, she said the transportation department’s advertising could never counter the pro-car images portrayed by the automobile industry.

”The real reason we have gone to individual marketing, it actually changes people’s behavior,” she said. ”We could literally spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on billboard advertising and it doesn’t address the real information and needs that someone has.”

Benefits to Bend

In his presentation to Bend City Council Wednesday night, Bend Transportation Planner Rick Root said the greatest benefit will be the data that comes from the surveys, which will help the city make transportation decisions.

”The most important thing, it gives data about Bend. It is a good sample size,” Root said.

Kaempff agreed.

”It can be very helpful in determining what to invest in bike lanes or where to put them,” Kaempff said. ”This information could be very helpful in determining what kind of transit system should be built.”

Unlike most of the cities that participated in the project, Bend does not have a well-developed transit system. Some say it could limit the effectiveness, but noted the city does have an extensive network of walking trails and bike paths. Currently, the city has a Dial-A-Ride service were residents can call the city and request to be picked up and then taken to places.

”You may not see the same kind of results, but you will see a reduction in car trips,” Ginenthal said.