Promoting active transport in a workplace setting: evaluation of a pilot study in Australia

Promoting active transport is an increasingly important focus of recent health promotion initiatives addressing the major public health concerns of car dependence, decreased levels of physical activity and environmental health. Using active transport that relies less on the use of private cars and more on alternatives such as walking, cycling and public transport has the potential to increase population levels of physical activity and to improve the environment. Over 12 months, a combined social and individualized marketing campaign was delivered to a cohort of randomly selected health service employees (n = 68) working at a health care facility in inner-city Sydney, Australia. Pre- and post-intervention surveys measured changes in mode of transport, awareness of active transport and attitudes towards mode of transport. Following the intervention, we found there was a reduction in the proportion of participants who drove to work 5 days per week and a decrease in trips travelled by car on weekends. In addition, there was high awareness of the intervention amongst participants and their understanding of the concept of active transport improved from 17.6% at baseline to 94.1% at the follow-up survey (p < 0.01). There was also a significant shift in attitudes, which suggested increased positive regard for active transport. Our findings suggest that a combined social and individualized marketing campaign in the workplace setting can increase the use of active transport for the journey to work and trips on weekends. However, before these findings are widely applied, the intervention needs to be tested in a controlled study with a larger sample size.