07 Feb Driving Downtown is so Last Year…
Do you drive to work?
Alone?
What would it take to get you to take public transportation, or bike, or walk?
The city of Durham, North Carolina, found out. City officials have good reasons to encourage people to move to alternative transportation: Traffic. Pollution. Carbon emissions. Valuable downtown real estate eaten up by parking (and costing $24,000 a spot to build).
But hey, there are also good reasons to eat healthy, give up smoking, exercise daily, be a little kinder. . . . Information by itself isn’t always enough to modify behavior. Old habits die hard.
The city of Durham partnered with behavioral science researchers at Duke University to test ways to nudge downtown commuters out of old habits—to use alternatives to solo driving.
They tested 1500 workers over six months. One group of participants received personalized route maps that showed bike, bus, and walking routes and times, and included potential benefits, like weight loss and gas money savings. The city also added a bus lottery for some of its employees: ride the bus, and be eligible for a $163 weekly cash prize.
Among those who received the personalized map, solo driving was 12 percent lower than those who didn’t. It dropped 16 percent among those who received a map and took transit for prizes.
Carrots, no sticks. (Maybe carrot sticks, but that’s it.)
Read about it here.
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