Getting started: Active travel
Active travel means a type of transportation that involves a level of activity.
Active travel is often used to mean walking and cycling, but it also includes trips made by wheelchair, mobility scooters, adapted cycles, e-cycles, or scooters. More active travel will make roads quieter, safer and more attractive for people to walk, wheel, and cycle.
Active travel, what do we mean?
Active travel benefits human health and the health of the planet. The Geneva Sustainability Centre encourages hospitals to champion active travel for their workforce and the wider community.
Promoting active travel is one way for hospitals to ‘address climate change as an integral part of healthcare delivery’.
Actions for hospitals
Promoting walking
- Create support networks for walking. Groups can provide friendship and encouragement, such as buddy systems and visits to local parks and trails.
- Contact local gyms and sports centres to find out about their facilities, membership, and to ask for special promotions for your workforce.
- Run a campaign with positive messages about the benefits of walking. Share stories from team members who are already walking to work.
Boosting public transport
- Talk to local bus and tram companies and the local council if there is not enough public transport to and from the hospital. Ask for more frequent services to help the workforce and patients.
- If good public transport is available, do not give incentives for driving and parking.
Encouraging cycling
- Make sure bike parking is available on hospital grounds.
- Provide facilities for the workforce, including showers, lockers, and changing rooms.
- Partner with your local cycling association to offer cycle clinics and bike maintenance workshops.
- Promote any government-funded initiatives such as a “Bike to Work Scheme”, or subsidies to buy bicycles and e-bikes.
Tackling accessibility and equity
- Develop a mobility plan to identify any accessibility needs from the workforce, patients and their families.
- Make sure pathways are well lit and easily accessible.
- Plan for regular maintenance of pathways, to keep them safe, comfortable and smooth
Case study: HUG sustainable mobility plan
The Geneva University Hospital (HUG) works with local public transport operators, and the Swiss and French railways, to offer its workforce a yearly travel subsidy. HUG partners with the local parking foundation and the local authorities to make sure that a significant proportion of parking spaces in the streets near to the hospital buildings are available for two-wheelers (both, motorized and non-motorized).
The hospital has set up bike-sharing and car-sharing subscriptions. The workforce receives discounts on classic, folding, and electric bicycles from local sales partners.
