Sustainable Transport for Tourism Wales (STTW): 1996-2001
	Campaign Background and Key Achievements
	Summary Presenter: Colin Speakman 1.  What Today is About 2. Differing Roles; Common Purpose 3. Sharing Ideas and Building Consensus 4. Campaign Background and Key Achievements 4.1  The ‘Quality’ Message 4.2 The Urgency of the Challenge 4.3 Three Major Issues 4.4 Outputs 4.5 Monitoring and Evaluation 4.6 Long-Term Shift in Attitudes 4.7  Creating Opportunity and Choice 5 Third Phase of the Campaign
	Summary
	Colin Speakman, the well-known and highly-acclaimed expert in transport for leisure development, explains what today is all about and sets the scene for a third phase of a campaign that has had extraordinary success in getting its message across to visitors and operators alike. Emphasis is placed on the 'quality' message and that in the face of the urgency and size of the challenge, there should be no letting up in getting this message across and in addressing the three key issues at stake. In the slow process of achieving long-term shifts in attitudes (amongst visitors and operators alike) to the use of public transport for leisure, the demonstration of positive outputs along the way and the need for effective monitoring and evaluation is crucial to achieving ongoing support from funding bodies for the creation of greater opportunity and choice. Mr Speakman's recognition that the Sustainable Transport for Tourism Wales campaign has achieved all this with impressive results, and is "living proof of what can be done in Wales", is a tribute to all participants and a firm platform from which to launch the next phase of the Campaign.
	Presenter: Colin Speakman
	Colin Speakman is Managing Director of Transport for Leisure and together with co-writer Les Lumsdon produced the seminal Green Guide to Wales, first published in 1991. His views have changed little since and he continues to advocate sustainable tourism development based on a balanced approach to commerce, culture and the environment. Sustainable tourism, he says, is sensitive to the needs of the local economy, local communities and the countryside. It embraces living traditions, festivals, events and other community initiatives. It encourages visits to local craft workshops, museums and bookshops; hospitality that provides a sense of place, and exploration by public transport, bicycle and on foot. It enables access to beautiful countryside, and the pursuit of wholesome food and drink. Above all, Colin says, sustainable tourism enables visitors and residents to interact in mutually-beneficial ways. The local economy is strenghtened, local services are extended, and the public transport infrastructure is improved.
	1. What Today is About
	Today is about two things. First a recognition, a celebration, of the achievement of Phase Two of the Sustainable Transport for Tourism Wales Campaign 1998-2001. Second is to look at ahead at what we hope will be the start of Phase Three of the STTW Campaign 2002-2005. We will receive presentations of five super, practical examples of schemes that have benefited from STTW Campaign support. Not only will these inspire us but I am sure that each of the examples will be looking not only at what has been done during Phase Two but forward to the kind of things that are likely to be developed during Phase Three. So in a way the case studies will have in them key pointers as to the way forward, and will illuminate our debate this afternoon.
	2. Differing Roles; Common Purpose
	First my role. I am here not as the expert on The STTW Campaign - there are several people in this room who know a lot more about what has happened than I do, including Andy Shingler project co-ordinator who has put a huge amount of expertise and energy in the Campaign, and other key movers and shakers such as Terry Jackson - who might be described as the "Godfather" of the Campaign - Jim Embrey, Leo Markham and other members of the Campaign Management Panel. There's also a tremendous amount of additional experience and expertise in this room. The main purpose of today is to make best use of that expertise in the time we have available. My role is as facilitator, to move the debate along to try and keep everyone in order and ensure we finish on time both to enjoy lunch and trains home.
	3. Sharing Ideas and Building Consensus
	What today is really about is a sharing of ideas, and hopefully a putting-together of some building bricks for the future, built on the foundations of the first two phases of the Campaign. Today is also about hearing from you. Discussion and debate, both formal and informal, is going to be the main contribution you can make. The challenge will be at around 3pm this afternoon to see if we have built sufficient consensus to be able to launch a new Sustainable Transport for Tourism Wales Forum.
	4. Campaign Background and Key Achievements
	I have been asked, as a relative outsider, to say something about what I see of the Campaign's background and key achievements. All this is admirably set out in the Phase Two Campaign Report, which I presume everyone in this room has already seen and read from cover to cover. This is an impressive document and I would like to offer my personal congratulations to Andy Shingler, the main author and editor of what is a superbly written report. I can't speak, I regret to say, for the quality of the Welsh prose, but the English has an admirable clarity. It is a good read, has some impressive statistical information, and it is also handsomely produced, with some delightful illustrations and good design. Tourism South and West Wales, who have also hosted the whole Campaign, must also be warmly congratulated. It really is a lovely document to handle.
	4.1 The 'Quality' Message
	Presentation is actually very important. In a very real sense, to quote the old phrase, the medium is the message. Transport for Tourism is about quality. It is about giving people a good experience. It's about offering the public something which is not just at least as good as the motor car, but better in terms of quality provision and customer care. This report gives decision makers exactly that message.
	4.2 The Urgency of the Challenge
	But let me offer a note of realism. Despite the many achievement of the Campaign, we live in the dark ages in terms of sustainable transport in the countryside, even within such a green country as Wales. The overwhelming majority of leisure journeys to and within the Welsh countryside, something like 85%, are made by car with all the problems of visual pollution, air pollution, noise, congestion, danger, urbanisation, and threat to health that implies. In many areas, including the three National Parks, the percentage is over 90%. The remaining 15% is divided into travel by walking, cycling, coaches, buses and trains. Public transport, using scheduled buses and trains, equates to a mere 5-6% of trips to the countryside or 2-3% in our National Parks. Does that matter? Should we not resign ourselves to the fact that public transport users are just an eccentric minority who don't count and, as tourism providers, what really matters is that the overwhelming majority of our customers (85+%) come by car? Indeed for a lot of people in the tourism industry in Wales, as elsewhere in the UK, that is a self evident truth and their promotional material will simply tell you how to reach your accommodation or an attraction from the nearest motorway interchange. There are many recent authoritative reports, too numerous to name, from the National Assembly, the Countryside Council from Wales, from local authorities, CPRW, RSPB and other bodies which will explain why such an attitude is short sighted and discriminatory, and why, as a society, good quality public transport access is vital to the future well being of both the environment and communities of Wales.
	4.3 Three Major Issues
	The arguments about the need to develop and promote sustainable transport can be crystallised into three major issues: (1) Environmental - the impact of the car on our historic towns and countryside, impacts on air pollution, global warming, landscape. (2) Social - the need to offer that significant proportion of the population of Wales - around 30% - equal access to our countryside, and historic towns and leisure opportunities. (3) Economic - the whole, wide agenda of sustainable transport and tourism and the spending powers of visitors, including many overseas visitors, in rural communities. The central issue for today is what effect, if any, has the Sustainable Transport for Tourism Wales Phase 2 campaign had on any of these key issues. It is the third of these, Economic, which has been the prime focus of the Campaign, and this is entirely appropriate bearing in mind that the funding of the Campaign from both Welsh and EU sources is clearly linked to developing the Welsh economy. In looking at key achievement therefore, economic benefit has been the main measurable output, though in fact a prime objective of the Campaign is also to relieve "the road-borne congestion that threatens to underline the very qualities of Wales that visitors come here for in the first place."
	4.4 Outputs
	But what impressive measurable outputs there are. These are listed on page 1 of the report within the Executive Summary. There were 29 individual campaigns supported by the Campaign, run by its match-funding partners, and six strategic projects developing the provision and usage of public transport access information for tourism. Of these surely the crowning achievement was the launch of the Freedom of Wales Flexipass, a range of multi-mode tickets offering a huge range of travel opportunities by rail and bus throughout Wales linked to various discount facilities. The really impressive statistic is the 18,000 passes sold since Flexipass's launch in 1999. 42% of these customers would not have come to Wales without the Pass, which created at least £300,000 additional tourist revenue into the local economy.
	4.5 Monitoring and Evaluation
	What is impressive about STTW - and a requirement of all their funding projects is the careful monitoring of all projects. This has enabled the Campaign to report that other STTW supported activities has generated 20,000 additional trips to Wales, more than £575,000 additional revenue and between 21 and 31 fulltime jobs - all with a knock-on multiplier effects within the economy. These are hard, measurable facts. What is more difficult to assess is whether or not either the new visitors generated or the switchers has had any impact in terms of reducing the environmental impact of tourist traffic.
	4.6 Long-Term Shift in Attitudes
	I would argue that whilst even the impressive examples and figures quoted in this document are probably doing little more than keeping up, if that, with the annual increases in car usage within Wales, what is really happening is the start of a long term shift in attitudes, and eventually in behaviour which ultimately will make a real difference. It is a slow process, and will not happen everywhere at the same speed or in the same way. But what this report does demonstrate, through some of the excellent case studies described here, is how change is beginning to happen.
	4.7 Creating Opportunity and Choice
	The two key words are opportunity and choice. There is still an implicit assumption than in ever more-prosperous Britain, sooner or later we shall all own cars and use them on every possible occasion. That is simply not true. Indeed if the recent news on the collapse of personal pension finance is to be believed, we shall soon be an ageing population with declining personal incomes for whom car ownership will become an intolerable financial burden as our incomes decline and costs rise. By creating the kind of high quality green networks that are described in the Report, we are giving everyone, affluent and less affluent alike, a real choice. As road congestion inevitably worsens, integrated public transport networks, especially rail based networks than do not require the use of ever more congested roads, will become a much better, safer, and more enjoyable experience than the private car.
	5. Third Phase of the Campaign
	Of course as this report makes clear, there is still a long, long way to go in the process of providing a high quality, well integrated network to serve visitors to Wales, let alone the local population. That's precisely why it is essential that we have a Third Phase of the Campaign. But if devolution has proved anything, it is that Wales, as a more autonomous nation, can be more innovative, more creative, more radical than its more lethargic, Whitehall-dominated neighbour. The STTW campaign is living proof of what can be done in Wales.
	The achievement of long term goals of environmental sustainability is, or should be, at the absolute centre of all our work in transport and tourism within Wales. The fine Welsh poet and writer Gwynn ap Gwilym wrote a moving introduction, in Welsh, to the book produced by Les Lumsdon and myself in 1990: The Green Guide to Wales.
	"One of the tales of the Mabinogi, written around the twelfth century, speaks of a magic mist descending on the countryside, and when the mist had lifted all the people had vanished. It would seem that the challenge facing us in the twenty-first century is to preserve our environment whilst at the same time providing the means to sustain our communities and our way of life."
	That is exactly why we need the Sustainable Transport for Tourism Wales Campaign in 2002.
	Public Transport Tourism Mapping; Sian Thomas Mission Statement/Terms of Reference Phase 3; Draft Project Portfolio
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