People in the East Papanui area of the Shirley/Papanui Community Board are taking part in a pilot scheme to see how small changes to the ways we travel can help the entire community.

Called Go Smarter, the community project aims to make better use of existing local modes of travel and balance car use with other forms of travel. People taking part in the pilot are recording their everyday travel.Those records are then analysed and suggestions made about how it could be done more efficiently.

“Smarter travel is more efficient travel”, says the project material. “That means making fewer trips and spending less time and money on travel. It doesn’t involve giving up using cars, but just making smarter use of them and balancing car use with other forms of transport.”

The scheme encourages people to plan and combine trips, cut out ones that are not needed, travel at off-peak times to make trips faster, work out trips which would be cheaper and faster on foot or by bus or bicycle.

Community Board chair Yvonne Palmer says Go Smarter, a regional council project being supported by the Board, is an idea which shows small changes can make a big difference.

“Take something like your local school. Every morning there’s a jam outside with parents or caregivers from not far away dropping kids off.

“That’s one example of how we could change, just taking the time to walk or set up a walking schoolbus,” she says.

“Travelling around the city’s getting slower and more frustrating every year,” she says.

“Unless we start changing, it’s only going to get worse. If we were all a little smarter about how we travel we could free up the roads, save money for the city and ourselves and maybe get a little healthier too.”