Rushden Lakes Achieves Green Travel Award
Rushden Lakes has become commended for its commitment to green travel and crowned the UK’s very first retail park and multi-use site to receive a Modeshift STARS award. To achieve this accolade the Northamptonshire retail and leisure destination has been working with us at Brightwayz for the last year.
Some Words From Rushden Lakes...
Rushden Lakes Centre Manager Donna French explained: “Within our travel plan we support staff parking and we want to encourage sustainable and alternative travel for our visitors to Rushden Lakes. We reached out to Brightwayz and the progress has been incredible. We surveyed staff and visitors to find out how people travelled to Rushden Lakes and from there we have held events to encourage people to walk, cycle, take a bus or use a scooter.”
About the Award
Modeshift STARS (Sustainable Travel Accredited and Recognised) is the UK’s leading active travel scheme and recognises schools, businesses and other organisations that have shown excellence in supporting cycling, walking and other forms of sustainable travel.
Rushden Lakes was awarded bronze level for its sustainable travel plan, which has helped reduce car journeys by over 7%, and made active and sustainable travel a feasible choice for as many people as possible.
Our Partnership with Rushden Lakes
Alison Holland, founder of Brightwayz, said: “It has been so rewarding working with Rushden Lakes and seeing staff and visitors start to embrace greener modes of transport,” said Alison. “More surveys are planned and will be working with individual stores and outlets to identify active travel champions. We will hold another sustainable travel event later this year and are confident Rushden Lakes will achieve silver within the year.”
Utilising Social Media
Another way Rushden Lakes have tackled active travel has been by utilising their social media channels.
Donna explained: “When Cineworld recently offered £3 tickets for all films for a whole day we knew that parking could be a challenge if everyone decided to turn up in cars. So, we hit our social media and did everything we could to encourage people to leave their cars at home and use other means of transport. It worked. On that day Stagecoach recorded a 60% increase in customers, there was a 73% increase in Voi scooter use and an extra 37% crossed the bridge into Rushden Lakes.”
Becoming a Greener Business
The Crown Estate own the site and it is managed by Savills. Jo Francis, Property Management Director at The Crown Estate said: “As part of becoming a greener business, we need to work with partners to develop resilient and sustainable travel infrastructure, offering people more options to either walk, cycle, use electric vehicles or easily access public transport.
“It is great to see the hard work of the team at Rushden Lakes accredited through Modeshift. We look forward to continue working collectively with everyone who uses our spaces to help shape our sustainable travel plans for the future.”
Here at Brightwayz social enterprise we love to provide information and tips to help you, your colleagues, friends and family travel in safe, active, sustainable ways for everyday journeys.
Our unique range of products is here to help support your active travel campaigns and 100% of profits from sales is ploughed back to support the work we do. Take a look at our range here and find something to help you inspire others to travel in good ways.