At its heart, Alconbury Weald has been designed to encourage a healthy, sustainable lifestyle, with the right infrastructure and services being put in place for people to lead low carbon lives as the development rolls out. Working with Active Travel Planner smart journeys, Urban&Civic has been rolling out a range of initiatives to help residents make sustainable travel choices.
Lift sharing
Car sharing is a great way to save money, lower congestion and reduce your carbon footprint. Urban&Civic has been working with smart journeys to launch a new App for Alconbury Weald and surrounding communities to join. The Liftshare App helps find matches with other people living locally and travelling to/from similar destinations — as a driver, passenger or both.
Bus incentives
The AW1 bus service – which celebrated carrying its 40,000th passenger in September – is now connecting even more people. Launched in January last year, the service - which is funded by the Alconbury Weald development – connects Alconbury Weald and the surrounding villages to Huntingdon town, and bus and rail station. With more roads opening up within the development, the service is now reaching more residents within the new community.
The service, which uses a specially designed low carbon vehicle, is part of masterdeveloper Urban&Civic’s commitment to low carbon living and to improve sustainable transport options, so people living and working at Alconbury Weald have a convenient and reliable alternative to the car, while also supporting travel connections for neighbouring villages.
To encourage residents to leave the car at home and travel by bus during the summer, Alconbury Weald residents were given free bus travel vouchers for the AW1 bus during August and September. As a result, the service saw a 22% increase in passengers!
In addition, in direct response to feedback from young residents, Urban&Civic is also subsidising AW1 tickets for young people in full or part time education (up to 21 years old) to encourage sustainable travel habits from an early age. A flexi ticket for 10 journeys is now £15 – valid for 12 months).
