Case studies - University of Dundee

The University of Dundee has around 2,500 staff and 18,000 students. Based in the centre of Dundee, the campus is five minutes from the city centre and railway station.

In recent years Dundee University has been experiencing an increased demand for parking spaces, this has been made more evident since staff and students were re-located from the Gardyne Road campus (School of Education and Social Work) and Ninewells campus (School of Nursing) to the Central campus.

The University is removing many of its car parks either to make way for buildings or to provide more green space on the campus. Recently a car park was replaced with green space to allow easier and safer pedestrian access between buildings. Overall car parking has been reduced by 400 spaces.

Measures

With the increased numbers of staff and students on the Central campus, the University was pleased that they had encouraged car sharing five years ago as part of their 1st green travel plan. Read

Dundee University's 2nd 5-year travel plan (PDF, 273K), published last year.

Initially there was a slow start, with less than 100 members for the car share scheme but now this has increased to over 350 members registered with the scheme.

Marketing Initiatives

The increase in numbers is mainly due to the continuous and targeted marketing of the scheme to University staff and students.

'We just keep drip feeding messages to everyone' says Trudy Cunningham, Environment & Sustainability Officer at Dundee University.

Some of the marketing initiatives have included:

• emails to students before they break up for Christmas holidays encouraging them to think about how they are going to travel home;
• emails focusing on petrol price increases after the budget was announced;
• placing flyers on windscreens;
• placing posters in car parks;
• adding information to new student fresher packs;
• informing staff about car sharing during their induction sessions;
• posting messages on the electronic notice board at the beginning of semesters.

Looking forward

Future plans include introducing dedicated car parking spaces for car sharers, this was mentioned in the most recent travel survey as something that would encourage more staff and students to car share.