The iConnect (Impact of COnstructing Non-motorised Networks and Evaluating Changes in Travel) study aims to measure and evaluate the changes in travel, physical activity and carbon emissions related to Sustrans' Connect2 programme, which is an ambitious UK-wide project that will transform local travel in 79 communities by creating new crossings and bridges to overcome barriers such as busy roads, rivers and railways, giving people easier and healthier access to their schools, shops, parks and countryside. We are working closely with Sustrans and other partners to achieve this ambitious aim.

The five-year iConnect study started in May 2008 and involves a broad evaluation of the whole programme coupled with detailed investigations at five specific sites. We hope to determine if the new routes have got more people switching from using their cars to walking or cycling, helping them to get more physically active and reducing their carbon footprint.

The project is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. This website is the main dissemination portal of the project.

Our objectives

1. To develop an evaluation framework and measurement tools for use in assessing the impacts of infrastructural interventions on travel behaviour, physical activity, carbon emissions and energy use (and their inter-relationships) at the individual and population level.
2. To apply the framework and tools thus developed to quantify the changes in travel behaviour, physical activity and carbon emissions and the changes in putative mediating factors associated with infrastructural interventions at a purposive sample of case-study Connect2 sites and to explore why these interventions are (or are not) effective, in what ways, for whom and in what circumstances.
3. To determine by means of a randomised controlled trial whether an additional tailored self-help intervention delivered at the level of the household can enhance the effects of an infrastructural intervention.
4. To evaluate the Connect2 programme in terms of its economic performance at a broad strategic level.