Making Car Sharing and Car Clubs Work - Case ... - The Civil Service

MAKING CAR SHARING AND CAR CLUBS WORKCASE STUDY SUMMARIES10.6 The Council and The Heath Business and Technical Park (in Runcorn) have closed/privatesites within the Halton Journey Share Site.10.7 All closed/private groups can extend their search for car share partners to the public sectionof the Halton Journey Share site, if they are unable to find a suitable match with colleagues.10.8 Halton College are considering having a closed site on the database for staff. Its maincampus is located next door to the Council’s Offices in Widnes and there is possibility herefor sharing between College and Council employees. The College is only advertising thescheme to staff, as it is College policy to encourage students to travel by public transport.10.9 The NTT has been in contact with another local employer, with 3,000 staff, who hasexpressed an interest in taking an active part and promoting the car sharing scheme in theirworkplace.Impact and Effectiveness10.10 The Scheme is in the early stages of development. The impact and effectiveness of theScheme is very low, so far. Development is being hampered because the NTT feels unableto promote the Scheme as they are concerned about the equity and suitability of the currentdatabase.10.11 The NTT is trying to persuade the database providers to make its site more user-friendly forpeople who have low levels of literacy. At present the site is difficult to navigate in places,includes questions that are probably unnecessary and could be seen as discriminatory. TheNTT is concerned that the level of literacy required to fill in the form and use the website isrelatively high, and includes information that requires a reading age above the nationalaverage.10.12 The NTT is especially unhappy with the specific question about disability on the applicationform, which includes the following list of options:NoneDeafBlindPartially-sightedPhysical disabilityPsychiatric disabilitySpeech disability.10.13 The list of employment types listed on the form, which is not a compulsory question, appearsto the NTT to be arbitrary and skewed towards identifying higher earning individuals (thetype of questions typically used for segmented marketing purposes). Many residents inHalton are used to completing benefit-related forms, where all parts must be completed. TheNTT is concerned that residents will not take note of the symbols indicating a question isoptional, but will instead think they are obliged to fill in all of the sections.Final V1.1, Dec. 2004 - 64 -