Limerick Smarter Travel and partners scoop eight of the 13 awards on offer
Limerick Smarter Travel and its partners Northern Trust, UL and LIT are top of the class when it comes to the National Smarter Travel Awards after scooping eight out of the 13 awards on offer.
Northern Trust in Limerick were crowned the overall winners at the event in the Aisling Hotel in Dublin and were presented with the Overall Smarter Travel Workplace for initiatives implemented in the company to promote more sustainable forms of transport amongst its staff.
Aimee Reed from Northern Trust was the winner of the Smarter Travel Workplaces Co-ordinator Award. Aimee has worked on many projects to promote smarter travel. The company also won the Smarter Travel Carsharing Workplace category.
Limerick City and County Council was awarded the Smarter Travel Workplace Walking Award to acknowledge their efforts to encourage and support staff to walk to work. Its ‘Beat the Chief’ Challenge, dared staff to walk more than the Chief Executive in one week.
Denise McEvoy from Limerick Institute of Technology was the winner of the new Curriculum Development category. This represents important work developing student curriculum to promote walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing, in an effort to engage students through their multimedia coursework and to support a culture of smarter travel within the campus.
The University of Limerick was acknowledged in three categories for the work that has been undertaken in recent years to promote and facilitate walking and cycling and their establishment of a cross functional working group to enable these actions across campus.
Miriam O’Donoghue from Limerick Smarter Travel at Limerick City and County Council said: “I’m delighted with all the awards for Limerick. Limerick Smarter travel is all about getting people to think about how they travel, focusing on more sustainable modes of transport.”
“Over the past number of years we have developed the infrastructure to allow people to walk and cycle much more safely. The Limerick city to UL and Corbally riverbank shared walk and cycle way is one of the projects we’ve been involved in.”
“In addition to the local authority winning the award, our partners in Northern Trust, UL and LIT have also won. Smarter Travel is a partnership approach and we need everyone to buy in to it for it to be a success.”
“The co-ordinated approach in Limerick and these eight awards show we are on the right path.”
Smarter Travel Workplaces and Campuses is a public awareness programme working with large employers to implement voluntary workplace travel plans. A growing number of Irish employers are engaging in Smarter Travel, working with their employees to facilitate travel choice in favour of more sustainable transport, resulting in reduced costs, enhanced employee wellbeing, better access and more effective parking management.
Anne Graham, Chief Executive Officer at the National Transport Authority said: “A growing network of organisations in Ireland are engaging in Smarter Travel, working with their staff and students to facilitate travel choice in favour of more sustainable transport, resulting in reduced costs, enhanced employee wellbeing, better access and more effective parking management.”
“Internationally workplace travel plans have been shown to reduce single-occupant car use by 10-24%. The promotion and facilitation of cycling in particular, both on campuses and in workplaces made for strong competition, which highlights the growing interest in cycling across Ireland. The Awards are well placed to act as inspiration and leadership as we recognise organisations that are paving the way for more sustainable travel options.”
Awards were presented in 13 categories across different modes of transport, overall workplace and campus, student projects and curriculum development. The University of Limerick took the lead amongst third-level institutions, taking home the award for Cycling Campus of the Year, Smarter Travel Campus Working Group of the Year and Walking Campus of the Year.
Winners in the workplace categories included: Northern Trust, Limerick; Limerick City and County Council; and St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin.
Winners in the campus categories included University College Dublin, University of Limerick, Waterford IT, Maynooth University, and Dublin City University.