When travel matters: opportunities, barriers and policy options for workplace travel management in Sydney

The way we travel matters. The transport mode we choose enables us to fulfil our needs and meet our daily requirements as we move from place to place. The car, as the dominant transport mode in most cities internationally, affords us considerable mobility and flexibility. It allows us to moderate spatial and temporal limitations in carrying out our travel routines, thus providing a functional and convenient way of moving about. However, the negative consequences of excessive car use also matter. Car dependence in cities gives rise to various environmental, economic, human health and social implications, requiring urban planners and policy makers to consider ways to address these negative externalities. -- In Sydney, an increasingly populous, multicentric and car dependent city, urban planning policy continues to focus on improved public transport infrastructure and service delivery as means to achieving car reduction objectives - hence demonstrating a predisposition to supply-side initiatives. Initiatives that seek to reduce demand for travel, including Workplace Travel Management (WTM), have received considerably less attention, despite being embraced by strategic planning frameworks for more than a decade. WTM incorporates a system of policy interventions aimed at travel behaviour modification of employees within trip generating organisations (workplaces) to reduce, or increase the efficiency of, car use for journeys to, from and at work. As such, it offers a possible approach to reducing commuting and work-related travel that may contribute to broader planning policies seeking to address excessive car use in urban environments. -- This thesis considers the potential development and implementation of a centrally administered, citywide WTM programme in Sydney. It explores the domains in which such a programme would operate, and garners the perspectives of primary system actors within these domains as to opportunities for, and barriers to, more comprehensive WTM planning practice in Sydney. The thesis aspires to a deeper understanding of the WTM policy environment and the diversity and interdependence of actors and their contexts - as these factors ultimately determine programme operation and outcomes. This thesis reveals a highly complex policy environment for WTM and proposes a resilience framework as a means to better understand and negotiate that complexity.