EU Tapestry

The aim of the Hampshire County Council case study is to explore new and innovative measures that are designed to promote sustainable travel in a rural setting.

The TAPESTRY project focuses on 10 satellite villages around the key market towns of Petersfield, Alton and Alresford in the east of the county of Hampshire.

Traditional information and marketing procedures in this area have had limited success in their ability to raise awareness of service provision, to reposition rural bus services as a mode of first rather than last resort, and to increase levels of use. This study hopes to overcome this problem through the use of a new approach to ’selling’ rural bus services, based on an “interactive marketing” approach.

“Interactive Marketing” will be promoted within the villages via the development of “Learning Networks” and “Stakeholder Forums”.

“Learning Networks” will be developed with members of the local community in order to work up campaigns and communicate information about service provision. These marketing campaigns could take many forms, but will be designed to support the requirements of the local communities.

“Stakeholder Forums” will also be established to run alongside the “Learning Networks”. These will be used to assess the viability of suggested campaigns, and to add another perspective to campaign development.
Via this “interactive marketing” campaign it is hoped the TAPESTRY project will increase awareness of the implications of individual transport decisions; change attitudes and perceptions towards transport modes; raise awareness of the availability of passenger transport in rural areas; and increase patronage of existing rural transport services.