21 Feb London Stansted boosts investment into sustainable transport provision
London Stansted Airport has underlined its sustainable transport credentials by outlining plans for new charging points for passengers’ electric vehicles and further investment into facilities that support the airport’s industry-leading levels of public transport usage.
Up to 13 high-speed electric charging points will be installed at a new purpose-built charging station on Thremhall Avenue. This is planned to open later this year and will allow our passengers to charge their vehicles whilst taking advantage of two new “drive-thru” restaurants planned for the same location. The airport will also soon introduce charging points into its Meet and Greet car parks, ensuring that owners of electric vehicles who use this product can return to a fully charged battery.
London Stansted currently sees the highest proportion of passengers travelling by public transport of any major UK airport, with more than half arriving by train, coach or bus. The airport is currently investing £2 million in transforming its Passenger Transport Interchange, which provides a seamless connection between the airport and its direct rail services to central London and the unrivalled coach network which offers 2,000 services a day to 50 towns and cities across the UK. Last month a successful trial of one of the UK’s first fully electric coaches was run between the airport and London Stratford Coach Station and this service will now begin a full passenger trial in the coming weeks.
In addition to the high volume of passengers using public transport, the airport has a number of schemes in place to encourage sustainable transport usage amongst staff. These include the popular Airport Travelcard scheme which can offer colleagues commuting on public transport savings of up to 80%. The proportion of staff using public transport has been rising steadily in recent years to almost 40%, with more than 2000 travelcards being sold to colleagues per month. For those driving to work, the airport operates a car-share scheme which incentivises staff travelling into work together.
The airport has also recently launched a free dockless cycle scheme to help colleagues get fit while travelling between staff car parks and the terminal and also reduce the number of minibus shuttles required.
