Workplace travel plan: the structure, an example, and where to start

A workplace travel plan is a working document: how employees travel today, what the employer wants to change, which measures should change it, and how the effect will be measured. The term is British professional vocabulary, but the document exists across Europe under other names, and the structure is the same everywhere. This page gives you that structure, a filled example, and the honest order to do it in.

One document, many names

In the United Kingdom it is a workplace travel plan. In France, a plan de mobilite employeur is tied to mandatory workplace negotiations for employers with 50 or more staff at a site. In Belgium, Brussels requires a bedrijfsvervoerplan from larger sites, and a federal commuting survey runs every three years for employers with more than 100 workers. In Spain, law 9/2025 requires a sustainable mobility plan for workplaces above 200 employees. The names differ and the legal weight differs. What every version has in common is that it starts from a picture of how people actually travel.

Requirements vary by country and change over time. This page describes the document, not any country's legal duty; check the rules that apply to your site before relying on them.

What a workplace travel plan contains

Strip away the templates and every serious travel plan has five parts:

1. A baseline: the modal split at your site, measured, with a date and a response rate. Not last year's assumption and not the national average.
2. Site facts: parking, public transport links, cycling conditions, and what commuting costs employees and the employer today.
3. Targets: what should change, expressed against the baseline, with a date. A target without a baseline is a wish.
4. Measures: what the employer will actually do, each one linked to the barrier it addresses.
5. Follow-up: when the site will be measured again, with the same questions and the same method, so the change is real and not a change of method.

A filled example

The clearest way to see the structure is a filled one. Our example report is a complete baseline for a fictional 240-person workplace, calculated with the real engine and the Dutch factor set: modal split, cost picture, barriers, convertible potential and a prioritised action plan, with the method chapter behind every figure.

Read the example report

Why the baseline comes first

Most travel plans are written in the wrong order: measures first, measurement never. The result is a document that cannot show effect, because there is nothing to compare against. The honest order is to measure first, set targets against the measurement, and measure again the same way. That is also the cheapest order, because measures chosen against real barriers are fewer and better targeted than measures chosen from a template.