ActiveTravel

A fun way to get active

Wanting to reduce your stress levels? Needing help meeting your fitness goals for 2023? Looking to reduce your environmental impact? Active commuting and travelling by walking, running, biking, and taking public transport has more than one benefit. It can help us disconnect from our busy lives, keep us in good shape, promote good sleep, and reduce our carbon emissions. With new mobile application ActiveTravel, you can keep track of your travel habits, set goals for healthier travel, and measure your progress.

What is ActiveTravel?

ActiveTravel is a research project which aims to increase the understanding of how coaching mobile apps can be used to encourage active mobility and explore how knowledge can support employers to facilitate more active commuting in their organisations. The project is run by Karolinska Institutet and by Trivector, and is funded by Vinnova.

Four workplaces throughout Sweden will participate in an ActiveTravel campaign period during the spring of 2023. As an employee at one of these organisations, you are invited to join the campaign.

How does it work?

During the three-month campaign period you will be able to use the app to set personal goals on how to increase your physical activity when commuting and for other everyday travels. The app will give you feedback and encourage you to reach your goals through notifications. You need to bring your phone throughout the day. The phone will then register your trips and you check that the information is correct. Short background questions about you and your health will be asked during the campaign period.

Other campaign participants at your workplace will be shown in the app, but all are anonymous and no individual data can be extracted. You can terminate your participation at any time. More detailed information about the research study and its implication for you as a participant is available at travelvu.app/activetravel.

We hope that you are interested in participating!

What do you get?

• Encouragement to walk and cycle during everyday trips
• Feedback about your own results
• Possibility to compare yourself with others – compete with your colleagues!
• Information about health and CO₂ savings
• Tips and ideas for a more active travel

Get started!

From March 15 and onwards, you can:

1. Download the app ActiveTravel at Google Play or in App Store.
2. Choose the survey with the namne of your employer.
3. Follow the instructions in the app and answer to questions.

The ActiveTravel-app analyses your GPS-tracking and helps you describe how you travelled during the day. To ensure that your travel day is described correctly, it is important that you, who know how you have been travelling, review and edit the description if needed. When the travel date is correct, you mark this and it is included in your results. The more days you mark as correct, the better the app will be at understanding how you travel.

This is how the app works:

1. Activity: has ActiveTravel entered the correct activity? If you need to change, simply tap on the activity and enter the correct activity. The next time you’re in the same place, ActiveTravel remembers what you did last time and suggests it.
2. Trips: Make sure the trips are correctly described. if not, simply change the transport mode, time and distance.
3. Is the day correct? When the descriptions is accurate, you just mark it as correct – done!
4. Results – shows your total of active minutes, how much CO2 you have saved and how you have travelled.
5. Goals – here you can set goals and follow your development.
6. Competition – compare your travel pattern to others using ActiveTravel.
7. Messages – an overview of information and tips sent out to support you in reaching a more active travelling.

Questions about you and your health will be asked during the course of the campaign. You can easily answer them directly in the app.

We encourage you to start now! The first week the app will calculate how you travel and therefore you should not make any adjustments in how you travel. The following 11 weeks you set personal goals on how many active minutes you want to reach each week. Try to cycle, walk and travel by public transport more than you usually do to reach your goals. Focus in on work related trips, but all movement counts.

Research project for a more sustainable and healthy commuting

ActiveTravel is a research project in collaboration with Karolinska institutet and Trivector with support from Vinnova. The aim is to develop and easy-to-use tool that helps individuals to choose, and organisations to support, a more sustainable and healthy commuting.

Read full study information

Read ActiveTravel Privacy Policy

Organisations participating in the research project

There are 4 organisations using the app: AstraZeneca in Mölndal, TetraPak in Lund,Region Västerbotten and Region Uppsala.