by Graham remembers his part in London 2012’s once-in-a-lifetime Travel Demand Management programme
Previously in this series: Part 2: The Olympic and Paralympic Route Networks
Another important transport planning workstream in the run-up to London 2012 was the travel demand management (TDM) programme. This was TDM on an extremely wide scale, covering spectators, businesses whose logistics or staffing might be affected, and anyone else who might be travelling in and around London and the other venues during the Games times. Which adds up to a lot.
The technical underpinning was a major demand forecasting effort to understand the likely ‘hotspot’ places and times on the road and public transport networks. This used a combination of existing forecasting tools such as Railplan, and bespoke ones such as for estimating Games family demand volumes. In technical terms it was a do-minimum scenario: what would happen with the additional Games-related demand on top of routine background demand, assuming that no behaviour change took place. This paper sets out the work done and shows just how complicated an effort it was.
The basic principle of the TDM campaign was to tell people about the hotspots, planned traffic management measures and other anticipated impacts, and encourage those affected to plan their trips: by changing route, re-timing, changing mode, or reducing travel. This was through a combination of generic messages essentially saying ‘your journey could be affected, so plan ahead’ and targeted messages for particular areas or locations – the latter particularly where only certain days were affected. A website had all the details.
One big uncertainty was how many commuters would work from home, take annual leave or just go on holiday for the Games period. One scenario (optimistic from the TDM point of view, perhaps pessimistic from others) was that large numbers would do just that, irrespective of any messaging, thus providing enough capacity relief that those remaining would be fine. But you couldn’t take the chance.
The whole TDM effort used the slogan ‘Get ahead of the games’. (Paris 2024 is similar: ‘Anticiper les jeux’). As a traveller in London and other affected areas, you couldn’t miss it, and sensibly so. There were posters, newspaper ads and announcements at stations (it was the ‘see it, say it, sorted’ of its day), plus leaflets, handy walking maps and the occasional goodie item. I have a GAOTG Oyster card wallet.
I was involved with the element covering travel advice to businesses. Here the focus was business continuity, helping them to ‘keep on running’ as the slogan had it. Again the message was to see how you might be affected, and then plan ahead. The checklist was multi-faceted and covered staff travel, business travel, customers’ access and deliveries. We were promoting the ideas of enabling staff to work from home, and using web conferencing or video conferencing, well before Covid made it the norm. Changing opening-hours or temporarily shifting operations to different locations were also possible responses.
Businesses were encouraged to develop an action plan, test it before it was needed for real, and communicate it to all involved. Large businesses in affected areas were offered one-to-one engagement, advice and support, provided by my colleagues among others. Written materials – for which I did some of the drafting – were provided for the ‘long tail’ of smaller businesses. A handful of major employers were brought on board as early adopters and became case studies. There was also a group of business representatives to advise on the tone and content; it took a couple of iterations to settle on the final messaging.
It all worked. In fact by the start of the Olympics the messaging had shifted to a more nuanced one of ‘enjoy London’ whilst still of course planning ahead. TfL subsequently estimated that around three-quarters of Londoners had changed their travel during the Olympics. And London had not simply emptied: background demand had reduced only by 5%. A large number of people made relatively modest changes to their travel patterns. The transport networks continued to operate smoothly while carrying record numbers of passengers.
If you want to know more about the outcomes, this TfL report gives full details of travellers’ responses during the Games. Freight and business delivery responses are covered here.
Next in this series: Part 4: Ready, test, go
