Travel Demand Management and the Big Scare

Abstract

This paper presents an independent review of the travel demand management (TDM) program for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, including the official TDM plan and a discussion of the undocumented but highly influential aspects of the “big scare” effect. The games were some of the largest planned in history, with more than 20 million additional trips expected in a city renowned for significant daily travel congestion. The network of Olympic lanes was the largest ever (108 mi); a traffic lane was designated for exclusive use by Olympic vehicles over a large proportion of inner London's roads. The TDM program was the largest in history and cost £30 million for extensive advertising, travel planning for 611,000 employees, new trip planning web tools, and the transmission of 107 million travel advice e-mails. This program, along with a substantial transit development program, aimed to encourage public transit use and to reduce base load travel so as to increase the capacity for games-related travel. The TDM program warned Londoners to change their travel patterns during the games. This warning, a range of probably unplanned events, and media hysteria before the games acted to enhance the big scare effect of the games on travel. The impact of the games on travel was impressive. About 20 million (more than 30%) additional transit trips resulted. Road travel itself decreased by 10% to 30%. A 26% change in travel by London residents included a 20% reduction in travel and a 13% change in travel (i.e., retiming 6%, rerouting 4%, and remoding 3%). Significantly, media reporting was highly positive during the time that the games took place. Business surveys corroborated these findings: employee attendance decreased by 30%, and a strong preference was shown to reduce and retime commutes. Implications for policy and future research are identified in the paper.

Towards Sustainable Attendee Transportation: Modeling the Psychological Determinants of Reduced Car Use to Special Events

“…Currently, existing research in this context has been primarily limited to case studies surrounding the behavioural outcomes of preconceived travel demand management (TDM) interventions. For example, travel characteristics have been studied as a result of sustainability messaging at a horticulture festival in Taiwan (Horng et al, 2014), information sharing at world championship sporting events in South Africa and Brazil (Malhado, 2014;Malhado & Rothfuss, 2013), fear-appeals at a mega sport event in England (Currie et al, 2014;Jones & Woolley, 2019;Parkes et al, 2016), and persuasive messaging at a mega sport event in China (Xinhua et al, 2011;Zhou et al, 2010). While these studies offer unique insights into the efficacy of TDM strategies, several limitations exist.…”

“…Thus, TDM strategies may include emotional appeals towards the negative impacts of attendee car use or promotional campaigns surrounding the benefits of sustainable transportation alternatives (Collins & Potoglou, 2019;Klaniecki et al, 2019;White et al, 2019). For example, one of the largest TDM programs in history was implemented at the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games (Currie et al, 2014).…”

“…Termed the "big scare", strategies focused on encouraging the use of public transportation through advertising and providing travel advice over the duration of the event (Currie et al, 2014). As a result, car use was reduced by 10-30%, while public transportation use increased by 30% (Currie et al, 2014).…”

Public Transportation and Social Movements: Learning from the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill Protests

“…Although many similar definitions have been suggested in the transportation literature, it is commonly understood to relate to system performance under perturbations to maintain its function and return to equilibrium after a disturbance. The existence and importance of resilience have been demonstrated by research into transportation systems faced with both natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes (19) and flooding (20) and social events, either exogenous (e.g., terrorist attacks (21) and social disputes ( 6)) or planned (e.g., major sporting events (22)). The adverse impacts of both natural and human-induced events raise the need for government agencies and the community to strengthen transportation systems' resilience.…”

Co-producing Mobility: Lessons from Ridesharing for a More Just and Sustainable Autonomous Future

“…At the same time, growth in the use of smartphones as a platform for mobility presents an opportunity to promote individual and societal benefits of carpooling through savings in congestion, collisions, emissions, time, and money (Abrahamse & Keall 2012;Chen et al 2000;Shaheen et al 2016). These challenges create an opportunity for transport policies that manage the demand on roadway capacity (Abrahamse & Keall, 2012;Currie et al 2014;Gärling et al 2002;Meyer 1999). Co-production of services traditionally offered by government returns agency to the public while offering flexibility for top-down and bottom-up approaches (Clark et al 2013;Griffin & Jiao 2018); in this case, for mobility management.…”