On an average day in London, 23 million journeys are made. On the single busiest day in history there were 4.5 million journeys made on the Tube, and a quarter more people than usual used the Overground in a record week that saw us carry 2.86 million passengers.
Our task was to reduce demand by 30% at key hotspots on the travel network (both in London and around other venues) so that spectators and Games family (athletes, officials and media) could arrive at events on time and everyone else who needs to travel could do so with minimum disruption to their day.
To achieve this we needed our Background Demand audience (consisting of commuters, mums on the school run, etc) to change their usual travel behaviour and adopt one of the “4Rs”: Reduce (e.g. work from home or take annual leave), Re-mode (e.g. go by bike or walk instead of driving or taking the train), Re-time (i.e. leave work or home earlier or later than usual to beat the rush) or Re-route (i.e. go a different way to usual to avoid highly congested areas).
The campaign had to convey the severity of the disruption to encourage behaviour change without creating unnecessary negativity towards the Games.
The results were astonishing. Over half of Londoners checked for disruption, planning 62.9m journeys on TFL’s Journey Planner. This equated to 63% of people who planned their journey, with a massive 43% who actively changed their travel patterns to help keep London moving during the Games. This smashed our 30% target that was set pre campaign.
4.4 million people visited GetAheadoftheGames.com, and 62,619 of Londoners followed GAOTG on Twitter.
Just over a third of London’s cars got a well-deserved summer break, and one fifth of London’s alarm clocks were reset to avoid the busiest times.