Travel Demand Management for the Summer Olympic Games - Approaches and Impacts

摘要

The Summer Olympic Games presents the largest ever transport challenge for host cities that are oftenalready facing ageing infrastructure and congestion pressures. This paper reviews approaches to traveldemand management (TDM) for Olympic Games related travel and assesses documented evidence ontravel impacts. It aims to inform future games planning but also lessons for general urban planning. It ispart of a wider research project applying Olympic transport lessons to the Hajj/Omrah pilgrimage inMakka, Saudi Arabia.Five Olympic TDM measures are described; travel capacity creation, travel behaviour change,traffic efficiency, traffic bans and public transit emphasis. Different Games‟ approaches and their impacton travel are discussed with particular emphasis on how „base-load‟ non-games travel is reduced.In general more recent games have emphasised significant investment in high capacity transitinfrastructure and much stronger measures for reducing car use than conventionally occurs in host cities.This is because of the relative capacity efficiency of these modes. There is some evidence that more recentgames have adopted more subtle TDM approaches such as „test events‟ and communications strategies toreduce base-load. Evidence suggests reductions in system-wide „base-load‟ demand of up to 30% occursand localised impacts can be up to 40%.The Games provide a practical case study for general urban planning since strong TDM practicesare applied to achieve significant change in congested cities. These should provide an excellent basis toinform planning for congested cities facing similar challenges in general urban transport futures.