COVIDSafe Travel Choices, an agile Travel Demand Management initiative

Susie Garland & Alexandra Lyle

Transport for NSW

This presentation was delivered at the 2021 Online Conference Series and until October 2022 is only available to registered delegates and Content Access Pass holders via Interchange. For information on accessing this and other presentations please review the Content Access Pass options.

ABSTRACT

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic NSW Government in March 2020 issued a public health order directing all workers with the ability to work from home to do so. This order was followed and resulted in a reduced demand on the Greater Sydney transport network, preserving sufficient space on public transport for essential workers to travel safely.

By May 2020 the focus in workplaces shifted from adjusting to working from home to how to return back to the workplace in a COVID-19 environment. TfNSW Travel Demand Management Implementation team, in response to requests for support from businesses and peak bodies, launched the COVIDSafe Travel Choices initiative in May 2020 to help businesses and their employees make the right decisions about if, when and how to travel for work, as restrictions begin to ease and businesses transition to their new normal.

COVIDSafe Travel Choice’s approach has been agile, responding to frequent changes in COVID-19 prevalence, policies, attitudes, working practices and travel trends across Greater Sydney. The initiative is centred on employer and employee needs and insights and has focussed on supporting businesses and their employees by providing them with resources and collateral for internal use and distribution.

The COVIDSafe Travel Choices program centres on stakeholder engagement, insights from industry, transport network, international trends and COVID-19 safe best practices, with a key focus on data. Since the start of the COVIDSafe Travel Choices, over 300 stakeholders have been engaged in collaborative conversations, including those facilitated through workshops, forums at the TDM Community of Practice. To date the Community of Practice has provided space for businesses and industries to share their COVID-19 experience, plans and to participate in conversations with TfNSW leadership and industry experts in behaviour change and travel demand management. The TDMI team plan to expand the group and it remit and use this approach as part of the TDM programs going forward.

What has made COVIDSafe Travel Choices interesting is that the design is in recognition that COVID is not a planned disruption which TDM has traditionally worked within, and at many points in the program there were changing scenarios and situations daily. The initiative has focused on capturing and influencing the TDM benefits of the COVID response by both employer and NSW Government and creating sustainable long-term travel behaviour beyond COVID-19.

What the COVIDSafe Travel Choices Initiative shows that TDM programs can be agile, set up and respond quickly to a diversity of scenarios. But most importantly what this demonstrates is that TDM is key to managing travel behaviour when situations change, even the unplanned unpredictable ones.

The talk will focus on sharing TfNSW TDMI team approach to using Travel Demand Management and behaviour change within workplaces as a response to a Global Pandemic and share the lessons learnt in how to deliver effective and responsive TDM program in a complex, changing environment.

Author(s)

Susie Garland | TfNSW

Susie leads Transport for NSW’s Travel Demand Management team. She has been leading the Travel Demand Management program since 2015 and prior to this has worked on a number of behaviour change programs both at the state and federal level.
Travel Choices is Transport for NSW’s travel behaviour change program which has been working with employers in strategic business centres to understand needs, share information about the transport system and encourage sustainable travel behaviour.

She believes in the value that Travel Demand Management can provide to the community in terms of providing successful places which deliver social, environmental and economic improvements through more walking, cycling and public transport use and less dependence on cars.

Susie’s experience is in travel demand management and behaviour change, project and program management, change management and stakeholder engagement and communications.

Susie and her team have been heavily involved in Transport for NSW’s Covid response, launching the COVIDSafe Travel Choices program in 2020 to help businesses and their employees make the right decisions about if, when and how to travel for work as businesses transition to their new normal.

Alexandra Lyle | TfNSW

Alexandra has been leading the Travel Choices Program since 2018 and prior to this has worked across the NSW Government transport cluster from strategic planning, development and program implementation.

Travel Choices is Transport for NSW’s travel behaviour change program which has been working with employers in strategic business centres to understand needs, share information about the transport system and encourage sustainable travel behaviour.

Central to Alexandra’s approach to transport and place making is to ensure that it support sustainable development outcomes and, most importantly, creates places that she wants to live, work and play. Her approach is to embed Travel Demand Management in transport projects from scope to evaluation, reframing the question from what infrastructure is needed to what outcomes NSW Government and their customers want to achieve in travel behaviour and place.

Alexandra’s experience is in travel demand management and behaviour change, transport planning, infrastructure development, urban design, active transport, project and program management, change management and stakeholder engagement.