April 2016 to May 2018

The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games took place in Queensland, Australia in April 2018. It attracted over 1 million spectators over an 11 day period and was one of the largest events in the Country’s history. The transport challenges associated with the event were considerable with over 6 million journeys expected to be made on what was already a very busy transport network.

A considerable travel behaviour change programme was required to ensure that the local community adjusted their usual travel behaviours in order to accommodate the influx of additional travel demand with a requirement in some cases of 60% of the existing local population having to change their usual travel behaviour as well as all spectators travelling in the most effective way to each of the 13 competition venues.

In the Round was commissioned by the Commonwealth Games Delivery Unit within Queensland State Government’s Department for Transport and Main Roads to provide senior level support to the Games Travel Demand Management programme working with its partners the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Organising Committee and City of Gold Coast Council. We worked alongside a team of talented professionals to lead the Get Set for the Games travel marketing communications behaviour change campaign as well as leading the planning and delivery of the games time operation (including extensive testing and readiness exercising). The award winning program included extensive community engagement, pro-active media management, high quality static and interactive mapping and a world class spectator journey planner.

The event was a success and the travel demand management activity worked. We were proud to be part of achieving something special proving once again how non transport interventions can achieve amazing travel outcomes with the regions public transport carrying record numbers, traffic levels about 20% below their usual comparable levels, more people walking and cycling and multiple organisations working together to achieve shared communications goals. It is estimated that on average 30% of the local population changed their travel behaviour with many saying they will continue to make more use of public transport and active travel.