Multimodal transport disruption communications

Transport for NSW (TfNSW) aims to minimise the impact of unplanned disruption by providing customers with information and services that present viable alternative choices to the 4 R’s approach: Reduce stress and uncertainty, Remode to alternative public transport services, Reroute their journeys, and Retime their travel plans.

However, during recent major disruption events, customer experience and feedback suggests areas for improvement in terms of communications and messaging across modes and channels.

This project seeks to address these issues by providing an actionable standardised framework for customer disruption communications and messaging, while considering the unique challenges of different regions and modes of transport.

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Participants

• Transport for NSW
• University of Technology Sydney

Project background

The NSW Government has identified restoring network reliability and increasing public transport patronage as core priorities, with effective disruption management central to achieving both. TfNSW is developing a strategy to minimise the impact of service disruptions by equipping customers with timely, accurate, and actionable information.

This strategy aims to help customers reduce stress and uncertainty, remode to alternative public transport services, reroute their journeys, and retime their travel plans—enabling them to complete their intended trips within the public transport network wherever possible.

Delivering this outcome depends on providing customers with clear guidance and viable alternative travel options during periods of significant disruption. However, recent major disruption events have highlighted gaps in customer communications.. Addressing these shortcomings is critical to improving customer confidence, retaining passengers, and strengthening network resilience.

This project examines how TfNSW and transport operators can better support customers during unplanned disruptions, when travel uncertainty and stress are highest. It focuses on the empathy dimension of disruption management—how customers are engaged, informed, and reassured about the nature of the disruption and the practical options available to continue their journey.

The project will build on TfNSW’s existing behavioural and attitudinal insights, supplemented by targeted analysis of customer and stakeholder feedback from past disruption events, alongside new research. This research will explore how different customer segments respond both rationally and emotionally to unplanned disruptions, and how these responses influence travel decisions and behaviours.

When communications are designed well, their effectiveness is shaped by three closely interrelated factors identified through recent TfNSW research and operator experience:

1. Timeliness (“the 20-minute window”): Information must be delivered quickly to be useful. Evidence suggests there is a critical window—approximately 20 minutes from when a disruption is first identified and its impacts begin to emerge—during which customers make key decisions about their travel.
2. Severity of disruption: The perceived scale of the disruption influences customer behaviour. Some transport apps are trialling 0–10 severity indicators, but it remains unclear whether such metrics—or the language used to describe disruption intensity—support effective decision-making.
3. Level of uncertainty: Uncertainty about duration and cascading impacts affects whether customers wait, reroute, retime, or abandon travel. Messaging must therefore address not only what is known, but also what remains uncertain.

Together, these factors provide a structured foundation for this project. Existing research will be synthesised to develop an evidence-based messaging framework, which will then be pilot-tested and refined to reflect the interaction between timing, severity, uncertainty, mode, location and customer group needs.

Project objectives

The main project objective is to strengthen customer confidence, reduce travel stress, and support continued patronage through consistent, evidence-based approaches to communication during unplanned public transport disruptions across NSW.

Specifically, the project will:

1. Establish a best-practice disruption communication framework;
2. Embed customer empathy into disruption response;
3. Optimise communication channels for impact and reassurance; and
4. Deliver practical tools to enable system-wide implementation.

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!