Expo Transport: people and gear

The logistics of getting 20 or so cavers and half a tonne of miscellaneous gear out to Austria, on a shoestring budget with a limited number of cars, and people coming-from/going-to various places are daunting. The job mostly involves collating info and badgering people regularly. Starting early saves everyone money.

Organising transport is one of the biggest nightmares and the sooner we know who is going and when, the easier this gets. Getting a second (non- refundable) deposit off people helps to tie them down.

Routes and travel advice

• Personal travel - Getting there

Accounting and money

In the past we have communalised travel from Cambridge, but these days with people coming from many different places we don't do that. But we do all need to share costs of moving expo supplies, and the car owners need to be paid for that.

• Accounting guideline - who pays for what travel
• Classifying travellers - the expo fiddle-factor
• Car costs - crediting car owners

Organising travel

The bugbear of the Expo Leader if he/she hasn't managed to find a dedicated person to do this. This is a co-ordination/coercion game. Ask everybody when they would like to go to Expo, then match those without cars of their own to those who have cars and will take passengers. Try to make sure that each vehicle that will be funded by Expo will be as fully utilised as possible (for emissions minimisation as well as cost).

This game is combined with the job of getting people to commit to going on Expo at all, as some people will only go when they see their friends are going. You want to get some keen definite people to say when they'll go, then advertise this on the social media so that other people will say 'I'll go then'. Keep everybody informed of the situation with regular emails and posts to social media. People will normally see obvious car sharing opportunities, but don't be afraid to make suggestions. It's important to include the whole lists, not just those who've said they'll go already, as we always pick up a useful number of experienced latecomers.

Later on, there'll be the job of determining who the full, semi-independent and independent travellers are and which vehicles are funded in full or part. This may be a bit iterative, depending on how helpful and communicative various people have been.

• Coordination and coercion - why this is hard
• The 2019 travel matrix - In Googledocs
• The travel matrix - [slow] 2018 using SCRF as expo website was broken at a critical time - again
• The travel matrix - [slow] 2017 standard "who & when" format on the expo website. People edited this online using "Edit this page"
• The travel matrix - [slow] 2016 using SCRF as expo website was broken. This has an example of additional "by week" and "by person" tables (scroll down to the bottom).
• The travel matrix - 2014 using SCRF as expo website was broken. This has an example of additional "by week" and "by person" tables (scroll down to the bottom).
• The travel matrix - 2004 (sophisticated) "who & when". Most browsers can't render this these days, so this is effectively broken. Shamne really, it worked well.

The expo handbook assumes (in places) that it is the Treasurer who organises transport; or by default it gets done by the expo leader. This is probably not a good idea and a dedicated transport coordinator should be nominated. This must be someone who has been on expo before, and who can liaise closely with the treasurer on decisions about allowable costs.

Entering data: we have had no particular problems requiring all expoers to hand-edit HTML or Markdown tables when stating their travel plans. This is somewhat surprising.

Commercial gear shipping

Rumour has it that we paid for a pallet of gear to be transported to Hilda's using a commercial courier at some point in the past.

Back to Expo Planning Guide.