Similar to yesterday’s post on New York, this is a great little video on the steps that Los Angeles’s transport agency has taken to improve the marketing of public transport – and to make public transport “cool”.
A couple of things really stood out for me: the cleverness of using different coloured buses to indicate different service types – such as express services versus local services and some of the fantastic artwork that fills their train stations.
ARTA has started to get clever in terms of marketing public transport in recent times, with the B-Line service apparently being a huge success. Hopefully smart marketing, combined with a service that keeps getting better and better, will encourage more people to use PT.
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A point they make here is about too many different logos and brands and to be honest NZBus has gone mad in this respect creating dozens of bus brands which in reality create nothing but confusion. The average person doesn’t know if they’re all different companies and whether they all accept his or her pass….
I agree that good marketing is needed and I think ARTA is starting to get it but have a long way to go. I wonder if part of the problem over the years has been that people consider marketing a waste of public money when that money could be spent on improving services when they don’t realise that without marketing what you have you can’t attract new riders to justify improving the service.
Living not far from a station I was quite impressed recently when I received a train timetable in the post, to me that was a great idea for a number of reasons. 1. it reminds people about the service 2. it makes it easy for them to find out what time trains are and hopefully give them a go and 3. it is probably quite cheap and easy to do compared to big marketing campaigns like radio or print.
American systems so often are known by a single letter, the L, the T, the M…
That is brand penetration..!
Good video, that. I was always put off visiting LA by the challenges of getting around without private transport, but after a bit of research it was clear that they’ve made big improvements. Spent 3-4 days based in Santa Monica last year and getting around on express buses and the metro was a real breeze.
great video. certainly lots to learn from that. not least, having a bus that looks and acts like a tram, without all the infrastructure required.
And New Zealand has John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce to0 inspire us. Gee wow, how uninspiring!
Very impressive, but for Auckland two caveats.
1. Big marketing campaigns need to arrive with big service improvements.
2. The whole situation described in this video and especially the NYC one suggests a supportive political environment. Do Joyce and English look at a 17% increase in train ridership and go YAY!? No they somehow manage to see this as an increase in bludging, because of their narrow financial analysis and unexamined view that cars good; transit bad.
ARTA do seem to have made a start with their “More services, more destinations, more often” campaign. I’ve seen it in the Central Leader and on a billboard on the Southern Motorway facing northbound traffic at Penrose.
The Waka Pacific and Birkenhead transport and Urban Express ect. ect. ect.
Too many. I got on a bus with my auckland bus pass to go to the north shore, got allowed to board and then was turfed out before we got to the harbour bridge because apparently my bus pass didn’t work on that bus (the bus driver wasn’t sure either!)
I LIKED The Yellow Bus Company. I liked stagecoach as well. All these other brands though are just rediculous. I don’t care who runs the buses, i just want to get from A-B.
Brand them all MAXX and call it a day.
It’s not that simple. They’re not just brands, they’re operators. Waka Pacific, Go West, b-Line, they’re all run by NZ Bus (formerly Stagecoach). H&E, Birkenhead, Northstar, Richies, etc are all different companies. Branding won’t fix the problem, because it’s far more complicated than just the colours of the buses and the drivers’ uniforms.
When we finally get integrated ticketing, then it won’t matter what colour the bus is (in theory, though Joyce could still bugger it up) and your pass will still work.
Northstar, Metrolink and LINK are also owned by NZ Bus, as are GO Wellington, Valley Flyer and Runcimans motors in Wellington
Freaking complicated isn’t it?