Lucy ads are much more fun than actually promoting transit usage
Local blogger Christof Spieler posts some useful ideas on how METRO could better promote its services to the public:
[T]ransit still works in a world where documents — bus schedules, system maps, and brochures — are printed in large, one-size-fits-all, runs.
Consider an office building: several hundred people, all of whom need to get to work and get home every day. They should know what their transit options are. But a system map posted in the lobby won’t do the trick: it shows too much information, and that’s intimidating. But a custom map ... showing just the routes that stop nearby, would.
The technology is not difficult. The time involved is not prohibitive. And, once the map exists, it’s easy to convert for posting on a web site, printing in an employee manual, and otherwise making it available to people whom it would help. It would be entirely possible to put one of these in every large office building lobby, in every hospital and in every university in Houston.
It’s not good enough to simply provide transit. One has to make people aware it exists. And transit agencies ought to be using every tool they can to do that.
That's a very sensible proposal.
Unfortunately, as is the case all too often with METRO, the stylistic takes precedence over the substantive. People win awards, after all, for neat posters advertising museum exhibits (or was it advertising transit?), and not necessarily for customized transit brochures/maps that might actually boost disappointing ridership.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/24/08 10:52 PM | Houston Transit | Print | Comments (3)
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