As someone who’s spent over a decade writing automotive content and more than three decades using public transit, I’ve noticed a lot of emphasis on the environmental aspects of transit. However, public transit’s environmental benefits are only one of many benefits to transit, depending on your target audience.
In this blog post, I’ll discuss why something as globally beneficial as helping the environment doesn’t speak to as many potential riders as you might think.
Environmental Benefits of Public Transit
The environmental and cost benefits of public transit are clear:
- fewer vehicles on the road
- improved air quality from lower emissions
- decreased road maintenance, road-widening, and construction projects
- potentially shortened construction season (I know: pipe dream. But still.)
- reduced noise
Public transit saves money and makes our immediate environment more comfortable.
So, why all the resistance?
Transit marketing doesn’t always speak to people’s actual transportation needs.
Barriers to Transit
If your transit marketing doesn’t focus on people’s actual needs and how public transit can actually help them, you’re talking to the paint drying on your wall. Potential riders will continue driving and speaking out against public transit, because they don’t see how they fit into your services.
Does your system have any of these barriers:
- transit arriving late, early, or not at all
- no space on transit for larger purchases, a personal shopping cart, or luggage without clogging the aisle
- inconvenient and confusing methods to pay fares
- bus stops without shelters or heating elements
- trips that require multiple transfers
- bonus points if transfers don’t always work
In large urban areas, such as the Greater Toronto Area, the inconveniences of traffic outweigh the inconveniences of transit. However, in growing urban areas, such as Waterloo Region, which has 650,000 people, transit must still fight for its existence.
Japan’s Transportation System: Service Is the Marketing Strategy
I spent two weeks in Japan and relied on its public transportation system in all but three trips, where I used a taxi or shuttle.
Japan’s transit system is fragmented, so you need an app to get around. But it requires virtually no marketing: trains arrive on time, and the system’s convenience and cost savings are obvious. You exit a train at one station, follow the signs (all in Japanese and English), and wait at most 10 minutes in the Greater Tokyo Area for your next transit vehicle.
Once you’re in the less-populated areas that don’t directly connect to a large city, trains may only come every 90 minutes, but they still arrive on time.
As a transit user in Waterloo Region, I avoid tight transfers because I don’t know if I’ll make the transfer. Buses can leave a minute early, show up five minutes late, and sometimes leave you stranded for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. (Thankfully, that last scenario has become increasingly rare.)
The consistency you see in Japan’s transportation systems is lacking in Waterloo Region’s.
How do you market something so confusing?
Focus on the Benefits
Although taking public transit has many environmental benefits, I don’t believe that reason is important enough to encourage large numbers of riders where I live and certainly not in other areas of comparable size.
When I speak to car owners, their priority is convenience. And let’s face it, a car is very convenient:
- complete flexibility in driving schedule and route
- full privacy
- as much silence as you want—you don’t have to listen to others’ conversations, music, videos, etc.
- as much cargo space as your vehicle allows, which will be much more than you can carry
- virtual door-to-door service, with a maximum five-minute walk in most parking lots
- immediate wheels in an emergency
Drivers accept these inconveniences aspects of driving:
- vehicle purchase price
- insurance costs
- maintenance schedule
- living without a vehicle when it’s in for repairs
- accidents
- getting stranded in the middle of nowhere because they had the freedom to drive there and something broke down
- getting stuck in traffic and being delayed by anywhere from a few minutes to several hours
- refuelling*
- gas prices*
*These apply less to EV owners, since they can install a charger at home. This lets them recharge the battery overnight while paying residential electricity rates.
Owning a car is expensive and can be dangerous, yet the convenience outweighs any of these factors.
This means your transit marketing has to speak to the conveniences of taking transit. As your service improves, update your messaging.
Focus on Convenience and Ease-of-Use in Your Marketing
Highlight aspects of public transit that are convenient for car drivers, while also ensuring car owners you’re not suggesting they abandon their vehicles.
Those who support environmental initiatives already know how public transit can help to decrease global warming. But for many, getting through life is understandably more important. If transit doesn’t help with that, people won’t try it.
If you have unique solutions to supporting public transit in Canada, contact us. We’d love to help you get the message out.