Campaigning blindly to encourage people to relinquish cars and take public transit is not enough. Policymakers need to develop business school marketing strategies to brand their campaigns, experts say.
The global car industry spends more than $20 billion annually on marketing to get people behind the wheels, reports The Dirt. Transit agencies do not need to squander their capital and match that figure in order to give public transportation a fighting chance in the competition. Instead, what these agencies need is a smart game plan.
Transportation think tank EMBARQ discusses several marketing options that will help retain ridership, attract new customers, and secure political base and financial support. Some of the branding strategies include defining core values of public transit, avoiding terms that come with a stigma (e.g. bus), building coalition at different levels of government, and making user education for new services readily available.
FULL STORY: Increasing Public Transport Use with Smart Campaigns
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research