Why transit agencies and advocates should learn from car ads to make planning less contentious
Image credit: GO Transit
Adam Gopnik writes that transit advocacy in the US lacks the same “passionate constituency aroused by cars and by bicycles,” with most people willing to “settle for Chinatown buses and carpools and shuttle planes,” for example, despite wishing for high-speed rail. While anyone who has spent any time on Transit Twitter (including this author) would jump to counter that there are, in fact, people “passionate about public transportation,” Gopnik is right about the majority of Americans outside the urbanism and transportation advocacy bubble. For most people, transit just isn’t part of daily life. Fewer than 4% of adults commute to work using public transit. A 2016 survey found that only 11% of US adults took public transportation for any reason on a daily or weekly basis. Meanwhile, 92% percent of US households own at least one vehicle, meaning the concerns of driving and being a driver are already familiar and relevant to them.
How does this lack of a transit constituency affect planning? When conducting public engagement for transit projects, planners often start at a disadvantage, facing apathy if not outright hostility. It’s difficult to implement a truly transformative transit project, especially if it involves compromises such as reduced parking, fewer bus stops, or a more efficient but unfamiliar new route in a bus network redesign. Some of the negative sentiment stems from historically poor service provided by neglected transit agencies or simply distrust of government. But another key reason that communities that would otherwise be neutral are often cynical about, critical of, or hostile toward specific transit projects—even if they are generally supportive of the idea of transit—is the media they consume.
National and local media tend to focus on issues affecting transit, such as tragic incidents of violence. While some outlets add caveats that transit is safe overall, the average reader glancing at headlines will still come away with the notion that transit is unsafe and unreliable. Each new incident brings with it the same hand wringing about public transportation as a mode of travel. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of annual deaths in car crashes have yet to vault the questioning of driving and car reliance from the likes of Streetsblog into the mainstream. Nor do the safety and congestion issues caused by car travel shape people’s views of automakers in the way that issues affecting transit routinely make transit agencies punching bags for suburban drivers and transit enthusiasts alike.
To put it simply, perceptions of transit could use a lot of help—and the numbers-focused, facts-based messaging commonly put out by transit agencies, while appealing to nerds like me, don’t always work with general audiences. Amtrak has lately put out some decent ads touting the relaxing vibes of rail travel. But these ads still play it pretty safe. I contend that there is a further level of fantasy that transit agencies and advocates can and should be willing to sell. And where better to learn how to sell fantasies about a (branded) mode of transportation than car advertising?
Spend any time watching YouTube or TV and you will be bombarded with car advertisements featuring scenarios including but not limited to: speeding through apocalyptically empty city streets, chasing a dog named Bear through a forest, backing into a cliff-edge parking spot, and “unlocking the energy” by learning lessons à la a martial arts protagonist. There’s even an entire sub-genre of feel-good ads, of which Kia’s “beachcomber” ad is one of the most infamous examples. While most buyers will actually be spending their time stuck in traffic or searching for parking, these ads don’t care. They sell the idea of the car as a symbol of freedom, mobility, and individualism.
Transit agencies, advocates, and marketers can tap into the same emotional side of the brain, and they have many examples of what is unique and amazing about transit to choose from. Is it the joy of a child on their first subway ride? That feeling of running to meet a loved one after getting off a long-distance train and walking straight into the downtown core for a stroll? The “could it be?” feeling of a chance encounter with a long-lost friend on the bus? The togetherness of sharing a train with fellow Swifties to the concert? Good transit and walkability can enable these powerful feelings and positive experiences, which makes it even more important to highlight them.
Put another way, through storytelling, marketing can convey how effective transit can change the way one views and experiences a place. Fast and frequent transit can “compress” time and space, making new kinds of journeys possible and enabling more spontaneous experiences, for example. These are the qualities that can be unconvincing on paper, especially when described to people who have not experienced living amid a good transit network.
The goal should not be to influence individual trips, which in many parts of the country are objectively more difficult to make via transit, but to alter the perceptions and sentiments about transit among the masses in the long run. This is no different than how the most effective car advertisements are not about selling a particular make and model but about getting viewers to equate “freedom” with one brand or “luxury” with another, so that the 19-year old who sees an ad during the NBA Finals might just buy an SUV from that manufacturer when they land their first big paycheck at age 27. With effective marketing of transit, maybe that guy stays car-free and shows up to his community board meetings to support transit improvements instead.
To be clear, many transit agencies are already getting creative with their messaging, whether through anime mascots or Taylor Swift mashups. But there is still a lot of room to push the envelope, and third-party interests (the passionate transit advocates) could help agencies get past the financial and creative barriers they may face when it comes to marketing to wider audiences and people who do not interact with transit regularly. Success in terms of increased ridership or revenue will take time, and the absence of immediate results should not be held against out-of-the-box types of marketing. Decades of transit being perceived as the mode of last resort will not be easy to overcome, especially given how long it takes to build the improved transportation infrastructure designed to increase ridership and satisfaction. Effective marketing could start to reshape what transit symbolizes for Americans into something positive and desirable in a much shorter time span. Improved public perception could then feed into a virtuous cycle. Transit planners would enjoy more productive feedback and a higher degree of consensus. The communities they engage with would receive better projects and outcomes, further improving their views of transit.