Making Transit Options a Standard Part of Your Business Address

Hello folks,

At the same time as we make embed the option of transit into directions to get to our places of business and homes, we should look at an alternative name, especially for the term 'mass transit'. "Mass transit" conjures up images of hordes of sweaty people crammed into subway cars intruding on personal space. How about personal public transit? Or getting rid of the name 'transit' altogether. Think of the advantages of a transportation system for people as in 1. inexpensive 2. less ecologically destructive 3. with a chaffeur 4. no personal maintenance required 5. faster (than bumper-to-bumper 6. safe, etc. What would you call that?

Norm Ruttan

iWasteNot Systems
www.iwastenotsystems.com
Materials Exchanges & Reuse/
Recycling Websites
1-800-630-7864

Hi,

Our local uni (www.uow.edu.au) makes a massive effort to push public transport - the nearest train station has university signage on the platforms, there are shuttle buses from there, a bus depot at the uni and a map on the website showing bike rack locations. Pretty good huh? So how come there's a facebook group called "Maybe if I join this group, UOW will finally do something about parking"? - full of rants from people who refuse to believe that they could realistically take the train, or that walking 10 mins from their parking space aint so bad, and that new multi-storey carparks must be built? Have a look. Personally, I reckon a lot of these people are 17 and 18 year-olds, newly qualified to drive and damned if they're going to get to uni any other way cos they're GROWNUPS now and grownups DRIVE!! How can we get across to these people? Compared to (what I imagine about) the U.S., public transport here is pretty good. Did I mention students get 50% off ticket prices too? And they complain about being poor? Anybody got an insight into what's going on here?

Lorna

Hi Norm,

Interesting thoughts there I read back through my original post and noted that I seem to simply use "transit," rather than any modified form. I don't think there's much to be gained by trying to avoid negative stereotypes through word choices if people have the image of transit that you suggest, that image will follow and attach itself to whatever words we start using to describe that mode of travel. I think that changing the negative images of transit requires changing the reality making transit clean, frequent, safe, and comfortable in other words. That's true in some places; in others, not so much. I'm not sure about term "personal public transit" because I think that space has already been captured by advocates of "personal rapid transit" little monorail types pods suspended from risers like an El train (essentially little individual rail cars). If you include "personal" in the name then people think "private" as in not having to share any space with anybody else. Not to mention that "personal public transit" is kind of an oxymoron, personal space being space we can exclude others from, whereas public space is space where anyone is welcome without exclusion

Norm, Hi.

Thanks for the idea on changing the term "mass transit" for another one. From my perspective, and having worked for a while in urban transport issues, I had never thought of this as an issue (I've always thought "go mass transit" without thinking of what people may think of that term!). We've been using the term "sustainable transport" as a generic term for public transport, walking and cycling... but I can't think of a best term for PT and your ideas are most welcome! However, "personal public transit" reminds me of the term "personal rapid transit", which is not really a great idea from the sustainability point of view. In your list of positive attributes, one could also include the fact that many public transport vehicles are Mercedes, Volvo, and in some cases (such as Bangkok's skytrain) they have Porsche engines!! I also think that public transport should be more "sexy", and this goes directly by the hand with quality of service. Buses that leave you many blocks away and where frequencies are terrible will not contribute to improving the image of public transport. But this is another story. We have published with other organizations an 830 page document on Bus Rapid Transit Planning which includes some of these issues, and you can download it from www.sutp.org .

Best regards,
Carlosfelipe Pardo

Coordinador de Proyecto-
Project Coordinator GTZ -
Proyecto de Transporte Sostenible
(SUTP, SUTP-LAC) Cl 93A
# 14-17 of 708 Bogot D.C., Colombia
Tel/fax: +57 (1) 236 2309
Mobile: +57 (3)15 296 0662
[email protected]
www.gtz.de 

Just come in on this discussion. Do you need to clutter the card with the individual routes, could it be simpler to simply list the nearest stop? Eg. Rome Street Station, Bus Stop E Adelaide Street. This also gives people their departure point. As a country girl where public transport is near to non-existent, when I go to the city I use public transport continually as navigating traffic and parking is too stressful, costly, etc. I spend a lot of time planning routes and locating stops when working on my appt schedule. It is not hard to indentify the route I need on any on-line (or paper) trip planner/ timetable but the actual nearest stop is very hard to identify. This information would be very helpful and also give the commuter confidence they are where they are meant to be once actually on the transport. I notice businesses in London mention the nearest tube station as standard; and tourism businesses in Australia generally include access information on their promotional material (but not business cards).

Thanks
Helen

PS. We only have one bus past my premises (in Cairns Australia) so makes it easy for me... (should I mention not to miss it or they'll have to wait an hour for the next one...)

PPS. We don't need to 'name' access options as public or private. You know exactly what I mean in the address bar below without naming it and on 'where are we maps' you would simply list the actual options - Train, bus, etc.

Helen Simpson
Managing Director
Simpson Marketing
23 Simon Street Freshwater
4870 Freshwater
SS Bus Stop Route E,
G E: [email protected]
T: 0419 188 067
F: 07 40551568

Hi Helen,

Interesting points. Alas, here in the US, we don't have any tradition of named stops, and they are not numbered either, so there's no convenient way to refer to a stop that's concise and unambiguous. It's definitely an opportunity waiting there for an enlightened transit agency. If we developed such a tradition, then it would be easy to include some designator for the nearest stop in the office addresses, although that still makes the citizen search for "Ok, which buses serve that stop" (unless the stop designator had the route built in like J7 might be the designator for a stop served by the J bus ... so perhaps the same stop might have multiple designators when served by several routes). (Some transit agencies in the states don't even bother to put the routes on the transit stop signs, so the casual person going by doesn't even know which routes serve the stop.)

Thanks for the reply John. I see what you mean... I must admit my personal preference is for trains and this is where I have seen the station information used particularly well in London. And as train stations are unique to the line they are on, you can be pretty safe with the station name. Also, with this, main stations that are serviced by multiple routes are known as such by most commuters. In big cities it would be over-information to list train, bus, tram, mono rail, etc access points - not sure how to get around this - in Sydney city there is at least three main options and I'm sure New York and other big cities would have multiple options too. But I really like the idea of putting public transport access points on 'where are we maps' and listing them on any other place we use our address - business cards, email stationery, letterhead. I will definitely start doing it myself and encourage our Council and Tourism Association members to do the same.

Cheers
Helen

HI Carlosfelipe,

I'm a long way from having much expertise on 'mass transit' but the terms I've seen strike me as having been invented from the viewpoint of someone who makes/operates/plans the system, not someone who uses it. The user is an individual. (S)he, is only interested in going conveniently and inexpensively where s(he) wants to go; not in the idea of mass transit. So go masstransit doesn't appeal to me. Whereas iGo might. For example, I like the term 'travelling together' (Canadians tend towards co-operative action more than some places) as a better way of describing the experience, than 'go mass transit'. We should talk about mass transit as 'chauffeur driven' perhaps. Not that I've given the terminology a lot of thought, but perhaps it would be good if someone did. Words are very powerful things, as marketers have learned over the years. (For example, would you like a cottage/summer home on "Leech lake"? Or would you prefer "Trout Lake"?)

Regards,
Norm 

Hi John,

I agree that you used the word 'transit' rather than mass transit, but the two have become synonymous in the public mind, because they're been used so often together. And words are powerful things, because they are just symbols for ideas. For example if I call a beautiful lake, "Leech Lake" versus "Grey Trout Lake", I'll get a different reaction from people. I'll bet that a cottage on Grey Trout Lake sells for a lot more than the one on an equally beautiful lake named "Leech". So in suggesting rethinking the word 'transit' and especially 'mass transit' I'm not talking about putting lipstick on a pig, and describing it as a beauty queen. But rather avoiding stereotypes that have already been created through transit services that have been less than user-friendly. And it seems to me that "mass transit" is transit as described by the planner or operator of the system. Whereas the user of the system isn't interested in 'mass transit' but rather in personal transit. In getting from here to there, using whatever means is most economical, comfortable, time-saving and safe. I'm far from an expert on this; just suggesting that the terms transit and mass transit have become 'loaded' terms, and transit planners and providers might want to conciously change them to something like 'iGo' or whatever.

Regards,
Norm

This is such a thoughtful comment. Thank you. Years ago, I taught architecture and environmental design at a community college. Whenever I made reference to "mass transit" I vividly recall the facial expressions of my students. They were negative and the follow-up discussions usually revolved around complaints vs. the positive community effects of lower cost and "cleaner" transportation. I think the term "mass transit" drums up the uncomfortable vision of huge crowds in chaotic motion and the inconvenient and sometimes dangerous conditions that result. So, I think you are spot on with the notion that a more consumer-friendly label is in order. But perhaps it's not so much that an industry-wide term-change is needed as so much as every local jurisdiction that has control over its own transportation systems needs to address this important 'marketing' requirement. So, if 'trout' is a familiar, friendly, invigorating label then, what the h.... go ahead and call your light rail line the "Trout Line" ... sounds a bit fishy but I'm all for it as opposed to MASS TRANSIT!

I think the term "mass transit" is for transportation professionals.
People take buses or trains. I think of myself as a bus rider, not a transit rider.

I have started adding bus route info in the sidebars of my road project newsletters - Route numbers with a list of stops for each route and the web address of the transit agency for more info.

Tina Hokanson
Snohomish County Public Works
United States

Tina, good for you! Has anyone noticed/commented on the info in the newsletters?

John Gear
United States
http://lovesalem.blogspot.com/

Thank you. The transit agency appreciates this of course and it has created a nice working partnership. I have heard from a few people who appreciated the list of stops when the bus has been rerouted for construction. My ongoing intention is to plant seeds in the minds of drivers who hadn't considered taking the bus and didn't know all of the places that the bus in their neighborhood traveled to. My hope is they'll try it . . .

Tina Hokanson
Communications Specialist
Snohomish County Public Works
United States