A Time for Transportation to Shine?

What’s all this I’m reading about the restrictions on travel for the inauguration–even on transit! Okay, so I understand that there is a need for extreme security, and quintupling the population of the city for the day will require some patience.  But its all hands on deck time for the transportation system! And its also a chance to prove to the policy makers that public transportation really can move lots more people than new highway lanes. 

I’m concerned about the Metro station closures and the periodic urgings of many transit operators to people that seek to discourage folks from joining the party on the Mall.  I am particularly worried about the elderly and disabled who are openly steered away from participating.  They are being downright scared out of what could be, for many, the most significant event in their lives.  I would like to see the transit industry and advocates for the elderly and disabled all over DC right now, putting all sorts of programs into place to encourage people to come.  Maybe its special buses with aides who will help the disabled travel that crucial final leg of the trip from the bus stop to the Mall, or putting those electric carts at the bus stops and special areas on the Mall so seniors don’t have to walk blocks and blocks in the cold and are sure to have a place to watch when the finally get there.

I’d also like to see transit telling people that they should go down to the inauguration and if they do, they will get there by transit.  I think everyone knows to be patient.  But do you have to bend over sideways telling people how miserable they can expect to be?

There is a real bright spot in all of fuss, though.  The Washington Area Bicycle Association is providing free valet parking for people who want to ride their bicycle to the inauguration.  A brilliant idea and something that will make it possible for many people–tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? who really knows?– to attend.  I hope they make lots of money on tips.  WABA is a great organization and it is providing a downright patriotic service.

What I would most like to see is my son and I at the inauguration.  But we won’t be going because even after more than 20 years in the transportation business, I can’t find a way to get there.  But I do hope that all of my colleagues down in DC do get there, and are able to point with pride at a transportation system that brought everyone who wanted to be a part of this historic, if a little bit crowded, day.

Hold’em if you’ve got’em

Okay, I know that’s not the way the saying goes, but it is the point of this post.  We’ve seen increases in public transit ridership, carpooling and vanpooling over the last 6 months or so that we would otherwise get with (really, really good) marketing and a whole lot of aggressive outreach to commuters, employers, and anyone else we could find.

So the mantra that I am encouraging my clients to adopt is RETAIN CURRENT CUSTOMERS.  We’ve all heard the standard “its less expensive to keep a rider than to get a new one.”  Well guys, we’ve got them now.  The baselines have risen in double digits for some operators. 

So when you all sit down to plan your fall marketing plans, remember that you’ve been given a gift, albeit at the cost of higher gas prices and hardship for many people.  Let’s hope these new converts are content with their new commute.  Or are they ways we can make them even happier?  This is the windfall we fantasized about (at work, I mean).  A shift from changing behavior to rewarding behavior and improving capacity and service could be a challenge for some systems, who may have had their 2009 marketing plans cast in stone before gas prices began to rise.  Cast that stone aside–ill-placed bible reference, I know–and make 2009 the year of innovation in developing strategies to retain riders.  At the end of the year you’ll be much further ahead than you would have been if you’d played it straight.

Have we missed the bus?

As I pulled into the normally mobbed Costco gasoline station the other day, I stared with horror at the price sign–$3.99  (and 99/100 of a cent) per gallon for regular.

I know, for most that would be a welcome sign.  Finally, gasoline below $4 a gallon.  But as an industry that has been searching for way to get people into bus, train, subway, carpools, vanpools, telework, bicycling and walking*, is our great opportunity just about ready to pass us by?  Have the people who have tried MARTA in Atlanta enjoyed it so much that they are going to continue (and did they get a parking space at the station I hope?).  Did all those people who tried the bus for the first time get a seat, a comfortable ride and arrive at their destination on time?  Are newly formed carpoolers bonding for life or secretly resenting that they have to share the ride?

I worry about this.  The increases in ridership didn’t have too much to do with the efforts of highly professional, skilled TDM professionals or brilliant advertising campaigns (but if only I’d had one out on the street at the right time…..).  It was $4 gas.  What this experience has shown me is that there is a huge discretionary market for alternative transportation–higher than I think anyone in their wildest dreams ever expected.  We interact with the captive market and the super long commutes and the people who are fed up with traffic and maybe want to save a little.  There’s a little bit of “last resort” in all of that.  But with $4 gas, these new riders suddenly saw our alternatives as a viable and maybe even attractive option.  Did we do enough to make their experience enjoyable? Of course we want every rider, transit dependent or discretionary rider, to have the same excellent experience when they use BTSCVTW (call me lazy–my son and three friends are out back on the trampoline and probably are in need of some adult supervision because its all fun and games until someone pokes an eye out; my mom used to say that all the time). 

I know that transit operators, TMAs and others work very hard to make the travelers’ experience as easy as possible.  We should keep that as a top priority and maybe concentrate on incentives to maintain some of these new riders for a while rather than spend marketing dollars on attracting new ones.  We will never, ever attract as many as $4 gas did.  Let’s hold on to a few of them.

I don’t want people to have to pay $4 a gallon for gasoline.  That’s not my point.  I know it hurts people.  Heck, it hurts me since I made a knee jerk boneheaded decision to buy a Mercury Mariner SUV last year–I’m a single mom with one son, sure he’s got sports stuff but that’s what trunks are for. 20 miles per gallon. And I have to put a flag decal on the back so I can distinguish it from all the other silver SUVs in the Target parking lot. Seriously.

But when the price of gas goes down, as it most likely will, I want to be sure we keep those new riders.  It’ll cost a lot more to get a new rider to keep one–if I didn’t hear cries of pain coming from backyard I would do a search and look up that number, but I know it exists.  That’s a real big shift in how we think about marketing.  Retention has always been mentioned but never really taken seriously.  Now’s the time to pay attention to all of our BTSCVTW’s.

*I propose an industry standard acronym for that since I’m tired of writing it out.  So here goes: BTSCVTW.  Not perfect.  Any transit modes that start with vowels?

Obsessive Brand Disorder?

I recently completed a very interesting book by Lucas Conley entitled “Obsessive Brand Disorder.” (available through Amazon.com and through www.publicaffairsbooks.com).  Throughout the book, Conley slowly (but effectively) builds a case of whether we have come to a point where everything, everyone, every place, every aspect of our lives needs to be branded in some way.  Think about it–cities?  Can a city of millions of residents be distilled to the one element that will resonate with potential visitors, but not leave some lasting impact on its residents and spirit?  Even people are branded.  Millions have been made by gurus who promise to identify your true essence so you can market your brand to potential clients, employers–and even online dates.  It may not be how you think of yourself or even what you do or enjoy best, but if it hits the needs of the market, that’s the brand they’ll steel you toward.  Kind of minimizes us to one-dimensional beings, don’t ya think?

I worked on a project a couple years back that sought to brand a major transit system.  We finally decided that rather than brand the system–which in a city of such diversity meant different things to different people–but to brand the ACT of using the system.  Sure seemed like a good idea at the time.  I’m cool with branding an action–you can always bring your own interests and personality to how you use it, but use it just the same.

Conley also talked about the extensive market research that went into identifying just the right brand for a product, service, city, you name it.  As a veteran of dozens of multi-state, qualitative and quantitative research projects to find brand triggers, I was amazed at the multitude of alternative means that he mentioned that got even deeper into our emotions.  Facial recognition–both “hidden” as part of focus groups and deliberate in specific studies, can identify the slightest movement that could indicate displeasure or acceptance of an image, concept, or celebrity.  Brain scans are also used to see which concepts “light up” certain areas of the brain and indicate a positive reception.

I have two thoughts on branding (that I can think of at this time): 1. They are very useful in streamlining outreach campaigns and bringing disparate elements of a program (different transit operators, for example) under a seamless brand.  and 2. Despite extensive evidence from the most popularly branded products in history, the transportation industry insists on rebranding its systems every time it embarks on a new marketing campaign.  Spruce it up–sure! But change the look, feel and attitude of your system because your new ad agency might have a better idea?  The greatest thing lacking in transportation marketing today is, I think, brand equity.  Multi billion dollar companies price their equity separately at a value of millions and millions of dollars.  But often, transportation systems toss out their brand as if it is campaign related and not the core of its identity.

Product Placements for Good?

Much has been said lately about advertisers’ practice of blending their branded products into the storylines of television programs—Staples for “The Office”, for example (actually a pretty good idea).  They figure that with everyone DVR-ing through their commercials, they need to get the word out somehow.

Its one thing to have a blatant Coca-Cola sponsorship of American Idol (full disclosure: my sister works for Coca-Cola, but it doesn’t mean I get a discount on my Diet Coke).  Even those Ford commercials, though extraordinarily annoying, are at least not fooling anyone but the most sheltered viewer.

I know I was as excited as anyone when “Carpoolers” came on the scene last season.  Anyone know what happened to that show?  Okay, so it didn’t exactly show a realistic view of carpooling, and in some ways brought the image down a peg or two, but it did get the word into the public lexicon and gave us something to talk about for a few months.  Maybe “Vanpoolers” would have given them more story lines—conflict between characters, clandestine romances, medical issues.  Heck, I think its an hour long drama, myself.  Maybe I’ll write it someday.

In the meantime, though, can’t we get some Desperate Housewives onto the LA Metro for a shopping trip? Does Ugly Betty have a good experience on the subway? Can the cast of The Office decide that they can’t take the rising gas prices and take advantage of a company-sponsored vanpool?  Or even Chloe and Courtney fighting for a bus stop in front of their clothing stores on Keeping Up With the Kardashians?   That pretty much exhausts my knowledge of prime time TV (and I happened to catch the Kardashians on The View last week; my son and I normally stick to Deadliest Catch and the Food Channel, although right now he’s watching Wipeout, which is just downright hopeless).

I was on a project team recently where a part of the marketing plan was to have buses roll by with the project logo on them.  I think we can be more creative than that.  Just as driving the latest Escalade helps to define a character so, too, would their use of transit, carpooling or vanpooling.  Watch for “The Real Working Housewives of Westchester County” coming to a network to you soon.  Just kidding.

Who’da thought?

I saw a piece on Fox News Channel this morning that talked about a serious problem being faced by thousands of commuters trying to escape rising gasoline prices–the lack of parking at transit stations.  The report, which did not mention a specific region but identified it as a countrywide program, reassured the audience that the states and municipalities are now looking to expand this parking.

Anyone who works with transit knows what an incredibly oversimplified statement this is.  Are there many plans on the books right now to expand parking significantly in major transit areas?  I know that Connecticut has done its best but is at the mercy of the municipalities who don’t want traffic from out-of-towners clogging their streets.  Many other areas simply have run out of space–and noone wants to build a big nasty garage in a suburban area (although they are coming through on occasion).

And once the parking is in place, can the transit services accommodate the additional passengers?  I know, that certainly depends on the system.  But the irony of cutting transit budgets in states like Florida when riders are flocking to do what millions of dollars have been spent to get them into transit is almost too much to process.  So we are left with carpooling and vanpooling as the only sure-fire methods of helping individuals stop spending their food money on gasoline.  It seems like a missed opportunity to pass this new interest in transit by.  Are states reviewing their transportation budgets to pay more attention to transit and parking? Are we as an industry good enough at marketing vanpooling and carpooling to really have any impact? 

I don’t know the answer, but this is the time our industry has been waiting for, forever.  Not to benefit from the misery of all the families who have no choice but to pay the gasoline for lack of options and inability to accommodate any form of ridesharing–there will always be an ambient level of people who can (or will) not do anything but drive alone to work.  But this is our time, folks.  When gasoline is back down at $3 a gallon and the panic is over, we’ll be kicking ourselves in the butt for letting this opportunity pass us by.  I hope to hear from some readers who can prove me wrong.

Who is leading this charge?

As I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts (which have been read by no one because technically my blog is not operable yet, but I do enjoy reading my own writing and my mom says she likes it but she’s my mom) this is a spectacular point in time where transportation demand management has merged with environmental and energy issues to be top of mind with most of America. 

Who is our spokesperson?

I personally believe Al Gore blew it when (a) he released “An Inconvenient Truth” commercially rather than recruit thousands of people to give free DVDs out in the downtown areas of every city in the country—the people who had to be persuaded.  All the move did in theaters was preach to the converted. And (b) he rejected me (and my friend Jeff) as spokespeople to deliver his speech to other groups, even though  between the two of us we could have brought most of the transportation, municipal, marketing and business leaders in the tri-state area to the table.  He did, however, pick Cameron Diaz.  Okay, she is better looking than me (and much better looking than Jeff).  But is she going to get up in front of 200 Chamber of Commerce suits at a luncheon in White Plains and do the show?  I think not.

We need a powerful, non-partisan champion who is respected and well spoken and can leap a small Rush Limbaugh barb in a single bound.  Not a Hollywood type (though I respect Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio for their efforts, plus that guy from HBO’s Entourage).  Not a politician.  An enlightened business person?  A former president?  A dynamic university president?  And its not a matter of whether you believe the planet is going to be a puddle by the time our kids graduate high school.  Its about how our world works—how things are made, how people get around, how we power our homes, how we feed our people.  Please send suggestions to me via this blog, and I’ll follow them up. And don’t nominate me, I’m way too busy writing my blog, raising my kid, building my consulting practice, that kind of stuff.  Plus (and this I know will get some responses) I think it needs to be a man.  Gotta be practical if we’re keeping our eye on the prize.

Great to be in Boston

I took the opportunity to hitch a ride with my dad up to Boston today to have my “first” meeting as the Principal of Hetherington Consulting.  I won’t say who I met with because I don’t want to get others involved in my postings, but I will say that like many who run transportation managment associations he was charming, smart, funny, and overworked.  Uh-oh, maybe that gives it away.

Anyway, being back in Boston reminded me of the great diversity within the transportation industry.  I went to Boston University and the T was my only form of transportation beside my feet.  Today I saw hundreds of people emerging from T stops, waiting for buses, riding bicycles–all the “right” things to do that those of us in more suburban areas can only hope for and spend thousands in our search for the right slogan that will turn someone around and make them say “Oh my gosh, I have to carpool!” (Hey, is that Carpooling show still on ABC? It was pretty funny; my son and I are hooked on Discovery Channel so we’re into Deadliest Catch and Mythbusters).  Of course its the same way in NYC, and probably a few other cities in the world, that people take their transit for granted just as we suburbanites take our cars for granted. Of course my dad and I drove into Boston in his Ford Explorer.  But we did carpool. 

And now people are flocking to transit because we’ve gone over the $4 a gallon mark.  After all the work we’ve done and the millions spent by the DOTs to promote ridesharing, is that all we had to do?  At least we can all sleep soundly knowing that they will still need us to fix the traffic congestion problem.  After they build enough transit to accommodate all the people who now want to use it.

 

WOW!

This is the most exciting time to be in the transportation business, I know since I started in 1985 but maybe even since the invention of the rail car. 

When I first had the idea to start my own consulting practice, I knew I wanted to work in three distinct areas: transportation, environment, and energy.  Since I first had this thought in February, I can drop the “distinct” and see an amazing synergy materializing between the three areas.  Never in my memory have more people been talking about these three issues, and acknowledging their dependence on one another.  Energy with less of an environmental impact is needed in order to power vehicles to allow people to travel.  What a concept.   Who’d have thought that $4.00 gas would have been the tipping point?

Is the Transportation Demand Management industry participating in this minor miracle of mobility, or is it purely market forces at work?  Are we facilitating change, or simply accommodating it? How do we create programs that justify continued funding when folks are flocking to full train station parking lots and forming their own carpools in droves at work, without outside help? What a tremendous opportunity to achieve what we had hoped for decades—liberal use of public transportation, awareness of the cost (and in many cases, the environmental impact) of each vehicle trip, and public sentiment leaning toward long term solutions? Do I dare say a decrease in traffic congestion, too?

Probably the best long-term solution I have heard was presented by Tom Friedman in his May 28, 2008 Opinion Piece in the New York Times titled “Truth or Consequences.”  Friedman creates a mythical presidential candidate who would support energy economist Phillip Verleger Jr.’s “price floor” of $4.00 a gallon for gasoline.  The price would never fall below this point; if it did, the federal gas tax would rise to make up the difference.  Accommodations would be made to ease the burden on lower-income households, car manufacturers would have to consider this new reality in planning their future inventory, and families would have to decide how badly they needed that extra row of seats in the back of the minivan if they knew for sure that the price of gasoline would never fall below $4.00.

What would have to happen to elect such a candidate and give them the support of Congress to make such an idea a reality?  How could the transportation, environmental, and energy advocates help make this happen? This is our once in a lifetime opportunity for change.  How cool to be a part of this.