Agencies can redefine their image and boost ridership by creating clear graphics and compelling narratives that effectively communicate the advantages of public transit. Creating a good product is the most important goal for a transit agency, but maintaining a positive public image is key to success as well. Successful marketing and branding helps attract riders who do not have other transit options, as well as those who do.
What would you do to better market or brand Nashville MTA/RTA’s services? How would you like Nashville MTA/RTA to communicate with you?
I appreciate nMotion responding to my suggestion of providing a space to comment on aspects that may be common to all scenarios. Thank-you.
I encourage others to comment as well. The grand prize is a great transit system!
The following comments were posted to Scenario 1 but belong here.
Branding: somewhere on the web it says your brand is your promise to the people. I am left to wonder what nMotion thinks about the MTA/RTA brand. Where nMotion has a choice they always choose SLOW with lots of STOPS. That is not what I have in mind.
I think almost everyone is thinking Light Rail. The strategy document says light rail can go 65mph!! Whee!! nMotion puts Light Rail on Gallatin Pike and Nolensville Pike and stops every half-mile. Twenty stops to downtown? Welcome to my lunch.
The slowest imaginable version of RapidBus also gets proposed: six stops per mile! RapidBus is supposed to be six stops per TEN miles. What brand is nMotion striving for if it is not SLOW and STOPS.
Six stops per mile is LOCAL service. People can walk one block so a local bus would need only six stops per mile, one every three blocks. This is why I said to keep Hillsboro as a local bus at six stops per mile, not a RapidBus at six stops per mile.
I know why nMotion is doing this. It repeats the mistakes of the Nolensville RapidBus route to solve the issue of local service. I also gave you a much better way to handle the overlapping requirements in the document linked to my name above. Please read it again.
Elsewhere I describe Light Rail traveling down the interstate median at interstate speed making stops every 4-5 miles and serving Gallatin, Franklin and Murfreesboro. Where the interstate is gridlocked then Light Rail would blast past cars like they are standing still, then tuck in neatly beside the expensive parking garage like we own the place. What would your brand be then?
Transit is not just STOPping to pick up and drop off people. It is also moving them quickly from A to B. I would like to see the assumptions behind your optimization that concluded that SLOW and STOPS were the best for Nashville. It just seems wrong.
Roy Wellington