Passenger Transport August 2017 Vol 75 No 15 - 22

2017 ANNUAL MEETING & EXPO PREVIEW

ADWHEEL CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20
in numerous engagements throughout
Florida and the United States.
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
created the Measure M campaign to
support a ballot measure for transportation. The campaign, launched nearly
three years ago, employed a unique
bottom-up approach in which Metro
first consulted the voters and asked
them to identify the projects that would
best help their neighborhoods. Measure
M was supported by nearly 70 percent
of voters. The sales tax will dedicate an
estimated $120 billion to transportation
over the next 40 years and fund 40 new
major projects.

Educate Riders, Stakeholders
Blacksburg Transit, Blacksburg,
VA, developed the "Drive for BT" campaign to reach potential applicants
to fill bus operator positions and, as
a result, meet the service needs of

customers. Prior to the campaign, BT
was forced to reduce service and use
operations supervisors on a daily basis
to fill in service gaps. The campaign
was designed to reduce print advertising costs, gather quantifiable data and
bring in 200 operator applications over
a 12-month period. Applications tripled
in the first few months, the training
department was filling operator training
classes to capacity, ridership increased
by 7 percent and staffing increased by
22 percent.
Metrolink, Los Angeles, devised a
campaign to help passengers migrate
from a legacy fare collection system and
its ticket vending machines (TVM) to
an app. The campaign's goal included
reducing wear-and-tear by shifting customer behavior to the account-based
app, which helped reduce the use of
TVMs that typically have a high cost
for maintenance and ticket stock, cause
queuing during peak hours and reliability

EXPO EXTRAS

2017 AdWheel Awards Exhibit
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION marketing and communications staffs are more
important than ever, shaping strategic messages and conducting campaigns that promote service expansions and improvements, attract riders and educate taxpayers about
upcoming ballot initiatives-just to name a few of their critically important roles.
APTA's AdWheel Awards Exhibit-located just across the aisle from the APTA Center-showcases best practices from this year's award-winning marketing, advertising and
communications initiatives, organized in three peer group categories. Visiting this exhibit
is the perfect way to gather new marketing and communications ideas.

22 | Passenger Transport

EXPO EXTRAS

The APTA Center
WHAT'S THE LATEST NEWS about APTA's Standards Development Program?
How can you update your member record? How can you sign up your co-workers for additional subscriptions to Passenger Transport? What does an APTA peer review entail?
Have an APTA-related question? We have answers. Drop by the APTA Center and talk
with association staff who will be on hand to provide information, share resources, discuss
member benefits and offer help.
The APTA Center also offers a place to relax and have a quiet conversation with a new
friend or an old acquaintance.

challenges. Within the first six months,
18 percent of passengers were purchasing tickets through the app, which is
225 percent over the agency's projected
goal.
GO Transit (Metrolinx), Toronto,
launched an initiative to increase passenger etiquette after discovering that
96 percent of riders had been affected
by bad behavior from fellow riders.
GO crowd-sourced the top five
"etiquette fails" and took a page from
straight-laced airplane safety guides,
with a tongue-in-cheek twist, in videos, social media and posters. The
campaign's return on investment was
5,700 to 1-the agency earned more
than $2 million in publicity based on an
investment of approximately $35,000.
Two months following launch, a survey of whether riders "noticed changes
to [x bad] behavior" reported drops in

every area; 36 percent of riders said
they noticed a decline in bad behavior,
exceeding the agency's goal of 25 percent, and complaints to its customer
service center dropped by 80 percent,
exceeding the goal of 30 percent.
Siemens Industry Inc.-Mobility
Division unveiled "Ingenuity for Life,"
a campaign to show how its technology
impacts not only business, but society
at large. One challenge was to identify
a customer who could help tell the
Siemens story in specific topic areas. Siemens featured TriMet in Portland, OR, in
the campaign, which included print, an
online presence and social media. The
initial results reported: 55 percent awareness among targeted audiences, higher
"likeability," 23 percent slogan recall
and 83 percent relevance to Siemens.
Learn more and see all entries at
www.apta.com/adwheel.

http://www.apta.com/adwheel http://www.man-engines.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Passenger Transport August 2017 Vol 75 No 15