To be sure, there is no substitute for offering high-quality bus or rail transit service, but many transit agencies skimp when it comes to marketing, outreach, and education and, as a result, the public often has no idea how good the service may actually be. Buses also have an image problem in many communities, which proper marketing could help address. Witness the huge sums spent by automakers in crafting the image of their automobiles.
Transit would be better served if the pay-per-ride and unlimited fare structures that currently dominate were expanded to include more fine-tuned pricing structures similar to those offered by cell phone companies. That was the idea that won the recent second annual Outside the Box transportation conference and competition at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy.
For years, Steve Jobs and company seem to have been our reliable guides to new technology and a better tomorrow. However, Apple’s decision to build a mammoth new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. – miles from public transportation and adequate housing – amounts to a corporate denunciation of sustainability.
How many cell-phone minutes do you pay for in a month? Or gigabytes of data? Are you on a family plan? Do you get a group discount from work? What does this even have to do with transit? If we think of a transit trip like we do a cell-phone minute (or megabyte) we start to realize that there are many ways to package our usage.
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