A Better Language for Transit
By Dan Johnson-Weinberger
We transit advocates have a problem: bad language.
* Formula funding
* Guaranteed appropriations
Boring!
Right now we seem like we’re still on the welfare train, asking for government handouts without any compelling, exciting opportunities for the nation to embrace.
If we want to inspire the imagination of our elected officials and taxpayers to create the modern transit network the nation deserves, we need language that similarly inspires.
And that means we’ll need a wholesale replacement of our current language that emerged from agencies and bureaucracies with language designed to resonate in the political world.
Thus, we should consider the names of the actual program simply a starting point for the language that we will choose to use in our communications with our riders, elected officials and the broader electorate as we look to build support for our political objectives.
Some rules of thumb; ‘investment’ is a better word than either ‘funding’ or ‘program.’ ‘Assistance’ is a bad word. ‘Freedom’ is a good word.
Here are three guideposts to designing new language to describe transit and our policy agenda.
2. Convey the benefits of a transit investment
3. Avoid reinforcing the negative associations of taxes and government programs
The benefits of transit include many of the following:
* Freedom from foreign oil
* Freedom from global warming
* Freedom from bad traffic and job-killing road congestion
* More prosperity
* Higher property values and property tax revenues
* Access to jobs and employees
We don’t understand yet which of these benefits are the most compelling to the greatest number of voters, and I suspect that some of these benefits will be more compelling to some groups of voters than others. While we should be prepared to emphasize certain benefits with certain constituencies, language for policy initiatives works best when it is repeated and echoed by the media as well as by the advocate. The new language is successful when it becomes universally accepted.
We don’t want to be associated with activities that elected officials shy away from: welfare, handouts or wasteful government spending.
We do want to be associated with the benefits that transit usage generates: freedom from foreign oil, freedom from global warming, freedom from bad traffic and more prosperity.
Finally, we do want to distinguish ourselves from our rivals for transportation funding: highways.
Dan Johnson-Weinberger is the President and Founder of Permanent Campaigns Consulting, a Chicago-based communications firm specializing in partnering with transit agencies to grow ridership.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:11 am
You have a well written argument. But, I have a few points in response. You wrote:
“Transit ridership, as a percentage of the electorate, is well below 10 percent (even in our largest metropolitan regions).”
In general, you are correct, but not in the New York Metro Area. New York City has 52% of commuters riding transit. The New York Metro Area is at 39%. I understand that NYC is the exception to your statement, but so be it.
“It’s important that we appeal directly to non-riders to build our base of support.”
I support this objective, but I think the appeal – to use or support public transit, is still too narrow. A majority of people drive alone by car. The public transportation industry should advocate for “sustainable mobility” – in other words, all existing and future alternatives to “drive alone”. This includes: walking, bicycles, ride-sharing, car-sharing, guaranteed ride, paratransit, taxi, public transportation and telecommuting. Equally important, public transportation should mean intergrated community mobility – that modes connect at stops and faciltiies, that there’s a common information access point (e.i. 511) and a common smart card to pay for fares.
Stress a lifestyle that is green and offers choices. That is how to capture a large market share of users and aspiring users. That is how to paint public transportation with a broad green brush.
Sustainable mobility is a strategy that would yield benefits of:
* Freedom from foreign oil
* Freedom from global warming
* Freedom from bad traffic and job-killing road congestion
* More prosperity
* Higher property values and property tax revenues
* Access to jobs and employees
March 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Dwight: thanks for pointing out that the New York City metro area is an exception to the “>90% of voters are non-riders” rule.
But I don’t know what sustainable mobility means. I think “mobility” is too wonky a word for our purposes.
I want something that reminds a driver and taxpayer that he or she has a direct economic interest in generating higher transit ridership, so that he or she feels good about paying their share of their transit.
I’m not sure that that is yet, but in order for us to build up the strength of our political argument, we need language that resonates with non-riders.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
For a pithy slogan, how about “Make our cities work!”
A few things I like about it–
* It emphasizes that we’re looking for real solutions, not feel-good greenwashing or civic boosterism.
* It plays off of the feeling everyone has, even people who don’t use transit at all, that our freeway systems aren’t really working that well.
* Instead of taking an us-vs-them, transit-vs-cars stance, it acknowledges that we could do better all around.
* It implicitly relates transportation to land use.
* It makes a good transit system sound like something to be proud of.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:38 am
Framing is important. I would suggest checking out the Rockridge Institute for more on framing the issues and using words that matter. I would like to add another one…
Economic independence
March 27th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Be careful just what you promise and imply.
“Freedom from bad traffic and job-killing road congestion” will only happen for those who actually use transit. Due to induced demand, every time someone stops using a car because of a switch to transit, another car will take its place on the road. This is the same reason that you can’t build your way our of congestion.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Eric…
If a web page is not listed in the first pages of any search, the odds of someone finding it diminishes greatly (especially if there is other competition on the first page). Very few people go past the first page, and the percentage that go to subseque…
March 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Well, yes, Ken. More money for transit means that transit commutes are viable for more people, freeing them from bad traffic.
March 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Dan – “we need language that resonates with non-riders.”
I live in Upstate NY, which is alot like the rest of the US in term of how people travel to work – nearly 80% drive alone. I put this data together from the 2006 American Communities Survey, US Census Bureau:
Workers 16 years & Older: Means to travel to Work
Upstate NY
Total: 2,617,776
Car, truck, or van: 2,313,937 88.4%
Drove alone 2,080,623 79.5%
————————————
Carpooled: 233,314 8.9%*
Public transportation 73,921 2.8%*
Bicycle 9,054 0.3%*
Walked 105,257 4.0%*
Taxicab, motorcycle, 25,205 1.0%*
Worked at home 90,402 3.5%*
————————————-
Now, we can look at this data and say that 97.2% of workers are “non-riders” since public transportation has a 2.8% mode share. Pretty depressing.
or
We can look at the data and say 20.5% of commuters use modes (*) other than drive alone. These alternative modes deserve promotion and a reasonable level of incentives and investment. I propose a mobility policy to encourage more people to use alternative modes – which includes public transportation. What bundle of mobility services are needed to provide realistic choices to the public? How do we increase the 20.5%?
Now, I agree with you that “sustainable mobility” is wonky language. We need new branding and new language.
“Internet search” is to Google as “sustainable mobility” is to ????. I do not know what ???? is.
What is sustainable mobility? It’s sustainable transportation plus social equity. It can be found in Wikipedia.
So, I invite public transportation’s services and marketing strategies to evolve. We have opportunities to advocate for all alternative modes. There are big roles for the private sector and market-priced services. There’s a business case for ridesharing (carpooling)that can generate revenue. There are at least two basic cross-cutting investments to be made to increase consumer convenience to access and use mobility services. We need a common method of payment or access (a smartcard key) and a single access for service information/trip reservation. I call this approach integrated community mobility. Bremen, Germany is an outstanding example of integrated mobility – google it.
If the public transportation industry stays in its stovepipe, it will lose an opportunity to grow market share and revenue. Are we community mobility leaders or not?
March 31st, 2008 at 12:54 am
Good discussion so far.
“Make our cities work!” is pretty good…. for people who live in cities. For suburbanites, ex-urbanites and rural(-ites?), we need something else. “Make our regions work!”? Too nebulous. Wonks know what a region is. Most people don’t. So what about the whole country? “Make America work!”? I don’t know. It doesn’t resonate with me. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t really say anything about what transit does to make America work. Not clear enough.
I agree that economic independence is an important idea to include.
This is the first I’ve heard of the idea that every single car removed from highways or streets from transit will be replaced by another previously not-used car because of “induced demand”. I’m not convinced that’s true, but I’m curious to learn more about your thesis that it is. Even so, we do save real dollars and real hours from the scourge of congestion, so I think we should be trumpeting our role in doing so.
The community mobility is an interesting argument. I buy the need to broaden our political coalition. I just am not seeing (or hearing) the language that conveys the broader coalition yet. How do carpoolers line up with transit politically? Fascinating to learn that three times as many people carpool as ride transit (according to the survey). Are these potential transit supporters? What are we asking for that also benefits the carpoolers? I don’t understand how carpoolers or work-from-homers will line up with transit yet. Any ideas?
Mobility is not a good word. It’s way too nebulous. Maybe we’re stuck with it if we want to talk about the concept of….well, mobility, but most people do not really know what the word means in a concrete way since most people don’t think about mobility as a concept. They think about traffic. They know what that is. And they know how high gas prices are. But they don’t really know what mobility is, as that’s too much of a social concept that isn’t really at all relevant to an individual. We need to find a way to convey the concept of mobility in terms that are meaningful to an individual who does not generally think about the community at all.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:51 am
Automatic Scuttle Submitter is 100% automatic social bookmarking software designed to submit your domains to thousands of Scuttle sites. Not only Automatic Scuttle Submitter creates accounts and bookmarks sites automatically, but also parses meta tags for each URL and runs itself in background without any user interaction.