Mass Transit - 52

Passenger Experience
Communicating with
Riders to Win Back Trust

With these new safety measures in
place, agencies have found it just as important to communicate these efforts
with their community.
"Now that we're in the middle of this
health crisis, we understand that we're
going to shift the messaging because we
have certainly enhanced our cleaning
processes," said Maynard. "If we don't
share that with the customer, it's going
to be hard for them to trust us to get back
to using public transit."
One successful method RTC has
found is using Wi-Fi messaging onboard
its buses. When passengers go to access
the onboard Wi-Fi, the agency provides
information prior to log in about sanitization processes that are being taken to
keep vehicles clean.
"That's a great way that we have found
we can communicate with our customers
almost in real time," Maynard said.
By the end of the year, Maynard says
digital signs onboard vehicles and the
mobile app will tell customers the last
time the buses were sanitized and how
the air is being sanitized.
Koprowski shares TARTA has had
success with social media, specifically
Facebook, which is popular with TARTA's
riders. Some of the agency's most engaged
posts are related to COVID-19 updates.
Communicating information in real-time, whether it be about cleaning,
vehicle capacity or route changes, is critical, but Clarke adds that focusing on the
"human element" resonates with people.
To do this, CapMetro posted videos
on social media of operators, mechanics
and cleaning staff. Clarke also does what
he calls "Thank You Thursday" videos
where he thanks a group of staff.
"Our staff, who are people's neighbors or people they go to church with,
they are better storytellers than just me,"
Clarke said.
Sisson and Koprowski both did something similar, where they shared videos of
staff cleaning buses and reiterated what
the agency is doing to help prevent the
spread of COVID-19, which they both
said received positive feedback.
Regardless of the method, everyone
agrees it's critical to keep the message
consistent and to monitor feedback. For

52 |

CapMetro

CAPMETRO USES a hospital-grade
disinfectant solution with its misters.

RTC

AN RTC staff member posts signs
onboard a bus for social distancing.

CapMetro, this means analyzing the response and perception, seeing how the
information is being received and being
proactive instead of reactive. For TARTA,
this means monitoring how information
is received on social media and communicating regularly with stakeholders. For
RTC, getting feedback involved surveying
riders in May, asking if they thought RTC
was doing enough to keep them safe. The
agency heard back from 728 people, with 74
percent of respondents saying RTC's efforts
made them feel safe while using transit.
"Our efforts shouldn't be done in a
vacuum," Maynard said. "I think it's important that we share our efforts."

Transit is More Than
One Metric

The industry is also realizing it's important to share more than cleaning
efforts. Agencies like DART First State
Transit, CapMetro, RTC and TARTA are
highlighting different ways they have
been supporting the community, such
as assisting with meal deliveries to seniors and students or providing mobile
hotspots in low-income communities
so kids could access their schoolwork.
These community outreach efforts
highlight the role transit plays in a community and helps reiterate the need for
sustainable transit by showing the added
value it brings to the community. This in
turn gives agencies metrics beyond their

Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | JULY/AUGUST 2020

ridership numbers to show the importance of transit and why it's necessary for
the community. A metric that jumps out
for Maynard is customer feedback and
whether RTC is meeting or exceeding
their expectations.
"[It's] great to see RTC moving
200,000 folks per day, but rather, are we
doing it in such a way that it will provide
a great service to those customers," Maynard explained.
Sisson points out another metric to
consider is the number of mobility options, such as bus, car, bicycle or walking.
When these modes become connected,
people are empowered to choose how
they want to get to where they need to go.
"Giving people choices and making
sure that when we design projects and different services, they're not just about our
fixed-route bus service or the contracted
rail services," Sisson said. "It's part of the
overall lifeline of what you give people."
Clarke echoes a similar idea, saying
transit should be viewed as a community impact.
"A trip by a single mom that gets to a
job that allows her kid to get after-school
programming is more valuable than
someone driving down the street in a car
to do nothing," Clarke said. "They're both
equal trips and that's not right."
Instead, the industry should focus on
the social value, economic value and environmental value each trip on transit
provides.
"Our industry has to continue to promote itself," Clarke said. "We should not
be shy talking about what we do and be
proud of what we do and pound our chest
and say what we do is critically important. [Don't] just assume it's like a utility
of decades ago, or it's just a given that it's
funded and it's a given people use it."
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