Car companies sell a dream, where cars literally represent the American dream. In these ads, the car itself is freedom. It allows you to find your true self, your dream self where you drive fast, you go into the mountains and nothing stands between you and panoramic vistas. In the city version of your car-commercial-dream-self, you skid around corners on empty streets and pull up to nice restaurants, usually with an attractive passenger by your side. Wow.
Never mind that, in reality, America’s dependence on private vehicles is shackling us to a number of profound problems. To start, driving is stressful and studies have linked commuting by car to spikes of high blood pressure, higher cholesterol, depression, anxiety, and more. Owning a car is also expensive and Americans are increasingly going into debt to pay for them. The infrastructure needed to support cars is expensive too, with governments going into debt, and taxpayers ultimately bearing the cost, for our vast system of roads. Having so many cars on the roads causes parking problems, traffic, crashes, injuries, deaths, smog, and air pollution. Surpassing all of this, shuttling ourselves around, usually alone, in 2-ton vehicles powered by fossil fuels is killing the planet.
Car commercials make you forget about all that too. The auto industry has been remarkably successful, despite all the downsides of car ownership, in connecting with Americans on a deep, emotional level.
There are a few examples, mostly from abroad, of compelling transit ads that try to turn car ads on their head. Check them out here, or here, and here.)
Selling a Vision: What Transit Agencies Should Learn from Car Companies
by Alana Miller, The Frontier Group, Monday, January 22, 2018
If we’re going to combat global warming, reduce air pollution, and create livable cities, we need more people riding transit. But for decades, transit has been heavily schooled in the marketing department by its main competitor: the auto industry.
We can all picture a good car commercial – empty roads, gorgeous views, exhilarating music, a sleek car taking you through it all. It actually makes your heart race a bit; it makes you want to turn off the TV and go for a long drive.
But how often do you really do this with your car?
My hunch is that more often, you’re stuck in traffic on a suburban road while your 9-year old and her soccer teammates throw Cheetos at each other in the backseat.
In car ads, none of that matters. The car companies sell a dream, where cars literally represent the American dream. In these ads, the car itself is freedom. It allows you to find your true self, your dream self where you drive fast, you go into the mountains and nothing stands between you and panoramic vistas. In the city version of your car-commercial-dream-self, you skid around corners on empty streets and pull up to nice restaurants, usually with an attractive passenger by your side. Wow.
Never mind that, in reality, America’s dependence on private vehicles is shackling us to a number of profound problems. To start, driving is stressful and studies have linked commuting by car to spikes of high blood pressure, higher cholesterol, depression, anxiety, and more. Owning a car is also expensive and Americans are increasingly going into debt to pay for them. The infrastructure needed to support cars is expensive too, with governments going into debt, and taxpayers ultimately bearing the cost, for our vast system of roads. Having so many cars on the roads causes parking problems, traffic, crashes, injuries, deaths, smog, and air pollution. Surpassing all of this, shuttling ourselves around, usually alone, in 2-ton vehicles powered by fossil fuels is killing the planet.
Car commercials make you forget about all that too.
The auto industry has been remarkably successful, despite all the downsides of car ownership, in connecting with Americans on a deep, emotional level.
Where is this same approach for transit?
The most marketing I see from my transit agency is how I could be killed by transit for doing something dumb. I’m not saying we shouldn’t run ads to improve safety (and considering cars kill 40,000 people every year, I’d like to see more ads for safer streets), but public transportation has a lot more to offer.
When it works well, transit is pretty amazing and should be able to sell itself. Where are the ads showing concert goers or sports fans arriving downtown on a light rail, instead of paying $30 for parking and waiting in traffic to exit the venue? What about commuters stuck in gridlock versus someone reading a book on a bus with a nice dedicated lane? Instead, ads on TV tell stories of this hardworking man who suffers on a bus every day until he saves up enough money to buy a truck.
Sure, there are days when someone spills a smoothie on the seat next to you, but many people who take transit quickly come to its defense. After Elon Musk, billionaire CEO of the car company Tesla, bemoaned transit as a “pain in the ass” that nobody likes, largely because “there’s a bunch of random strangers,” Twitter responded in force. Thousands of people used the hashtag #GreatThingsThatHappenedOnTransit to write about wonderful things that happen on transit, including meeting friends or spouses, hearing Christmas carolers, spending time with their children or with a good book, and yes, interacting with strangers who need help with directions or even a cough drop.
Transit agencies need to make public transportation work better, brag about its success, and market it. Of course, that can be challenging for cash-strapped agencies struggling to even keep the system going, but consider similar efforts around energy efficiency or recycling. Spending money to encourage people to reduce electricity use or properly sort their trash helps the whole system work better – and so does encouraging people to ride transit as opposed to driving alone. Investing resources to highlight the benefits of transit and to educate people how to use it won’t change behavior overnight, but it’s a start, and even small boosts in ridership can help improve a city’s transportation system.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. Car companies have been incredibly successful using marketing techniques that sell an ideal, and transit agencies should learn from their example. After all, they have an even better vision to sell.
How Lyft and Uber Can Fix—Not Cause—Congestion: While evidence mounts that Uber and Lyft are stealing rides from public transit, there’s still a chance for ride-hailing apps to do more to help than hurt congestion. The key: using ride-hailing apps to carpool. February 7, 2018, 11am PST | Dan Sperling, Austin Brown
Though app-based car services may increase congestion in this limited regard, there is even greater—yet largely ignored—potential for such services to reduce net congestion by facilitating multi-passenger pooling. So far, pooling has not caught on widely. Since the 1970s, hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested into building a web of carpool lanes in most major U.S. cities. Yet carpooling has steadily declined from about 20% of commute trips in the 1970s to less than 10% now (see figure). Today, each car on the road in the United States contains an average of only 1.6 passengers, and the majority of the time vehicles are occupied only by the driver.
The share of workers commuting by carpool has fallen steadily since 1980. Data from census.gov.
Nevertheless, pooling remains the transportation mode of choice for a significant fraction of commuters. In 2013 (the most recent year for which data are available), 9.4% of workers commuted by carpooling: almost twice the percentage of workers who commuted by public transit. App-based car services could vastly increase this market share. The popularity of services such as Uber, Lyft, and Via proves that people will pool as long as it is easy, convenient, and reliable. And when people pool, everyone wins. Sharing a ride with just one other passenger effectively halves all the costs and negative externalities of driving, including congestion. This is particularly important with respect to work commuters, since jobs tend to be located in cities and other concentrated areas where parking and road space is at a premium. App-based pooling can also increase equity by expanding transportation options for those who can’t afford to drive alone and may not be well served by transit. Finally, pooling can reduce noise, local air pollution, and greenhouse-gas emissions by providing more transportation service per mile of vehicle travel. (The role of pooling as the most important innovation for achieving sustainable transportation is a central theme of the forthcoming Island Press book authored by Dan Sperling and nine other leaders in the field of new mobility, Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future.)
Given limited funding availability for improving mass transit as well as general public resistance toward implementing congestion pricing, public officials should not just allow app-based pooling systems—they should champion them as one of the most feasible ways to tackle traffic congestion. Unfortunately, most policymakers have been slow to do so. The city of Chicago, for instance, recently imposed a $1-per-ride fee on all ridesharing companies amid concerns that such companies were costing the city money in the form of lost transit fares, parking fees, and other transportation-related sources of revenue. A major problem with Chicago’s fee is that it fails to differentiate between single-rider trips, which provide no extra societal benefits, and pooled trips, which do.
Next up is New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo is evaluating options for reducing traffic, including a possible ridesharing tax. This complex process is exposing disagreements between New York State and New York City, and among different boroughs in the city. Yet the process also presents an opportunity to set important and innovative policy. Governor Cuomo—and all other decision-makers in similar positions—would be well-advised to consider the substantial role that app-based pooling can play in reducing congestion and improving quality of life for all. Indeed, a diverse coalition of transportation experts and stakeholders recently expressed precisely this view in an open letter [pdf] to the governor. Regulation of app-based car services may be justifiable in some cases, but such regulations must be carefully designed to favor pooling and avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Dan Sperling is founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis and professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy. He also is a member of the influential California Air Resources Board and is recognized as an international expert on transportation technology assessment, energy and environmental aspects of transportation, and transportation policy. Dr. Sperling’s book Three Revolutions is officially publishing on March 1 and is currently available for order from Island Press and pre-order from Amazon.
Austin Brown is executive director of the Policy Institute for Energy, the Environment, and the Economy at UC Davis. In this role, he builds strong connections between the research and policy communities at the local, state, and national levels with a focus on clean energy and sustainable transportation. Prior to joining UC Davis in June 2017, Dr. Brown spent nine years in Washington, D.C., working for the Department of Energy and as assistant director for Clean Energy and Transportation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama Administration.
