We’re constantly battling the perception that wealthy, successful people do not ride transit. Thus, those who aspire to become wealthy and successful can often feel that riding transit is a sign of their lack of social or economic progress and would rather drive.
In the Academy Award’s Best Picture Crash, Chris “Ludacris” Brown’s character tells his friend why the Los Angeles buses are brightly-lit inside at night. “So they can humiliate us” by exposing the bus riders to passing motorists and the corresponding disdain and ridicule for the indignity of riding the bus.
It’s another example of the low social status that buses still suffer from, and a challenge to transit operators to include explicit strategies for improving the social status of bus riders in their community.
One excellent, inexpensive tool to build good will about transit is to ask elected officials to ride.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire, understands the social dynamics of transit well. He famously rides the subway to work in City Hall. He not only helps to elevate the social status of transit — if the Mayor rides the subway, why shouldn’t I? — but also understands that riding helps make a billionaire appear to be more of a man of the people, in touch with their daily concerns. His daily commute, more than any policy position, engenders him to voters and generated word-of-mouth. I first heard about Mayor Bloomberg’s subway commuting from one of our interns at Permanent Campaigns who goes to school in New York and proudly reported that the Mayor takes the subway every day.
You can generate similar sentiment by asking your elected officials — from a school board member to your U.S. Senator — to simply ride transit for an hour. This is also a great opportunity for press as a Congressman or Mayor or several school board members on the bus makes for a great image.
For the elected officials, riding the bus for an afternoon offers a chance to help combat the resentment of riders (and voters) who perceive non-riding elected officials as ‘too good’ for their bus. The comments to this blog post in the Chicago Sun-Times illuminates the danger to elected officials of rider resentment from not riding transit.
Help elected officials by giving them a chance to ride transit and generate some free press while doing so.
P.S. Feel free to reach out to legislators from other parts of the state. The Illinois Farm Bureau runs a very successful Adopt-a-Legislator program that encourages county farm bureaus to ‘adopt’ an urban or suburban legislator and bring him or her down to the farm to learn about agriculture. The Farm Bureau understands that every state legislator votes on state legislator related to agriculture programs and funding, so investing time in building relationships with elected officials who do not represent any farms is a very smart idea. This article highlights the success in building a relationship between a n urban West Side of Chicago legislator with a rural Western Illinois county. Transit agencies — particularly state transit associations — should steal this idea and set up their own program.
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