How do you make people want to ride public transit?
Here's one. Make parking prices so high that you force it. That is what is happening in Downtown Lexington and I don't think it's a bad thing.
Right now, most meters are only 2 hours and the cost is $1 per hour. So the inconvenience of walking back to feed the meter on top of the cost makes riding the bus more enticing.
But Lexington has so much free parking, most people don't bother with meters. You can park in the Library or city lots free for hours with a validated ticket and validation is never challenged by the guards or desk people, they just stamp it and send you on your way.
I am amazed how every good plan for downtown includes a statement about "working on a deal with LexTran".
I don't think that people with cars are skipping the bus due to the $1 fare.
People don't ride it because the ride is long into downtown if you live outside New Circle Rd. and the schedules are too difficult to read. It took a casual conversation with another rider for me to realize that the 3S goes down Lansdowne on the weekend. The bus schedule says that the bus stops at Crossroads Shopping Ctr. Well depending on how you look at it, Crossroads is on Nicholasville Rd. but according to LexTran it's on Reynolds Rd. and how would I know that the bus went down Lansdowne first?
So for the record I've offered 3 ways to increase ridership.
1. Increase downtown parking prices.
2. Reduce number of downtown parking spaces.
3. Make route details more clear.
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I agree with 1 and 2. However #3 is much easier said than done. Go to any transit that operates with more than 1/2 hour headways and the schedule is pretty complex. With all the combinations it almost has to be. I would suggest making sure there are live voices in customer service that are well prepared to answer questions. The downside to this is that peeps answering the phones are expensive so perhaps more staffing at peak times....just an idea.
ReplyDeleteI don't think live operators are the answer to this. Adding each street to the route map is imperative. Not every stop on every street but at least let me know what streets are on the route. If you ride the bus, you can vouch that a third of the people who get on the bus have to ask if the bus goes down a particular street. We should be able to read it online or on the route map. That's BASIC customer service and we can skip the not so helpful operators. Thanks for reading and come again soon!
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