Cartopia + Transit = Quality of Life

Why would you ever take transit?

Do you hate traffic? Most San Diegans do. Along with rising gas prices, traffic costs everyone time and money. According to local plans, it’s only going to get worse. Major development projects suffer from significant traffic impacts. The region doesn’t have the space or the money for new roads and freeways. Studies show that major metropolitan areas can’t build their way out of traffic anyway. It turns out that, once you’ve reached a certain size and scale, adding new lanes tends to induce new trips, so you never catch up.

Cities face a basic choice: grow more like Paris, or more like Cairo. You can grow toward a quality of life supported by good transit, or you can grow like cities stuck with pollution, congestion and declining economic prosperity.

Is there any good news on the horizon? Some are escaping to transit. The Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) set ridership records in 2007. MTS provides bus and trolley services to the southern half of the San Diego region (south of SR-56). MTS ridership increased by almost six percent to 88,719,750 passenger trips and averaged over 265,000 daily weekday trips for the calendar year. That roughly amounts to keeping 133,000 potential car-trips off the road each week. Think of transit this way: every driver who can move out of traffic and into transit leaves a space for someone else.

“Many Factors contributed to these records,” explains Paul Jablonski, Chief Executive Officer of MTS. “The biggest reason is that our system has been realigned to better serve the region. In addition, high gas prices, congestion and greater awareness of climate change issues helped boost ridership.”

“Giving up your car for a day or more a week is the easiest and most effective way to reduce your personal carbon footprint,” states Jablonski. “The average driver in California puts nine tons of pollutants into the air each year. Riding one of our clean and efficient Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) powered buses or our all-electric trolley is much more friendly to the environment. That idea is catching on.”

But let’s face it. Most people think of transit as services for someone else. Is there anything that can coax San Diegans out of their cars and into transit? It turns out that there is.

Sensitivity to Personal Travel Experience Need for Flexibility and Speed     Most transit demand studies assume that the likelihood of choosing transit is primarily a function of household income.     Market research commissioned in San Diego suggests that other dimensions get closer to describing how people make their choices. The two most important dimensions are a person’s need for flexibility and speed in their daily life and their “sensitivity” to their “personal travel experience” – meaning, the degree to which they identify with a transit service (its look-and-feel and the people using it).     Source: Market Research conducted jointly by Cambridge Systematics, MTDB, and The Mission Group.

Applying marketing to transit

Extensive market research and focus groups involving a cross section of San Diegans were used in a market cluster analysis to understand what it would take to get San Diegans to give up their cars and use public transit.

It turns out that San Diegans can be separated into six (cleverly named) market clusters. One group (Road Runners, approximately 12%) will seldom or never take transit. One-sixth of us (Easy-Goers, about 19%) actually prefer transit. Where the action is in getting us to give up our cars is in the middle four market cluster groups. These four groups: Cautious Runabouts (12%), Intrepid Trekkers (14%), Flexible Flyers (4%) and Conventional Cruisers (40%), will use transit if and only if it meets their specific market needs.

What are those needs? Each market cluster responds to transit services based on a mix of the following:

• Need flexibility and speed (“get me where I need to go, faster than I can drive”)
• Save time (“don’t make me wait”)
• Sensitivity to transportation costs
• Sensitivity to travel experience
• Sensitivity to stress
• Concern for the natural environment
• Sensitivity to crowds
• Sensitivity to personal safety

The largest market segment, Conventional Cruisers, have a low need for flexibility and speed, but a high sensitivity to their personal travel experience. Intrepid Trekkers have a high need for flexibility and speed, but are only moderately sensitive towards their personal travel experience. They are distinguished from Cautious Runabouts by their relative unconcern for personal safety. Flexible Flyers have a high need for flexibility and speed, but low sensitivity to their personal travel experience.

Each cluster weighs its travel choices not merely on time and cost, but also on trip purpose (commuting vs. noncommuting) and the roles of those other needs. It was also found that while some individuals are cost sensitive, much larger groups are willing to pay more for a travel experience that meets their needs. If you don’t meet those needs, they will never become a transit customer.

It’s not the mode, it’s the motion

All of the major market factors important to getting drivers out of traffic and into transit can be summed up by the following three, critical design factors:

Network Structure: does the transit service network connect enough of the right locations without requiring transfers?

System Performance: are most transit trips competitive with the car? That is, can you get there faster than driving?

Customer Experience: what is the walking and waiting environment like getting to and from transit? What kind of information is available for customers to make the system easy to use? Are the transit vehicles clean and appealing?

All of these factors must be taken into consideration if our transit system is to have a significant impact on traffic congestion and justify the continued large public investments in transit.

Conventional arguments about transit usually divide people up into those who love trains and those who are willing to take the bus. But the market research shows the need to transcend these usual arguments.

People prefer the traditionally higher levels of services that trains have offered, while buses are better suited for local services due to their lower cost and flexibility. The bottom line for customers is whether or not the services get them where they need to go, on time, and makes them feel good about it. This means that to develop the most attractive services, we basically need to invent a better bus.

Now what?

MTS has redone their routes in the last year to better serve the region. However they haven’t had the resources to fully apply what has been learned by the market research. Enter Move San Diego, a local non-profit group with a mission to improve the region’s mobility.

Move San Diego took the market research and looked for the “global best practices” in transit planning and implementation in regions with similar land use patterns. The result is called the FAST (Financially Achievable, Saves Time) Plan. The FAST Plan proposes both a set of infrastructure and a possible service plan that connects the region’s origins and destinations so that the transit vehicles can make trip times competitive with the car.

Move San Diego is offering presentations to groups now.

For more information, visit their website: www.movesandiego.org.