The other day, I watched as the teenaged daughter of a friend tried to cajole a ride from her friends to get to the mall. The mall was only a couple miles down the road, and I suggested she take a bus. I was a little surprised by her response: “Yeah, and get mugged.” I asked what she meant. “Those things are gross, and the people who ride them are crazy.” I asked if she had ever ridden a bus other than a school bus, and she said that she had not. Long story short, her impression of buses is the same as many. It’s based on stereotypes and based on the class system that still seems to exist.
Taking the bus is not even a last resort for a lot of people. My friend’s daughter would have stayed home and not gone to the mall if somebody hadn’t volunteered to stop by and pick her up.
The pecking order seems to be car, Metrorail, taxi (because of the expense) and then bus. No, I didn’t forget walking or bicycling, but that’s not an option for some people due to the distance that needs to be traveled.
Transit marketers take note: You have a lot of work to do to change perceptions if you want to get more people to take the bus, especially at times other than rush hours along well-traveled routes. Buses need to be clean, well-lit and “friendly.” The image of the smelly guy asleep in the middle seat needs to be erased from our collective consciousness.
No, the bus is never going to be a big party on wheels, but people need to know that they are safer and cleaner, and the routes easier to figure out than most now think.
Of course, if there ARE problems, then they need to be corrected.
The bus as a transit option suffers more from an image problem than anything else, except maybe for the amount of time that people have to stand in the cold waiting for one to show up.
Get out of the zone
The District has just released a new taxi map that supposedly makes it easier for out-of-towners to figure out the city’s antiquated and, some say, unjust zone system.
The zone system makes it far too easy for some cab drivers to rip off an unsuspecting public by creating routes that go through multiple zones and therefore cost more. The zone system also doesn’t leave the same kind of paper trail like the meter system does. The drivers don’t have to balance their books at the end of a run based on a hard and fast tally of how many fares they picked up and the distance and total fee for each ride.
I guess the city’s Department of Transportation is right to create these new maps. Maybe they will give those visiting our city a fighting chance of understanding why they were charged $15 to go six blocks.
The real time and energy of the new administration should be in trying to get rid of this system and to install a meter in each cab that makes it very clear what the riders are paying and why.
Questions, comments, random musings? Write to [email protected].
