Why Set Up Public Transit to Fail? #blogboost

Yesterday’s postal mail brought an invitation by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to survey our driving habits.

I live in a rural area, along a state highway but between two college towns. Green as I’d love to be, I go most places by car. Occasionally, I’ll have enough time to bike to Northampton or Amherst, but it’s about 50 minutes each direction, and that’s a big chunk out of my day. It’s also not a very pleasant ride, along a busy, very hilly highway with lots of curves and potholes and big stretches without a shoulder.

I’m a lifelong fan and USER of public transportation. Growing up in New York City, I was eight years old when I switched from the school bus to the public bus—and that was with a transfer. I’ll often take buses instead of driving to Boston or New York (and I’ve actually booked Amtrak for my next trip to Washington). When I travel out of my area, I rarely rent a car unless the destination city is the start of an extended driving trip. If I’m just staying locally, I use buses, trams and subways (and the occasional taxi.

There’s a local bus that runs past my house. But even though I’m a public transit guy, I’ve lived here 12 years and have never taken it. Why? Because it’s set up to fail. The local transit authority, in its wisdom, runs full-size coaches three times a day in from Northampton to South Hadley and twice a day back to Northampton. I have lots of reasons to go to Northampton, but I can’t do it on the bus. The first trip to Northampton that passes my house arrives at 5:30; the last bus back departs Northampton at 5:35. So that leaves five minutes, after business hours, to do my business. Ha, ha.

If I happened to want to go the other way, I could have a whole hour in South Hadley, between 5:05 and 6:05 p.m. Whoopie! Oh yeah, I could also arrive at Mount Holyoke at 8 a.m., and if I happened to somehow discover nine hours of things to do in sleepy South Hadley, I could catch the 5:05 back home. Thanks a lot.

I can see these rare buses go by my house, and they’re usually very uncrowded. What a surprise! Set up a bus service to fail, and then complain that nobody takes the bus.

But how’s this: what if instead of a 40-passenger coach scheduled as to be unusable, there was a 10-passenger van or minibus, going, say, every two hours. Labor cost would be higher, as a driver would have to be diverted from a more popular route. But the other costs of operation, such as fuel, would be sharply less for each run. And my whole family would probably use the bus several times a week, especially if the route were extended three miles past Mount Holyoke to the high school my son attends, at the beginning and end of the school day. Probably so would a number of other people. Maybe enough to make the route viable.

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A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com