Promoting the Use of Public Transportation
Introduction
Public transportation serves numerous purposes: first, it helps to ease congestion in urban areas by decreasing the number of cars on the road at any given time but especially during busy traffic hours; second, it helps people who may not otherwise have means of getting to work obtain these means; third, it can reduce pollution and fuel emissions that can harm the environment. All of these are good reasons for using and promoting public transportation. The problem of how to promote public transportation, however, is one that needs to be solved. In order to solve it, a variety of factors have to be considered: a) who is most likely to use public transportation—i.e., who is the audience to whom the message needs to be communicated; b) where are these individuals most likely to need to go; c) how can the benefits of public transportation best be communicated to motivate the target market to use it? This paper will show that the best way for a city to promote public transportation is to keep prices low, make access points as convenient as possible, and keep the public transport system safe and clean so that it appeals to all people no matter their demographic.
Significance of the Problem
The problem is significant because of the negative outcomes that can be avoided were public transportation to be utilized more thoroughly by the populace of a city. To preserve the health of the atmosphere by cutting down on smog, people should use public transportation as it is essentially like an enormous car pool operation that allows individuals to get where they need to go without having to drive their on their own. It prevents congestion and allows traffic to flow more smoothly into, through and out of a city (Parry, 2002). It also enables people who work in the city to get to their jobs....
Were public transportation not available, pollution would be worse and the air would likely be unfit to breathe (Woodcock et al., 2009). Traffic would be congested at busy times and stress levels of individuals would increase (Sibinga et al., 2011). However, if people are not moved to use public transportation either because they do not feel safe using it or they are turned off by the lack of cleanliness or it simply costs too much, then none of these negative outcomes can be avoided. Therefore, in order to prevent these outcomes, public transportation has to be promoted more effectively, and that means it has to be maintained efficiently and offered at a low cost to commuters.
Recommendation to Solve the Problem: Why Cost, Cleanliness and Safety Matter
The best way to promote something is to let the product or service speaks for itself—and a service best speaks for itself when it is timely, efficient, effective and trustworthy. For public transportation to be promoted, it has to first offer value to the commuter at an affordable rate that makes financial sense for the commuter. The commuter is going to be thinking of how much he is saving by commuting via public transportation each month—and to that end, a subscription service is one of the best ways to lock in low rates month to month, as Thogersen (2009) points out. Cost is always going to be the most effective way of promotion because it puts the value of public transportation in monetary terms that every citizen can understand. If it saves one’s wallet, one is more likely to see the value in it. Thus, a promotion of public transportation should focus on the savings it can bring to one’s budget by cutting down on gas expenses, parking expenses and car expenses. This would be the most strategic way to promote public transportation because not everyone is going to…
