Chestnut Hill Local, Philadelphia, PA 4/17/24
A marketing campaign for transit
The coalition of Northwest Philadelphia civic groups and institutional organizations working to keep SEPTA’s regional train lines open is now planning a new tactic: a $40,000 “community marketing” campaign to make trains “cool” again.
“What we’re trying to do is to jump-start a virtuous cycle, in which more people riding can lead to more frequent trains, and more frequent trains then lead to more people riding,” said Ann Dicker, a Mt. Airy leader of the Save the Train coalition.
“So we’ll be getting out to advocate that people ride the train and the buses more,” she said. “We know that to get revenues back to where they need to be to help close the deficit, ridership needs to go up both in the short and the long term.”
