Welcome to our 12 Days of Mobility series, which celebrates the launch of our Transportation Cost-Savings Calculator, a tool that measures the return of investment from transportation demand management (TDM) programs. Click the image to see the entire series.
Art imitates life, and when it comes to media, transportation is no exception.
The entertainment industry plays a major role in normalizing certain modes. The gaps in representation are apparent: transit isn’t depicted very often. This may be rooted in practical production reasons, yet it has ramifications for what becomes ingrained in pop culture – and what is considered the “default” mode in any given place.
On the TV show Mad Men, the characters are based in New York City and take commuter trains or taxis. One character is a born-and-bred New Yorker who doesn’t have a driver’s license – which poses a problem when the show begins branching into Los Angeles. It highlights the limits of a car-dominated system: in NYC, there is an abundance of options but in LA, you need to know how to drive – or be stranded.
And the public image of LA is one marked by cars and breezy beach drives – ignoring its substantial public transit network. There’s a reason why the directors of La La Land chose the opening scene as a traffic jam on a freeway and not on a packed subway car. (Of course, there are exceptions, like the multimodal 500 Days of Summer and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which takes place during the decline of the city’s once robust streetcar network.)
Transportation demand management (TDM) is all about influencing people’s behavior to ditch drive-alone car trips and instead carpool, bike, walk, or use public transportation. So how can TDM practitioners help people ditch the “default” mode in their region and use something more sustainable when so much of our pop culture is implicitly telling them the opposite?
You have to make sustainable transportation look awesome.
Take these great PSAs from LA Metro. They managed to make talking about rules really fun and even exciting.
There are many more examples, and many different strategies: location-based marketing or maybe a national transit campaign.
Until the entertainment industry catches up, we can at least work towards improving our cities in reality by helping people use all of their transportation options, not just driving alone.
Photo by Sam Kittner for Mobility Lab
The post Can transportation demand management beat TV? Maybe with good marketing appeared first on Mobility Lab.