Think of it as a municipality-wide bus announcement system.
A request for proposals sent out Friday morning by Halifax asks for a communication and marketing strategy to help Halifax Transit inform the public of upcoming service changes caused by Moving Forward Together.
According to the RFP, the goal of the communication plan is to educate the public about route changes—and the reasons for those changes—as well as “promote positive change taking place across the network.”
All of that work will happen under a “single communications umbrella,” which HRM suggests could involve interactive elements and individualized marketing to try and help passengers understand how the bus system they travel is being modified.
So far the minor changes already implemented from MFT have been well received, says spokesperson Tiffany Chase, but communicating all the major upgrades planned for in the gargantuan transit document will be more challenging.
“When we have instances going forward when every route in the neighbourhood is changing, we want to increase our ability to help people understand how the changes affect them, and how their new trips would work,” writes Chase in an email.
Regional council approved the Moving Forward Together redesign in April, 2016. The expansive plan will alter or impact nearly every single bus route in the city over the next few years, though many of those changes will be minor adjustments to route maps and bus numbering.
While those tweaks aren’t as drastic as original plans to blow up HRM’s transit network and start over from scratch, Bedford–Wentworth councillor Tim Outhit says it’s still vital to communicate that info to the public.
“It is sort of nitty-gritty, down-in-the-weeds information that is very important to riders,” says Outhit. “I think it’s only fair to try and get the word out to people on something that impacts them.”
According to Chase, a “timely, effective” delivery of the communication strategy meant looking at external partners, instead of putting it all together in-house at city hall. The spokesperson says HRM’s corporate communications team will still be “closely involved in developing and delivering” the final work, though.
The successful bidder’s marketing strategy will be used on expected route changes happening later this year—pending council approval. A six-month pilot project rerouting Porters Lake express 370 to Mic Mac Mall begins in May, but most of the MFT’s adjustments will happen later in August and November of this year, and February, 2018.
Which route changes happen at which times is all still subject to change, says Chase, with some being tied to the completion of the Big Lift. The success of the outside communication strategy on route adjustments this year will be reviewed before HRM approves its use on the rest of MFT’s four-year implementation.
A separate exterior consultant’s report due back at the end of the year will look at further refinements to Moving Forward Together’s corridor routes changes, and will incorporate the upcoming Integrated Mobility Plan, commuter rail and real-time ridership into the transit strategy.
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This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2017.
There are big problems that take big money to fix. And then there are the stupid little ones. Like the fact that Metro Transit has two separate buses with one number. The 7. Why? There are an infinite number of numbers available. Just to be clear, the 7 Barrington and the 7 Robie are not one continuous route. If you get on the 7 Barrington, it will not at some point become the 7 Robie. A first-time rider would have no way of knowing this since all of the bus stop signs just say 7. So does the rider manual. This is an avoidable problem.
Um… There’s a 7 Robie and a 7 Gottingen Street it is the same bus the sign changes when it’s heading outbound to Robie and when it comes inbound it changes into the 7 Gottingen Street… There’s a few on the routes at any given time to provide the 20 minute service level. You must be confusing the 9 Barrington.
In other words, we’re going to pay a fortune…an absolute FORTUNE for some private company to handle the communication for executives at Metro Transit whos motto is “Risk avoidance at all cost…STATUS QUO at all cost…nobody knows better than us” is it?
The HRM/City of Halifax/Club Old KAKA (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days) really need to understand something : If transit is to succeed, it matters NOT the communication strategy, or how well they try to baffle us with bullshit. The only thing that matters is that the bus system works well and that people use it. Period! And that has become infinitely more important than ever before now that city council has turned the entire place over to developers who are creating a situation where getting around by car is becoming an exercise in significant frustration.
In order to achieve that, the whole system needs to be deleted and a new one put in place…so that you’re not taking 90 minutes or more to get from one end of this tiny little port town to the other. Period! And if that means showing the door to every executive at Halifax Transit because they refuse to cooperate, then do it! They should either get on board, or they absolutely should go because they’re simply causing too many problems with their stubborn top-down executive nonsense.
Oh and hey HRM..if you’re listening…here’s a clue – the train idea will fail completely unless you do as I suggested above…JUST SAYIN’. You can’t dump a bunch of people who are trying to get to work at a train station and expect them to actually GET to work that day with the current system. If you pretend that problem doesn’t exist you’ll find people simply will not use the train, no matter how hard they may have been crying for it in the past.
Better pull your socks up HRM!
They need a faster logo…