MetroRiderLA

A reader tipped us off on Foothill Transit’s hip new guide book for riders. You can check out pix and a quick review of the book on Heather’s blog, With These Hands.

The cover of the “Bus Book” injects some green into Foothill’s usual blue and white color palette, no doubt to capitalize on the eco-sustainable-green movement that has been sweeping the globe. Wavy green flourishes follow the path of a Foothill Transit bus like vines, and flowers, birds, and lush fields of grass are seemingly emitted from the exhaust. The ecological theme continues inside the booklet with the slogan “Fresh Air, Fresh Fares” used to highlight Foothill’s fare tables. According to Heather, the bulk of the book, the schedules, lack the flair of the cover, but still retains a few elements of green iconography.

I guess it’s not surprising that some of the best aspects of our region’s transit agencies are their graphic design and promotional departments, given the creative nature of Southern California. I’ve long said Metro’s designers have created a canon of work that is more often than not far better than the service it promotes. And although Foothill Transit’s Silver Streak might look like it belongs in space rather than the streets of SoCal, the graphics team definitely hit the right chord with this Bus Book.  Unfortunately, like so much transit design and promotion, for the most part it’s only preaching to the choir.

While Metro awarded Miss Traffic her tiara and t-shirt, San Bernardino County’s largest transit operator, Omnitrans, announced the winners of its D.I.Y. TV Student TV Commercial Contest earlier this month. The contest, which had local high school students competing to create a commercial promoting Omnitrans, had significantly higher stakes than Metro’s Miss Traffic. A grand prize package of $1,000 cash, a new laptop computer, a year of free bus rides, and the honor of having the winning commercial played on local television and in local movie theaters surely motivated these Inland Empire kids to come up with creative ways to promote something most teenagers might dread, riding the bus.

The online votes were tallied and the grand prize went to Trevor Stevens of Redland High School for his spot, “Save Gas Use A Pass“. The commercial pits transit user against car driver in a turtle-and-the-hare race, where the bus rider comes out victorious because high gas prices and an empty wallet stop the car driver in his tracks. Trevor, who according to the Inland Empire newspaper The Sun has plans to embark in a career in TV and film production, chose to focus on the money savings that come from riding public transit because “the biggest issue for students right now is the price of gas”.

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The Miss Traffic Saga has finally come to a close. The videos were posted, the people watched, and the votes have been tallied. Your second runner-up is the sassy Sharon Butler, with 428 votes. Your first runner-up is the spunky Roz Brown, who garnered 445 votes. And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

With an astounding 1,867 votes, your very own Miss Traffic…

Stefanie Perez!!!

The little latina that could, did, and she did it with flying colors. Picking up more votes than Roz and Sharon combined times two, the people of Los Angeles had no doubt who they wanted to represent their Metro system. What is it about Stefanie that makes her the obvious choice for Miss Traffic? Is it her mysterious smile? Her dry wit? Her undeniable love of missing traffic with Metro? Or maybe it’s a combination of all those things and more… that je ne c’est sais quoi that defines all women who capture our hearts and minds.

It’s not known whether Stefanie has received her prize package yet, but I know a lot of ladies and gentlemen (maybe even yours truly) who are very jealous. It’s not every day you get a free Metro t-shirt and props from an advertising photo shoot.

It seems to me that the Miss Traffic Contest was a rousing success. In a period of 6 days since the finalists were announced, 2,270 votes were cast, more than half of them for Stefanie. In contrast, Metro’s highly publicized Imagine campaign has a poll that has only received 708 votes since March 12th. And the Imagine blog has a poll that has only received 77 votes in the same time period. I guess the old adage is true: sex sells.

Things aren’t that sexy over in Austin, where you may recall they are holding a similar contest. But, a guy named Chris Stangland has submitted a video that might give Stefanie a run for the money if Miss Traffic goes national. Imagine what Chris could do if he was competing for a Metro t-shirt instead of a stupid iPhone and $500 cash.

I know that as MetroRider’s you’ve been waiting with bated breath to find out who your new Miss Traffic is going to be. Well, today Metro proudly announced the finalists in the much mocked loved Miss Traffic Contest. The finalists are featured on a page on Metro’s new Interactive website. Rather unfortunately, no men made the final cut, and it’s down to three lovely ladies who are fighting for your vote to crown them the next Miss Traffic. Let’s take a closer look at our contestants:

• Roz Brown: She’s been going Metro for over 20 years and raised a child on Metro. She’s also got a rad side ponytail.
• Sharon Butler: She likes the peace and quiet the Metro offers. The zen candidate. Sassy.
• Stefanie Perez: Looks 10 years younger thanks to Metro. Her voice makes her sound even younger than that.

I voted for my girl Miss Sharon Butler, I like her style and she’s not afraid to sass if need be. Unfortunately, it seems that the internet has pretty much chosen baby-faced Stefanie, because with 513 votes so far, she’s burying the other contestants. But the results aren’t written in stone, and there’s still six more days to vote! That is unless this contest is rigged. Diebold!!!!

Good luck girls, but remember, there can only be one winner. Budgetary constraints ($60 million going to fare gates) prevent Metro from providing each of these ladies with their own Metro t-shirt.

Ahh, the audacity of hope… for a car-free future.

Last week, Metro released to the public their Draft Long Range Transportation Plan. The LRTP is a document that looks to assess and address the transportation needs of the Los Angeles area for the next 25 years.  A quarter of a century is a pretty big number, it’s hard to say if I’ll still be blogging when I’m 52, but if I am I’ll be able to link back to this post and review how the plan was implemented.

The next 40 days are crucial for the next 25 years, since Metro is allowing public comment on their plan until April 25th.   In order to encourage people to get involved, Metro has launched the Barrack Obama inspired “Imagine” campaign, in which Metro asks people to imagine a better future.  Yes we can!

The Imagine campaign may be Metro’s best marketing campaign yet.  It’s certainly the most complete.  The LRTP document[PDF] itself is beautifully designed, with inspiring photography that spans pages and equally inspiring copy.  The website is bold, colorful, easy to navigate, and interactive.  There’s even what I believe to be a Metro first… a blog! The blog even accepts comments.  There’s also a full on advertising assault, with billboards and posters promoting the Imagine campaign popping up all over the city.

Such audacity!

Join the conversation about the Long Range Transportation Plan in the new MetroRiderLA Forum.

Metro has officially launched the first phase of what it calls its “interactive video wall”, or Metro Interactive. Currently the site features various videos intended to “help customers and visitors more easily navigate Los Angeles”. It is also the new home of Metro Board Chair Pam O’Connor’s infamous online chats. Future plans for the site include: blogs, polls, user uploads, and live streaming video. Metro views Metro Interactive as “a tool to help us reach out to our customers”. Let’s see how phase one fares with this discerning customer.

First Impressions

Thankfully, Metro decided to go with a unique domain (or at least a subdomain) with Metro Interactive. Unlike Miss Traffic, which was hidden three directories deep in the Metro site, Metro Interactive can be reach by simply typing multimedia.metro.net into your web browser. Doing so will lead you to a site with the clean visual design that has been successfully standardized throughout Metro. Bold colors and imagery on a clean grid are complimented with the serious but friendly Scala Sans font. The header pays homage to the silhouettes of th now iconic iPod advertisements, portraying an image of a person holding a video camera. The site seems a little barren, with a sizable chunk of empty space in the top right corner, but keep in mind that this is the first-phase. Plus, less-is-more is always a good philosophy when it comes to design. One strange visual flaw is an unnecessarily low resolution Metro logo at the top of the page.

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