BART Free Field Trips

Target Audience: K-12 teachers and students who want to take a field trip to the SF Exploratorium world-famous, hands-on science museum.

Strategy Objective:The objectives were to provide Bay Area K-12 teachers free transport and admission to the Exploratorium at no cost and increase BART midday ridership at no cost to BART. A partnership agreement between BART and the Exploratorium, along with grant funding, made this possible. The parties promoted the offer through digital advertising, email blasts and post card mailings targeted to Bay Area schools, parents, and teachers. The offer included free admission to the museum and free BART tickets to students, teachers and chaperones. A pilot-program ran October 2017-January 2018 with much success prompting a second run in Spring 2018. In exchange for co-branding the program with "The Exploratorium is BARTable" message and promoting BART as the best way to get to the Exploratorium, BART provid

Situation Challenge: BART has lots of extra capacity to carry riders during midday periods. At the same time, there are unmet needs to transport K-12 school children from around the Bay Area to field trip destinations during the middle of the day. Moreover, many schools, teachers, and families are unable to afford the cost of transportation and museum admission. This program fills that gap by providing an opportunity for teachers and students, a high percentage from Title 1 schools, to ride public transportation and visit the Exploratorium.

Results Impact: Since November of 2017, 31,000 students, teachers and chaperones have participated in the program, and there are an additional 62,000 field trip reservations through the remainder of the current school year.

Why Submit: Through this exciting program, BART gained a phenomenal local non-profit partner (the Exploratorium), gained valuable media exposure, obtained goodwill from children, teachers and parents, secured $182,000 in new fare revenue, and is engaging a new generation of riders.