BART's campaign to educate the Bay Area about Measure RR bond funds at work

Target Audience: Voters in the 3 county Bay Area Rapid Transit District, our riders, elected officials and the entire Bay Area region.

Strategy Objective:BART utilized multiple platforms to promote various infrastructure improvement projects. Our objective was to promote overall awareness of RR work getting underway and highlight the oversight in place to ensure the projects are on time and on budget. -Frequent social media engagement -YouTube videos circulated to local media outlets highlighting our projects -10 news articles/blog postings on BART.gov -Email blasts -A comprehensive Measure RR Annual Report. To launch the report, we did an engaging Twitter thread and Instagram Story to promote the report -Branded project signs and templates to provide a consistent look -50 "We're Rebuilding" community presentations by our Government and Community Relations team -Multiple media events and press releases

Situation Challenge: The Bay Area voters gave BART an important vote of confidence when they approved Measure RR in November of 2016. The measure provides $3.5 billion for long overdue infrastructure projects necessary to keep BART in service. Now that BART is moving forward with many of these projects it's necessary to demonstrate to Bay Area voters that their money is being put to effective use. Our goal is to not only provide public transparency by showing that voter-approved bond money is being spent in a responsible way but that the work is benefiting our riders by increasing the reliability and overall functionality of BART. The bond alone doesn't fund our entire capital need and at some point, we will need to return to the voters while also continuously seeking local, state, and federal funds.

Results Impact: -Overall community awareness and engagement. -Positive media coverage. -Articles posted on BART.gov about RR funded work have generated more than 185,000 page views on BART.gov. -Two YouTube videos highlighting recent track work have attracted nearly 10,000 views with much more on Facebook and Twitter. The media also used the video on their broadcasts and websites. -Extensive engagement on social media, which provides us valuable opportunities to further explain RR and gives us a platform to promote BART's improving on-time performance rate, which is in part the result of our increased reliability.

Why Submit: The Measure RR-funded effort to build a Better BART is the most important initiative that BART has undertaken in decades. RR-funded work will be happening over the next 20 years so maintaining the public's trust in our efforts is essential. By frequently engaging with the public in a variety of ways we have been able to demonstrate that real progress is occurring. This will be especially important since RR only funds a portion of our long-term capital needs and more public support will be necessary to fully modernize BART.