Laketran How to Ride the Bus Video (English & Spanish versions)

Target Audience: Laketran serves Lake County, Ohio a suburban community 30 miles east of Cleveland, where the majority of our population is auto-dependent. We know that riding the bus can be intimidating and not everyone is comfortable reading bus schedules, planning their trip, or using the farebox, so Laketran offers Travel Training to help familiarize new customers to transit. The target audience for this video was new or potential customers interested in how to ride public transit, as well as caregivers, teachers or case managers who work with clients in need of transportation. Recently, Laketran translated the video into Spanish to bring awareness of our transit services to our growing Hispanic community.

Strategy Objective:There were four objectives of this video: - Promote Laketran's Travel Training program - Build confidence and teach skills to improve customer's the transit experience - Build awareness of Laketran's services to the Hispanic community - Partner with area regional transit authorities to reduce the cost of video production

Situation Challenge: This video was created to promote Laketran's Travel Training program and educate new and current customers about Laketran's newly launched Rider Tools that include a mobile app, trip planner, real-time arrival and next bus departure texting program. In 2018, Laketran produced a Spanish version of the video to grow awareness among a small, but growing Hispanic population that makes up about 5% of our county demographics.

Results Impact: In the past year, Laketran's How to Ride the Bus has been viewed 30,000 times (20% viewed Hispanic version). After 12 month of ridership decline, Laketran has now reversed the Local Route ridership trend the last six months. Local Route fare revenue has also increased 31% in 2018, in the first 8 months of the year. Even more significant, Laketran's has seen a large increase in Travel Training opportunities and increased the number of program participants by 34%. To reduce costs of this project, Laketran partner with two other transit system (SARTA & PARTA) to create a generic How to Ride the Bus motion graphics video, then added branding elements to the final production for each agency. The total production cost was $15,000, with each transit agency only paying $5,000.

Why Submit: There are two reason why Laketran's video should win. #1 The motion graphic design gives the video a timeless look, that won't date. It has grown ridership, revenue, and awareness to Laketran's services and Travel Training program. The video is used in many special needs classrooms and by case management staff who need to share this information with students or clients. #2 The collaborative effort between three Ohio transit authorities: Laketran, PARTA, and SARTA saved each of us $10K in production costs . We worked together to create one video that can be branded for each agency and other Ohio transit systems have also used the generic video to re-brand it to make it their own. PARTA - https://youtu.be/_W3fzn1n0dY SARTA - https://youtu.be/x3pLF8IYWis