It's the $27,000 question: Will people become regular bus riders if you mail them free bus passes and teach them about transit?
Seeking an answer is a neighborhood nonprofit organization with a playful name that sounds like a utility:
Linden Hills Power and Light.
The name is "just a joke," says executive director Felicity Britton. It's meant to suggest empowering or enlightening the Linden Hills neighborhood on environmental issues.
The group has received one of
eight grants for fighting climate change from the City of Minneapolis, a grant program now in its third year and funded by the federal Recovery Act.
Linden Hills Power and Light's idea is to promote transit ridership with a direct mail campaign to residents of the Linden Hills neighborhood in Minneapolis' far southwestern corner.
About 2,000 lucky residents will receive free Metro Transit bus passes in the mail, each with enough stored value for one round trip fare, explains Linden Hills Power and Light executive director Felicity Britton.
Metro Transit can track how many of the cards get redeemed, and which get more value added--an indication that a rider has become a regular.
Linden Hills is a bit below-average for bus-ridership, Britton says, with about 6 percent of residents riding regularly. Boosting that by 1 or 2 percent would mean 200 new regular riders.
The neighborhood is ahead of the curve in other environmental respects, including a pilot program for curbside compost pickups. (The rest of the city is set to have the service by the end of 2012.)
Besides buying bus passes and postage, the group plans a transit education program for the neighborhood. The effort is supported with $10,000 in federal funds plus more than $17,000 in locally raised matching funds and in-kind donations.
"We're calling it 'Taking the bus with training wheels,'" says Britton.
Source: Felicity Britton, Linden Hills Power and Light
Writer: Chris Steller