Free Commute, Better Advertising?

Commuters on BART will get a free ride Thursday morning from 4 to 9 a.m. courtesy of a new advertising campaign by Internet savings bank ING DIRECT, according to an Oakland Tribune article.

ING DIRECT paid BART the equivalent fare for all 100,000 people who use the rail system in the morning -- somewhere in the vicinity of US$250,000. For the donation, ING gets to flood the stations with promotional materials and set up tables -- and receives the ensuing goodwill for providing commuters with a free ride. It's clearly a good deal for ING, although whether its more cost effective than TV or Internet advertising has yet to be seen.

But, given that we're here to talk about transit, is it a good deal for BART? They certainly think so:

"We're hoping this will be an opportunity for new riders to give BART a try," said Mike Healy, the transit agency spokesman. "We are providing longer trains to accommodate the extra people."

BART is trying to claw back to the go-go days of 2001 when 330,000 passengers rode the system every day. Before the SFO extension opened in the summer, the numbers stood at 290,000 and is now in the 315,000 range.

I'm inclined to agree, although not necessarily for the same reasons. It sounds very good in theory to say that if you give people a free ride once, they'll see how nice the commute is and keep coming back. In reality, however, few people are going to take the train on Thursday who didn't take in on Wednesday or who wouldn't take it on Friday. $2.55 (the average ticket price) is rarely the deciding factor on whether or not people take transit -- and if it is, one day on the train is not going to change that individual's mind.

What it does show, however, is innovative thinking. It shows different ways advertising can benefit transit and ways of thinking outside the box. What if they could find 52 companies interested in sponsoring such a day. Make all Friday morning commutes free. While $2.55 doesn't make people look twice, savings $130 annually on their commute does. And to be honest, it probably can't be worse than what WMATA is planning on doing to the DC metro.

And ING DIRECT has proven that their advertising methods work -- they've been one of the fastest expanding banks and have survived the internet crash. Perhaps this is a trend of the future. I, certainly, could deal with a free commute once a week.