EDMONTON – A new text service for Edmonton bus schedules is being hailed as a hit after drawing more than three million messages in its first year.
“In the first month we projected about 10,000 bus schedules sent by text and got about 100,000,” says Nathan Walters, Edmonton Transit System’s strategic marketing supervisor.
“It turned out to be a real success story, to say the least.”
The service allows passengers to text the identification number of any stop to 31100 and receive an instant reply showing when buses are slated to arrive for about the next hour.
With the initial rush, the final results for 2011 came in slightly higher than the 2.9 million messages projected, but Walters expects it will grow to 4.9 million messages this year.
He only knows two or three other transit systems in Canada with a similar setup.
Without it, some passengers might be left out in the cold, he says.
“They may in the comfort of their home look up the information on the Trip Planner (website), walk out and just miss their bus, and not know when the next one would arrive.”
The rise in texting has led to a drop in calls to BusLink, an automated 24-hour telephone line for transit information.
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That service had almost 2.8 million calls for the first nine months of 2011, down about 340,000 calls from the same period the year before, Walters says.
He won’t disclose the cost of the text service, citing contract confidentiality with the provider, but says the price is less than two cents for each message.
That’s far less than contacting a 311 operator, which costs about $5 a call. Advertising that will be attached to all messages starting next month should see the service turn a profit by 2013, Walters says.
“We really want to show the barriers to riding transit are quite low, that we’re quite convenient … that we have services and products that can match everyone’s needs.”
Last May, ETS moved further into social media by launching a Facebook page with news and promotions, which Walters hopes will build customer loyalty.
The page was used to recruit 10 to 15 people to be extras in a music video shot on a bus last August with local singer Colleen Brown, he says.
“We want to leverage Facebook as a way to show to our commuters that they have a variety of different destinations and opportunities using transit.”
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