Increasing Ridership Through Partnerships BARTable and Exploratorium

1. Increasing RidershipThrough PartnershipsBARTable and Exploratorium APTA Marketing and Communications WorkshopFebruary 2018

2. Background • Each year, one of BART’s goals is to provide free field trips on BART to Bay Area schoolchildren. • Past sponsors have included American Express, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. • Challenges include finding a corporate underwriter to fund the trips and finding staff time to administer field trip reservations and distribution of letters authorizing free rides from BART’s Treasury Department.

3. BARTable + Exploratorium partnership • This year, however, BART was presented with an offer we couldn’t refuse! • The Exploratorium museum on SF’s waterfront, just a 10-minute walk from Embarcadero BART received funding to provide public transportation for schoolchildren to get to their Exploratorium field trips. • Encouraging schools to arrive by BART supports the Exploratorium’s message of easy access and sustainability (The Exploratorium is BARTable.) • Having schoolchildren and chaperones riding BART increases off-peak (midday) rides and gets kids familiar and comfortable with riding BART.

4. How did we do it? • The Exploratorium promoted the free BARTableField Trips through targeted digital ads aimed at K-12 teachers, on Facebook, their website, and in targeted email deployments to teachers in the 4 BARTable counties. • BART provided Exploratorium with media exposure in the BART system, to promote other initiatives (“After Dark”), highlighted the museum on a “BARTable Field Trips” web page and hosted online contests for Exploratorium tickets and merchandise. • All media was on a strict trade basis with the Exploratorium providing its deliverables at no cost to BART and vice versa. • Not only that…the Exploratorium agreed to purchase 25,500 tickets, $189K worth of BART tickets to provide the free rides for the field trippers and handle reservations and all other field trip logistics.

5. Outreach efforts

6. BART Usage Contra Costa County 1,680 • Over 25,500 students used BART to attend a field trip in the last four months. • We initially thought only schools within 1.5 mile radius would take advantage of the offer. It turns out schools were willing to take buses, or drive to BART stations. Alameda County 18,070 San Francisco County 2,403 San Mateo County 1,108 70 800 1 Number of tickets requested per school

7. How did we do? • Explo field trip attendance increased from 35,335 in Oct.-Jan. 2016 to 50,953 in Oct.-Jan. 2017, an increase of 44%. • Based on survey of 102 teachers post-field trip, 49% of field trips were teachers bringing classes for the first time. • 50% of field trips used BART/public transit in fall 2017, compared to only 25% in 2016. • The BARTable contest for Exploratorium tix had over 2,000 entries.

8. Teacher feedback • “This program was so fantastic. It made an otherwise impossible field trip possible for our students—many of whom have never been on BART, and some of whom have never been to San Francisco at all!”   • “Please keep this program. This is a life changing experience for all of us. Thank you for your generosity.” • “This program allowed me to bring over 400 7th graders to the Exploratorium. Most had never been and many had never ridden BART. This was a great experience, and I appreciate the opportunity!”

9. Where do we go from here? • Exploratorium seeking additional funding to continue the free access to field trips program and to conduct a study on field trip market potential. • BARTable and Exploratorium continuing partnership with co-promotion of this summer’s “Inflatable” exhibition and also After Dark (Thursday evenings 18+), which targets emerging adults (millennials).

10. Increasing RidershipThrough PartnershipsBARTable and Exploratorium Thank You David Martindale dmartindale@bart.gov Jason Davis jdavis@exploratorium.edu