A debate seems to be brewing over whether Sound Transit should be using public tax dollars to market their services to students in the classroom.
According to the Seattle Times, the agency is looking for consultants to help create educational outreach programs about the agency’s services for kindergarten through 12th grade. It also wants the consultants to provide teacher training and outreach.
While Sound Transit spokesperson Geoff Patrick defended the idea as “good business practice,” it’s being criticized by others such as the Washington Policy Center and the Sound Politics blog as an agenda-promoting tactic.
“Sound Transit taxes are supposed to be used to build a regional mass-transit system, not to groom children as young as 5 to use a particular government service,” says Mike Ennis, WPC transportation analyst.
Officials haven’t yet decided what a K-12 program might cost. The initial short-term contract, to create a curriculum, would be less than $200,000, followed perhaps by a larger deal to do the actual outreach. Proposals are due May 10.
Sound Transit has a $1.1 billion budget this year to build, operate and administer lines in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. The communications department’s share is $7.55 million, for goals that include demystifying “transit by involving youth in a three-year, K-12 initiative.”
In case anybody is wondering, Sound Transit has been inside schools before, to teach students the importance of staying away from Link tracks. Remember this ad? Plus with its big budgets for marketing campaigns, Sound Transit works to change public opinion almost every day. But do kids really need to have public transit “demystified” for them? I mean, there’s a bus/train and it takes you places—how hard is that to figure out? More important, should taxpayer money be used for this demystification? Taxpayers, whaddya say?
or we could just let untrained kids run wild on the bus, not going to the bathroom before boarding, and cutting their toenails in public.
… yeah, I think maybe this is necessary.
Defund the Tunnel of Doom instead.
You mean teach children that public transit is a good thing?!?!? If our children don’t place value in driving around in SOV the TERRORISTS will WIN!!!!
Besides, if our children are taught transit is good then we will lose a generation of voters who hold public transit as a contemptable idea!!
Sound Transit has the funding and the delegated authority. It’s so far within their purview it’s just fucking ridiculous those fundy assholes at WPC and the Sharkansky gang would raise a fuss.
I’m pretty sure it’s money down the drain, yes – nobody will ever, ever be educated or influenced by an educational website or school materials. But it’s completely within their ambit to try if they wish.
Seems reasonable. Like any business or service they need to promote themselves right? Bringing in future customers is an extensively used technique in the free market, why not here? If you want to keep your public transit system going you need to have ongoing ridership.
If our kids can’t figure out what a bus is and how to use it without a dedicated outreach program then we really are fucked.
So I guess driver’s ed classes are also an unreasonable use of public money to promote the use of a particular government service?
The kids sitting in that classroom are already being compelled to use a government service.
Considering that by the time most of these kids graduate they’re not going to be able to earn enough at their below minimum-wage service sector jobs to own a car, let alone afford to put gas in it when it hits $10.00 a gallon, I’d say, yeah, teaching them about how to use whatever public transportation still remains in 2020 is probably a good thing.
It’s either that or start teaching them about subsistence farming and the economic benefits of the landholder-serf relationship…
If GM or Ford had a classroom program promoting the “life-saving and environmental benefits of the internal combustion engine” no one would bat a fucking eye. Corporate America is in our schools already, Sound Transit is a guvmint agency working with… another guvmint agency, in this case, SPS..
If you’re that fucking opposed, vote with your feet and keep your kid home that day, spend that day VILIFYING the ObamaBus, Sound Transit, whatever.
Riding the bus gives kids a certain amount of autonomy and self-reliance, right, why should we teach that?
Sounds like a routine marketing program. Just another of the normal business practices that don’t raise an eyebrow from customers or shareholders when private industry does them*, but in the public sector are enough to start World War III.
*Face it, you as a consumer are the one paying for the private sector’s NASCAR sponsorships, the climate-change denial funding, the bogus charities, and the lobbyists.
Kids should be left alone to their own innate desires to run across the tracks in the bus tunnel, pull the alarms, and jump down from the very top step onto the ground.
Cause safety – well, that’s not important.
Right?
6 FTW!!!
Keeping teens from driving will save lives.
Why stop with K-12 students? Maybe if more people knew how to us it they would. Then they would get the money for new lines would be more accessible.
Cars are expensive and dirty. Everyone deserves to know, and have, the alternatives.
This region is at least 40 years behind where it needs to be in this department. Catching up will be more expensive than doing it right in the first place would have been, so lets catch up quick.
In called marketing, not much different from companies offering discounts for schools and students. Its meant to introduce them to a product at an early age, so that they grow up using it.
Riding the bus or train one time will pretty much teach you everything that can possibly be taught about the mechanics of it all. Of course for etiquette-related issues we’ll have to rely on the old system of getting yelled at by other passengers.
Don’t be shy fellow commuters, that dude’s backpack is WAY too big to be on his back still—this ain’t the mall, a simple “pardon me” is fair warning to people standing on the right side of the escalator.
Standing of the LEFT, I meant to write. Right side good, left side gets trampled.
And while I’m here again, if you’re even considering holding on to both handrails like a Goddamn orange-tang while standing in a moving bus/train, ask yourself “am I looking to get pantsed?”
Yes, the kids had better learn how to hide their iPods from muggers on metro. It’ll be valuable training for dealing with the more subtle pick pockets at Les Halles.
Besides, what better way to make kids hate transit than make them through a class about it. I say go for it.
I like how you folks refer to Metro as a ‘business’.
@18, we’re not referring to Metro as a business, We’re comparing a metro program to a standard business practice.
yeah – i’d hate for kids to be exposed to riding public supported busses… er… if they are not yellow.
Um, let’s not forget about the elephant in that classroom:
“Kids, not all public transit systems are full of black men waiting to rape white girls.“
That’s the “demystifying” that they are trying to accomplish, and that misconception is of the main reasons transit in this area is treated like a bastard child. Unless it is a fancy, commuter only bus, white folks from the Eastside will not use it out of fear. If you’ve ridden enough public transit, you have seen that fear in action.
Slog commenters (almost all of them) have given me such a boner (and a giggle).
I love how these morons argue “not to groom children as young as 5 to use a particular government service.”
So, don’t teach kids to call 9-1-1 or the police if someone is breaking into their house or if a family member is abusing them–heavens, we wouldn’t want to “groom” them to use that particular government service–just have them call some private-sector vigilantes instead!
Don’t teach them to call the fire department if their house is on fire–just have them put out the fire themselves with old-fashioned American individual effort!
Also, the use of the word “groom” and the phrase “groom children as young as five” sure looks like a sick attempt to identify promotion of public transit with sexually predatory behavior(!)
As a child of the suburbs, I never rode in anything other than a school bus and my family’s cars. I had no clue how public transportation worked until Metro brought a big ol’ articulated bus to our school parking lot and took all us kids for a spin through the neighborhood. I learned that you have to pay, what a transfer means, and how to read the bus schedule (none of which you have to do when the school bus picks you up). I also learned good ridership (which some of you beer swilling, loud music listening, whole seat hogging jerkoffs could still stand to learn) and how to be safe on the bus if I was riding alone (sit up by the bus driver and tell him or her where I was trying to get to). This was all in the early 80’s when it was considered just a benign educational thing about how to be a person (like learning how to use the card catalog at the library or tie your own shoes) rather than an indoctrination of our children into the worship of the evil government.
And sure, this stuff is easy if you’ve grown up doing it, but if your only exposure to public transportation as a child is the carpool to little league practice, a little help with understanding how not to be assaulted by a drunken bum or left on the side of the road because your transfer’s expired is pretty reasonable.
gefion, you must have grown up in the King county suburbs. We got nothing like that in Lynnwood when I was a kid.
I expect some youth would want to use transit, but their parents don’t know how to use it. If the kids can show their parents they know how to use it, that could help.
And why wouldn’t we want to teach kids some features of our system:
1. How to safely put a bike on and take a bike off–not easy the first time.
2. How the ORCA card works, for example, remembering to tap in both on the way in and the way out of light rail.
3. For buses that go through downtown Seattle, paying when you enter on the way into town, and paying when you exit on the way out, except for after hours.
4. Where the free ride zone is.
Etc., etc.
Just like kids should learn how to balance a checkbook, learning to ride transit is a practical life skill. Who else is going to teach it? Private transit schools? Parents who don’t use transit?
@26 Maybe we can have these kids teach us how to use Metro?
One person shot aboard Metro bus in Kent
April 20th, 2011
One person was shot Wednesday during a fight aboard a King County Metro Transit bus in Kent, a Metro spokeswoman said.
Two people, believed to be teenagers, were fighting aboard a Route 169 bus in the 10800 block of Southeast 204th Street before the shooting. The gunman then pointed the gun at the bus driver and demanded the door be opened. He fled, according to Metro.
The shooting was reported just after 6 p.m. No one else was injured, spokeswoman Rochelle Ogershok said.
There was no word yet on the wounded teen’s condition.
People – public agencies have “outreach” budgets. They include things like the silly sound transit booth at your local street fair / farmer’s market, etc. This is the same budget. They’re just choosing to spend it this way instead of on farmer’s market booths filled with handouts destined for the recycling bin. I’m in. And actually, kids asking parents to take them to Pike Place Market or some similar kid-friendly destination downtown on the train will get some people riding it who wouldn’t otherwise. Better than more handouts at the farmer’s market.
I used public bus transit every school day when I was a kid. So nostalgic for the bright yellow bus…