As I pointed out a few days ago, only the dimmest form of thinking can convince itself, and has the audacity to try to convince others, that Sound Transit is spending too much money on marketing the virtues of light rail. This mind has no idea that it itself has been conditioned to think this dimly, this poorly. Indeed, the auto industry’s social engineering is so successful that this mind can really believe that it and it alone came to the conclusion that devoting a large part of one’s wages on parking, fueling, insuring, legalizing, maintaining, repairing a massive machine that spends almost all of its time not moving at all is as normal as putting shoes on your feet or food on your plate.
This is what Sound Transit is up against. This kind of conditioning (if not social hypnotism). In fact, if your mind’s thinking penetrates the form of a driver a car it will reveal to you something like a hypnotized man having sex with a chair. It really makes as much sense as that.
But to be fair, Sound Transit’s marketing is not even saying: Get out of your car. It’s saying this, and this alone: There is an alternative. Americans are supposed to love choices. Well, here is one more: Link. It’s fast, it’s reliable, and it’s very cheap.
With all of this in mind, here are the hard facts that Sound Transit’s marketing team faces:
• Of 2.37 million regular commuters in the region, only 21 percent use public transit as their primary or secondary means of commuting.
• Of the 79 percent of the commuters not using public transit, 64 percent (1.5 million) have never even considered using public transit.
• The largest barriers to transit use are these perceptions: Transit doesn’t provide the flexibility or freedom that cars do. It takes longer to travel by transit than driving. Transit is confusing to use.
This is important information, and Sound Transit must make every effort to get it out. Remember, no public transportation agency has advertised its services during a Super Bowl.
Note: There’s a reference to Nabokov in this post, but I will not say where it is.
