The Route is Only Half the Story

Before we go any further, a reminder to vote:

Election Day is November 3! Whatever your position on the issues, make sure your voice is heard and your ballot counts.

• Check or update your registration: Go to VoteWA.gov.
• Register online or by mail by Oct. 26: That’s the last day for both. Mailed forms must arrive by then.
• Register in person after that: You can still register at the Pierce County Elections office in Tacoma until 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
• Return your ballot on time: It must be postmarked by Nov. 3 or placed in an official drop box by 8 p.m. that night.

World Building Around Election Day

Transit planners speak a language all their own. There are vehicle types, wheels, routes, frequency corridors, paratransit eligibility, age eligibility, weekdays, weekends and factors hard to digest for the everyday resident, especially if they don’t take transit on a daily basis. It’s a surgically precise, important lexicon, and to most people it sounds like a weather report from another planet. We say this with love. Some of our favorite people are transit experts.

That gap between planner jargon and everyday language was the starting point for Pierce Transit’s Proposition 1. On Nov. 3, voters in the Pierce Transit service area will decide on a measure that would raise the agency’s tax rate from 0.6% to 0.9% to maintain and improve local bus service. Even that sentence travels on a direct route in one ear and out the other.

The brand identity, “More Within Reach,” took big ideas into bite-sized stories — detailed enough to be accurate and compelling. With a new logo, website (ballot.PierceTransit.org) and voter mailer, JayRay’s collaboration with Pierce Transit reached hundreds of thousands of eyeballs.

Start with what the bus gets you to.

The headline numbers are big. They include a 47% increase in local transit service, four new routes and more frequent buses on 86% of routes. To a planner, those figures are thrilling. To residents, they’re abstract.

Ask a rider what better transit would mean, though, and the answers get hyper specific. Getting home from class. Making an afternoon work shift without watching the clock. Catching a grandkid’s game before the whistle blows. The messaging started there and drove back to the service details.

A brand built on “more.”

Pierce Transit already had an existing promise: “More People. More Places. More Often.” “More Within Reach” builds on that familiar phrase, so the project arrived with recognition already attached. “Within Reach” shifts the focus from the system to the rider and to how getting around the neighborhood would change depending on the outcome of the vote.

What comes within reach is a job, a class, a medical appointment or a summer evening on the waterfront. The bus (or trolley!) is how you get there.

The logo carries the same idea visually. Bright route-line colors run through bold lettering, like lines on a transit map, and it sits comfortably next to the Pierce Transit logo.

Translate the plan into a day-in-the-life.

The heart of the collateral is the illustration of what this means (three pennies for every $10 purchase) and four Pierce Transit rider profiles that chronicle how one would move through the world based on the passage of Prop 1.

• Carlos, a healthcare worker in Lakewood: In planning terms, Route 3 vehicles and frequency would change, but that means very little to a voter who doesn’t take transit, or even a voter who does take transit. For Carlos, that means a bus every 15 to 20 minutes until midnight. An afternoon shift would no longer come with a worry about getting home — the last piece is what sticks.
• JP, a parent and caregiver in Milton: On paper, it’s a change to Route 501. In JP’s week, waits get cut in half every day. Work and school pickup finally fit in the same day. Again, the last detail is what people remember.
• Tricia, a Running Start student in Northeast Tacoma: A new route, Route 63, would serve her neighborhood. She’d stop needing rides from family and classmates to get home after class.
• Kevin, 65, a rider with a disability in Puyallup: The plan lists fare-free rides for seniors, expanded paratransit and a new weekday route. For Kevin, it adds up to getting to his grandson’s game on time. For someone unfamiliar with the inner workings of the transit system, the promise of being present for a child’s core memory is more compelling than a new route. Especially when you have less than 5 seconds to land the message.

Whether you fit into one of these rider profiles or you have a loved one that does, these rider profiles help educate voters on the impact of the proposition.

Put it on a map people recognize.

Inside the mailer, a fun illustrative map of the Pierce Transit service area pins each rider to their own neighborhood, with routes running between them. Readers find their own corner of the county almost instantly and start picturing their own commute.

The website carries the stories further. Its plan pages are organized as “More Places,” “Shorter Waits,” “More Connections” and “More Options.”

What comes within reach is a job, a class, a medical appointment or a summer evening on the waterfront.

What we’d tell anyone with a technical story to tell:

1. Translate the plan into someone’s daily universe. A person’s routine explains a policy faster than a spec sheet can.
2. Let a familiar word do the heavy lifting. Building on language people already know earns recognition from the start.
3. Show it somewhere people know. A map of their own neighborhood helps readers place themselves inside the story.