The case for rider joy

When was the last time you felt joy while taking transit? Does transit – whether it’s your local Metro station, bus stop, or bikeshare station – make you feel connected with the people and places around you?

Not everyone immediately associates joy with transit: it’s more common in both daily conversation and in the media to talk about the daily practical challenges of using it, and the bigger-picture challenges confronting our regional transit system.

But cultivating rider joy can be part of a viable strategy to build a culture of transit ridership, and political support for a more people-centered Washington region. Think of it as a soft-power approach to transit politics that relies less on transit’s functionality and functionalism, and more on its ability to add social value.

What a pro-joy system looks like

I have experienced genuine joy while riding transit. Having grown up just outside of Tokyo, reliable, frequent service of trains and buses was a given, even in my suburban (by Japanese standards) hometown, Fujisawa City. I liked being able to go to school, run errands, and visit friends and family in my city safely and independently from the age of seven, even if I took it for granted at the time.

Transit is a part of the popular culture in much of Japan, and I remember my classmates in elementary school citing “train conductor” and “bus driver” as dream careers. These are professions we look up to because they connect us to each other and add to the cohesiveness of our communities.

When learning about our city in social studies class, our local train stations and bus stops served as symbolic anchors of neighborhoods. They were landmarks that helped us navigate our community and shaped our local identities.

Transit agencies in Japan regularly launch campaigns to excite riders. Whether it’s a system-wide scavenger hunt to promote exploration of the system and neighborhoods or inviting riders to submit lyrics for a train agency theme song, transit becomes more than just a mode of transportation. I participated in the Tokyo Metro scavenger hunt last winter and I also aspired to become a “singer-songwriter” when I was 9 by participating in the lyric contest for my local agency’s song competition (Tragically, my lyrics weren’t chosen, but I got a nice letter thanking me for my participation and received two day passes as conciliation!).

Through these initiatives, transit becomes part of the local culture, shaped by riders, and, in turn, shapes riders’ relationships with their city and the people who live in it.

How did transit reach that point in my hometown? Many things had to be done right over time, but here are my observations that could be applied in our own context in the Washington region.

Each station is imbued with the character of the neighborhood it was situated in, and, in turn, the neighborhood’s character was shaped by each station. Whether it’s highlighting local cuisine, local folklore, natural beauty, or history, there’s so much to show off in the system’s advertising and architecture.

There was a sense of pride in my local transit system, the Enoden, because riders, transit agencies, government, community organizations, and businesses worked together to cultivate a feeling of collective ownership over the system. There is Enoden-themed merchandise, a cozy atmosphere in the stations and the trains, and a popular association between important destinations like hospitals, schools, and tourist sites and the transit system.

The Enoden is part of the local resident and tourist experience, not just a way to get around. We didn’t view it only as a way to get to work (in fact, tourists flocked to our city just to ride the train). My local train line connected me to two cities, relatives, the beach, and school. Oh, and did I mention, it regularly ran with only two small train cars and a small fleet of buses? It was that small of an operation! And yet, even as a small, mostly single-track line, it packed a big punch shaping the identity of the city and region.

Rider joy closer to home

Metro, the Circulator, and other transit systems in our region are well-positioned to cultivate joy that leverages the unique history, culture, and geography of our region. Transit is not just a way to get people from one place to another, it’s also a placemaking tool that connects us to each other. And it should be used as such.

Metro, under the leadership of its somewhat-new General Manager and CEO, Randy Clarke, is making progress on this front. Increasing frequency on Metrorail, improving communications for bus riders to eliminate ghost buses, and the bus transfer light pilot initiative are important steps to improve the ease of use and reliability of the system. Much bigger steps include Metro’s newfound and much-needed focus on the bus system, especially with its flagship Better Bus Initiative. Metro’s support of the Autism Transit Project, where young transit enthusiasts with autism recorded “welcome aboard” announcements; the blossom and Pride trains and buses; the Art in Transit initiative; and even informal sightings of the yellow “money train,” all spark joy for riders.

These are the types of initiatives our leaders should encourage to highlight the diversity of riders, destinations, and cultural icons of the District and the region as a whole. Put simply, these steps make the system feel like it has a place for people and a place within the local culture, reciprocally shaping both. They should fit into a broader strategy to make transit a part of the region’s culture and for residents and tourists alike to take pride in the system.

If you think of transit as a product, then you might understand what I’m talking about as customer experience. But it’s more than that. Transit is a public good, something larger than us that we create together. If we don’t invest in the social infrastructure around transit, then the existing physical infrastructure won’t deliver the value and experience riders deserve because it won’t interact with them as whole people. Riders are more than just customers who want to be somewhere else.

We are collectively developing a system that connects us to one another, and we can decide whether to cultivate joy with it – or not. And our leaders should keep this in mind as they tackle some of the biggest challenges our transit system faces in a generation.

The biggest of these challenges is Metro’s $750 million budget gap for the next fiscal year and beyond. While rider joy may not be part of the short-term solution to bridge this gap by next year to avoid a catastrophic cut in service, it can be part of the longer-term solution that is needed to sustainably fund reliable and frequent service, not least through building up a broader demand base beyond the work commute. This funding crisis is a symptom of the challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, years of mismanagement, lack of investment, and the absence of a vision for what the system could be for the region.

As a recent Brookings report pointed out, 43% of activity centers in our region have seen an increase in transit trip growth between 2019 and 2022. Activity centers are places where people gather to work, play, learn, and flourish – areas ripe with opportunity to cultivate joy through transit.

Many of the activity centers that experienced growth in the post-pandemic years are outside of the District, meaning there is a growing constituency of suburban residents who rely on transit beyond just getting into the downtown core of DC for work.

We should leverage these centers’ assets by integrating their growth with the prosperity of transit and the region in turn. These residents rely on transit in ways they haven’t in the past, which may translate to greater political support for transit – critical as local jurisdictions figure out how to bridge the funding gap. These newfound developments in spatial organization should be a boon for Metro and other local transit services.

Finding creative ways to highlight small businesses, special events, local history, and culture within the District and the suburban counties is one way transit agencies can help riders feel connected to the region and each other. Following Tokyo Metro’s lead on placemaking through play and discovery is just one approach. Others may include a more intentional all-ages approach by partnering with schools and senior care facilities; promoting transit-themed toys and merchandise to current and future riders; and clean, visible, and accessible public restrooms to allow for all-ages access to transit. A joyous system is an accessible system.

Takeaways

Rider joy is not a solution to our transit woes in and of itself. Instead, it’s a framework that decision-makers should incorporate into their planning to humanize transit and use its full potential as a connector of people and places with one another. Cultivating and promoting rider joy is a demonstration of the iterative, continuous process of improving the transit experience beyond functionality – one demonstrated well by the Better Bus Initiative. People are more likely to take trips to new places if they feel good about the journey. There is more to connection than just bus lines and rails. Connection is about culture, history, food, art, and so much more. It’s about the people who take transit.

Leaders at WMATA, the District Department of Transportation, and the suburban jurisdictions’ governments and transportation departments should adopt this framework as a “north star,” first as they work together to avert catastrophic service cuts, but also beyond as they search for longer-term solutions to keep our region connected.