Promoting Safety is Taking on a Whole New Image for VTA

Target Audience: Our riding public and the community at large all benefit from our collaboration with public safety agencies. Our social media outreach not only was directed at our followers, but we were able to expand our reach to the more than 80,000 (collective, on three channels) social media followers of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office.

Strategy Objective:Live interaction was critical for these posts, using the passengers' or public's point of view as we interacted with bus and train operators whom our passengers see every day, putting ourselves in passengers' shoes to take a trip with Tex as he ensured our train was clear of explosives and provided a sense of security. So many people wanted to pet and meet him! The education provided on what Tex and the Sheriff's Transit Patrol Team do along our system was well received on all social media platforms. We also wanted to promote the use of our mobile emergency reporting app to further give passengers a sense of security, and the drastic increase in downloads confirmed our intention with a 450% increase in downloads over just a few days, even helping in one case to get weapons off our system.

Situation Challenge: Safety is the top priority for any transit agency, including VTA, and while there are certain designated safety "weeks" and "days," we feel anytime is a great opportunity to inform people what we're doing to improve their safe experience on or around the VTA system. The interest we attracted by collaborating with the Sheriff's Office about the job of the Explosive Detection Canine "Tex", followed by "Coffee with a Deputy" event, and the TSA's Emergency Response Training Exercise allowed us to provide necessary safety information to our riders and to expand our reach beyond our own passengers in a way that was not seen before.

Results Impact: In the four days that we posted about these three events, we gained 72 new users of our mobile emergency app, "VTAlerts." Trust grew among riders who were able to spend one-on-one time with Transit Patrol Deputies asking questions about their duties. And riders felt more comfortable approaching deputies on our system after watching the video that explained Tex's job, with over 300 likes of the Instagram reel of Tex's adorable mug, and more than 10,000 views of video of him working, not including collaborative posts across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Threads.

Why Submit: This series of safety collaborations was highly effective in reaching our audience with the important messages of how we were working to improve their safety on board the VTA system and what they could do to take part in ensuring their own safe experience. Messages, video, and events seemed to resonate strongly as people reacted, engaged and approved of our tactics. In just a few days, our social media reach exploded over 440 % more than the same period from the year before.