Best Practices for Transportation Agency Use of Social Media

312 Pages·2013·12.76 MB·English

by  Susan Bregman

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Transportation Agency Use of Social Media
offers real-world advice for planning and
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implementing social media from leading gov-
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The book provides an overview of the various social media platforms and tools, with r
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examples of how transportation organizations use each platform. It contains a series
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of interviews that illustrate what creative agencies are doing to improve service, t
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provide real-time updates, garner valuable information from their customers, and c
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better serve their communities. It reveals powerful lessons learned from various e
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transportation agencies, including a regional airport, city and state departments of

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transportation, and municipal transit agencies. f
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Filled with examples from transportation organizations, the text provides ideas
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that can apply to all modes of transportation, including mass transit, highways, avi- cr
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ation, ferries, bicycling, and walking. It describes how to measure the impact of i
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your social media presence and also examines advanced uses of social media for ls

obtaining information by involving customers and analyzing their social media use. Mp
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The book outlines all the resources you will need to maintain a social media dt
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presence and describes how to use social media analytical tools to assess service i
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strengths and weaknesses and customer sentiment. Explaining how to overcome i
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the digital divide, language barriers, and accessibility challenges for patrons with
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disabilities, it provides you with the understanding of the various social media
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technologies along with the knowhow to determine which one is best for a specific
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situation and purpose.
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Edited by
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Susan Bregman
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6000 Broken Sound Parkway, NW K16396
Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487
711 Third Avenue ISBN: 978-1-4665-6860-0 Kari Edison Watkins, PhD
New York, NY 10017
an informa business 90000
2 Park Square, Milton Park
www.crcpress.com Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN, UK
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w w w. c r c p r e s s . c o m
Best Practices for
Transportation Agency
Use of Social Media

Best Practices for
Transportation Agency
Use of Social Media
Edited by
Susan Bregman
Kari Edison Watkins, PhD
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
© 2014 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
Version Date: 20130812
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4665-6861-7 (eBook - PDF)
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Contents
editors ix
Contributors xi
1 Introduction 1
2 It’s a social World 5
Susan Bregman
What Is social Media? 5
Who Uses social Media? 6
How Does Government Use social Media? 7
How transportation organizations Use social Media 7
Defining the social Web 10
other social Media Platforms 28
summary 28
References 29
3 Fish Heads and Haiku: Voices from the Field 31
Susan Bregman
one tweet Away: on site with the Washington state Department of
transportation 32
Keeping It Conversational: on site with L.A. Metro 43
More Is More: on site with the Akron-Canton Airport 50
Capital Conversations: on site with the District Department of transportation 58
From Zero to ninety: on site with the Central ohio transit Authority 65
not Government as Usual: on site with the Arizona Department of
transportation 73
References 83
4 Using social Media to Connect with Customers and Community 85
Communicating at the speed of Light: Using social Media as a Marketing tool 86
Matt Raymond and Robin O’Hara
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© 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Contents
A Cantankerous noise: social Media as an Advocacy tool 103
Andrew Austin and Ashley Robbins
From the silicon Hills to the sea: Using social Media for Feedback and
Community engagement 114
Jody Feerst Litvak and Jennifer Evans-Cowley
From Hurricanes to Carmageddon: social Media for Real-time
Communications 139
Ned Racine and Susan Bregman
References 159
5 Learning from Customers and Community 163
Bringing Customers Back into transportation: Citizen-Driven transit
service Innovation via social Computing 164
Aaron Steinfeld, John Zimmerman, and Anthony Tomasic
May We Have a Few Minutes of Your time? Using social Media in
transportation surveys 175
Stacey Bricka, Debbie Spillane, Tina Geiselbrecht, and Thomas Wall
Checking the Urban Pulse: social Media Data Analytics for transportation
Applications 186
Satish V. Ukkusuri, Samiul Hasan, and Xianyuan Zhan
References 202
6 Agency Considerations and Policies 209
What’s the Worst that Can Happen? social Media Protocols and Policies 210
Susan Bregman and Sarah M. Kaufman
Rules of engagement: Using social Media to turn Critics into Fans 228
Susan Bregman
Bridging the Digital Divide: ensuring Information equity in social Media 240
Kari Edison Watkins, Katharine Hunter-Zaworski, and Sarah Windmiller
Is Anybody Listening? Measuring Impacts of social Media 255
Eric Rabe and Susit Dhakal
References 274
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© 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Contents
7 tying It All together 281
Kari Edison Watkins
Uses of social Media 282
Benefits of social Media 283
entering the social space 284
the Future 289
Conclusions 291
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© 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

eDItoRs
Susan Bregman has more than 25 years of experience as a transporta-
tion researcher and policy analyst. She is the principal and founder of
Oak Square Resources, LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that provides
research, policy, and communication services to the public transportation
industry. She has particular expertise in the field of social media and was
the principal investigator for TCRP Synthesis 99, Uses of social Media in Public
transportation, published by the Transportation Research Board in 2012.
Since 2008, Susan has been editor of the transit Wire (http://www.
thetransitwire.com), a daily blog about transit technology that covers
everything from mobile applications to social media to contactless fare
collection. Before joining the consulting world, she worked for the City of
Boston and the U.S. Department of Transportation. She started her profes-
sional life as a writer and editor for a trade association and a community
newspaper.
Susan earned a master of city and regional planning degree from
the Harvard Kennedy School and an undergraduate degree from Brown
University with a specialization in linguistics. She is also an award-win-
ning photographer and her work may be found at www.rednickel.com.
Follow her on Twitter @OakSquareSusan.
Kari Edison Watkins, PE, PhD, is an assistant professor in civil and envi-
ronmental engineering at Georgia Tech. After trying out the Northeast
as a consultant for a decade and the Pacific Northwest to earn a PhD at
the University of Washington (UW), she decided it was time to return to
her undergraduate alma mater and the City of Atlanta to help it become a
more transit-friendly, bikeable place.
In her research and teaching, Kari uses technology to improve, under-
stand, and influence travel mode choice and multi-modal transportation
planning. At UW, she co-created the OneBusAway program to provide
real-time transit information tools and assess their impacts on riders in
greater Seattle–Tacoma. She continues to work on ways to improve trav-
eler information, but has also begun to examine opportunities to crowd-
source cycling infrastructure and amenity data through the Cycle Atlanta
program. Check out her research lab, UTIL, at http://watkins.ce.gatech.
edu or follow her on Twitter @transitmom.
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© 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC