Same here. But also, I believe in meeting people where they’re at - and that makes me feel conflicted about your take.
Dusting off some concepts from intro-level college marketing classes, let’s think about this in terms of user personas, or who are the kinds of people who might use the R-Line. If you look at any random person who is downtown, I can there’s quite a few reasons as to why they’re in downtown Raleigh - and, thus, need to get around in it:
- Local people who live and work downtown
- Workers who live elsewhere, but still work downtown (maybe at different hours)
- Civil servants who work for the city, county, state etc.
- Workers for local businesses
- Regional visitors to “big” shows at the Red Hat Amphitheater or the Martin Marietta Center
- Regional visitors who are in Raleigh for “a day/night on the town”
- Regional visitors to downtown attractions like Dix Park, museums, or Glenwood South
- Tourists (incl. business travelers and event attendees for the convention center) who used buses or Amtrak to get to Raleigh
- Tourists etc. who got to Raleigh without passing through Union Station
- Non-local workers, public servants etc. who are in Raleigh for some one-off, unusual business or civic reason (protests, court dates etc.)
Unless our example person belongs in the first four categories, they’re not really guaranteed to have ever used GoRaleigh before. And to that point…
…I think this becomes a complicated value proposition. In some cases like this real-life issue, people may not ride buses since they may not be predisposed to think that they’re options in the first place. And in some of those situations, no amount of practical improvements in GoRaleigh’s services will improve the perception of GoRaleigh buses.
it only takes a quick look on Reddit to see how many people note that the Triangle doesn’t have local trains - and jump to the conclusion that, therefore, we have no public transit here. Obviously, some of the reasons for negative views of American city buses come from deeply-ingrained classism, decades of government failures, and harmful vibes from the media. I get the vibe that you think those are fuck-ups of character, and it should be the responsibility of individual people to correct that in themselves (if so, I’m sympathetic to that idea).
…but if that’s the case, wouldn’t a separately branded R-Line be a better gateway to warm people back up to the idea of GoRaleigh buses? A sort of necessary evil for image rehabilitation (and possible advertising venue for GoRaleigh buses beyond the R-Line and BRT)?