1. AC Transit Public Perception Survey
APTA Marketing & Communications Workshop
February 26, 2018
Michele Joseph, Director of Marketing & Communications

2. What is a Public Perception Survey?
Provides insight compares agency to other agencies and institutions
Rates agency’s brand
Captures both riders and non- riders
Respondents mirror the service area demographics
A public perception survey does just what it says—it gauges the public’s perception of your agency brand. The survey’s objectives are to compare your agency to the perception of other agencies—within the agency’s sphere of influence. In this case, we included other transit agencies, public utilities, and other institutions. The survey also captures both riders and non-riders, which is important when you’re tracking opinions for ballot measures or projects that will affect non-riders as well.

3. Why Conduct this Survey?
Identifies how agency is perceived
Provides insight into what the agency is doing right, and what can be improved
Provides a tool to identify how perception has shifted over the years
Offers guidance on key messaging, branding and service needs
A public perception survey provides insight on what folks think about the agency—what are we doing right, and what are we doing not so well. We first conducted this survey in 2013, so there’s now three years worth of data to compare. It’s a great tool, especially your external affairs team. As you know, the marketing message you promote to gain new riders and retain existing riders is not necessarily the same messaging you’d use to encourage people who don’t use transit be supportive of a ballot initiative. The results help guide the message of what’s important to people who know of AC Transit.

4. 2017 Survey Methodology
Telephone survey of adults (18+) in the AC Transit service area using both landline and cell phone numbers
Geographically representative
800 completed surveys
Margin of Error: +3.5 percentage points
Conducted in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish by trained professional interviewers
Where applicable, results compared with surveys in 2013 and 2015
We kept the methodology consistent from year to year, which is why we didn’t add a web panel or some other collection method. The number of completed surveys and the margin of error was consistent from The surveys were conducted in English, Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese) and Spanish because those are the three most frequently spoken language in the District. As we move on the presentation, you’ll see where the research vendor made cross-references to previous years. It should be noted that the same vendor conducted the 2015 and 2017 surveys, and a different vendor conducted the 2013 survey.

5. Key Findings 44% of residents gave a positive rating vs. 39% in 2015
Self-reported ridership is up, with 51% riding occasionally, a seven-point increase since 2015
19% of residents report hearing something recently vs. 28% in 2015
AC Transit provides an important public service, especially for students and those with lower incomes
AC Transit continues to improve its positive brand rating, with an increase of 5% points from Self-reported ridership is up from 2015, and interestingly, residents are hearing less about AC Transit in the news. This likely stems from the fact that in 2015 AC Transit was in the middle of labor negotiations, so there was likely more media coverage about it than in And…residents feel AC Transit continues to be an important public service,, especially for lower-income residents and students.

6. AC Transit Brand Rating
Very positive and positive numbers – we want to see that continuing to move in the right direction.
AC Transi’t positive brand rating is up 5 percentage points since A little less than half either have a neutral option of say they don’t know.
Agency goal/KPI – increase positive perception of AC Transit 15% over two year period. Aggressive -

7. Ridership and Brand Trends
Self reported ridership up 7% (in the occasional rider category), branding rating up 5 percentage points from all respondents, and among our core riders, our brand rating up 8 percentage points.

8. Awareness of AC Transit
Compared to two years prior, recall of ACT in the news dropped 9 percentage points. You can see this as a plus or a minus, but take a closer look at what residents most recall hearing about ACT…

9. Recall – Top Mentions
While the top issue people have heard about continues to be incidents involving buses, many have also hear something about changes to fares and routes, and budget challenges. Mentions of labor disputes are much lower than 2015.

10. Information Sources
Not surprisingly, the trend shows people are hearing about us less through traditional mediums vs. digital and online.
This underscores the importance of advertising, promoting and working media in the digital world – social media and on website, local blogs, etc.

11. Best Things About AC Transit
Things residents liked best about AC Transit are convenience, affordability, the ability to go many places and being on time.

12. Desired Improvements
The top things residents think that AC Transit can improve on are adding or expanding routes, increasing frequencies, and being on time.

13. Barriers to Riding AC Transit
And we learned what barriers people say they have to riding AC Transit. Interesting to note that those indicating they do not ride because they have a car is down 7 points.

14. General Attribute Importance
This chart shows the segmentation of how important an attribute is to them.
For example, 75% of residents feel it’s important for AC Transit to serve low income people at students.

15. Service Attribute Importance
And of the service attributes…Residents most value safety, reliability and convenience.

16. Comparing Ratings to Importance
Describes AC Transit very well 5
Not important at all
Very important
Attributes placed on a quadrant chart to assess the relationship between ACT’s rating on that single attribute and its perceived importance.
This chart shows all the point for the attributes tested
Horizontal axis – plots the importance of the attribute
Vertical axis – plots the ratings of that attribute
For AC Transit – all attributes fell into the upper right quadrant, meaning all positive attributes are generally important to residents and all describe AC Transit.
Now let’s take a look at the following charts, focusing on the upper right quadrant. 1 5 1
Does not describe AC Transit at all

17. General Attributes
Put things into perspective – give us direction on what to focus on – service improvements and/or messaging.
How well the attribute describes AC Transit, and the importance of the attribute.
Here – you can see that our perception of being financially sound isn’t as strong as some of the other attributes, but it is relatively important to residents. This give us an area to focus on in terms of messaging – highlighting where we demonstrate strong fiscal and operational management .

18. Service Attributes
Importance ratings on safety and reliability are higher than their descriptive ratings of AC Transit, which suggests that perception on those dimensions can be improved.

19. Public Perception Survey + & -
PROS
CONS
By including riders and non-riders, more comprehensive picture of the brand
Valuable data for planning a ballot measure
Relatively inexpensive to administer
Does not paint a complete picture on current riders
Cannot use the intercept method since survey includes non-riders
Not quite as relevant for the Planning and Marketing teams as a customer satisfaction survey would be
By looking at residents rather than riders, you’ll get a broader picture of the agency’s brand awareness. And because the data represents all resdients, it’s a good tool for not only future service planning needs, but to prepare for a ballot measure as well. The cost of the survey to implement is around $40K, which is less than executing a larger scale customer satisfaction survey.

20. Next Steps Customer satisfaction survey this year
Continue to focus on opportunities where perception of most important attributes can be improved
RM3 messaging – continue to focus on importance of AC Transit to voters

21. AC Transit Public Perception Survey
Michele Joseph
Director of Marketing & Communications