HUZZAH! MVTA's Campaign to Reduce Traffic Congestion

Target Audience: The target audience for this entry was current and prospective riders of MVTA buses, specifically those interested in attending the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.

Strategy Objective:A critical strategy to this entry was keeping a pulse on pre-event planning and listening to community needs. Our goal was to create a campaign that appealed to riders and demonstrated to county officials that we would be an excellent choice for addressing their parking concerns. To achieve this, we developed a campaign highlighting the ease and convenience of taking public transit. Our social media campaign, which targeted festival-goers, was designed to showcase the excited aspects of our service, and it included a series of organic and paid media posts that featured riders dressed in their costumes and using Renaissance slang. We also partnered with the festival to create "bus bucks," which incentivized festival-goers to use our service by offering discounts on admission tickets.

Situation Challenge: The MN Renaissance Festival has faced many challenges with congestion and parking in years prior. Attendees could expect to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over an hour waiting to get into the parking lot. The traffic into the festival caused issues for residents and local businesses, blocking a major highway. The festival was in danger of having its permit revoked if they didn't come up with a solution. MVTA staff worked with the Renaissance Festival to create a solution to the problem by significantly increasing our service by over 3x from the year prior. The festival also began charging for parking and encouraged attendees to utilize MVTA's services. Riders could conveniently board at 3 of our park & ride locations which offered free parking and many connections to other routes.

Results Impact: Marketing efforts contributed to a 63.2% ridership increase in the Renaissance Festival service from 2022, for a total of 48,393 rides in 2023. This number greatly contributes to the agency's overall yearly ridership, which is on track to be over 1,000,000 this year. This event was also the perfect way to highlight how riding with MVTA is comfortable, efficient, and mitigates traffic congestion. The event had significantly decreased traffic and multiple festival-goers attested to the ease of travelling to the event by bus. Avery M. stated on social media that MVTA "made the parking situation so much more streamlined – miles better than the past."

Why Submit: MVTA's service to the 2023 Renaissance Festival showed a great example of how public transportation can help alleviate traffic pressure. We are proud of the crucial role MVTA played in the 2023 Renaissance Festival, including coordination with the county, festival traffic consultants, board hearings, mitigating local business impacts, significantly decreasing road congestion, engaging first-time transit riders, and overall playing a big part in making the festival a continued success. Our team went above and beyond to market this service to the county and promote it to prospective riders. This was an all-hands-on-deck effort to get riders onboard as well as convince the county that public transportation is the viable option to improve the parking situation.