Never a Lack of Ideas

For more than 25 years, Metra, the commuter railroad in the Chicagoland area, has had a wonderful newsletter called On the Bi-Level. It used to be a fantastic tool for interacting with riders. The newsletter is printed every month and distributed on each train in the system. The best two parts of the newsletter used to be: "Sounding Board" was a forum for riders to ask Metra questions. Metra would write back with hilarious, sometimes snarky, responses. "Sound Off" was by far the best newsletter feature. Riders would write in to complain about fellow riders. The stories they told were incredibly entertaining. Here's one of my favorite submissions, from an August 2006 letter (featured in the absolutely awesome 25th anniversary issue ): "Today I saw an all-time first. ...A young brunette began fumbling with her purse, pulled out a can of aerosol hair spray and began spraying her hair. The man behind her gagged a bit but no one said a word. Unbelievab...

Out of Money Metra is the public transportation train system that connects Chicago with its suburbs. For the last five years, Metra has been in desperate need of a capital bill funded by the state of Illinois. Because of this, Metra needs money – a lot of money – and they need it sooner rather than later. Advertise – It’s Simple Metra does not advertise on the inside of its train cars right now. It advertises on train platforms and in between train cars, but not inside of the train cars. CTA and Pace, the other public transportation providers in Chicago, advertise inside their trains and buses. Why doesn’t Metra? Look at the photo I’ve posted here. There is plenty of space in the train car to advertise, and I’ll bet that there are plenty of advertisers who would be very interested in advertising to the market that Metra serves. Advertising on Metra trains could generate millions of dollars in additional revenue for Metra. I’m guessing that the average Metra rider spends 40 minutes on ...