Friday, March 20, 2009

Classic: 2009 Beer Week Day Pass

septa beer week day pass
Remember last month when Brad discovered the SEPTA Beer Week Philadelphia 2009 Day Pass? I do. Oh man was that close. Brad discovered the almost FAIL days before the start of Beer Week. How an image of NYC made it onto the almost final version of Philadelphia's transit pass, I just don't know.

How many thousands of photos of Philly's skyline are there out there? SEPTA could've held a contest with riders' submissions to have their image featured on the pass. Payment could've been a free monthly pass or something. Cheap and free viral publicity. Instead, they went stock and got an image of part of NYC's iconic skyline.

septa beer week day pass
But with the help of the entire city and the AP newswire, SEPTA got the message. But I believe some of these were printed in the end. Did anybody snag one of these misprints? I'd love to see one in the flesh if you've got one.

So this isn't a true SEPTAfail, but I just had to post it as an almost just because it's so ridiculous. It's worse than the construction signs I see around town with "Samson St" on them.

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Posted by Albert at 5:53 PM
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9 comments:

  1. You know what wasn't a fail? SEPTA made a beer week pass! How many cities in the United States could even make it possible for you to get to and from so many bars safely? And how about 'accidentally' dropping a NYC skyline on the card for some viral marketing? Not bad. Just saying.
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  2. mustloveSEPTA, did you not read how this was an almost FAIL?

    And wouldn't it have made more sense for SEPTA to have made a Beer Week 10-day pass? Now that would've been some progressive thinking. Why did SEPTA get rid of the Day Pass? Absolutely ridiculous that they did.

    How many cities with as many bars as Philly does have mass transit? I'm going to guess all of them.

    'Accidentally' dropping a NYC skyline? I don't think so, but nice try.
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  3. Where did you hear they got rid of the day pass? http://www.septa.com/fares/daypass.html

    I don't know anything about how people enjoy Beer Week, but I doubt that most people go out every night of the 10 days!

    For its population, Philly has far fewer bars than comparable sized cities, thanks in large part to how difficult it is to get a liquor license. But try going out on the town in Atlanta, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baltimore, any town in Florida or Texas without a car and designated driver.

    As to the skyline question, when an ad agency like Red Tettemer is involved, you have to ask yourself whether they didn't run a pretty successful game on the media with that one.
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  4. They got rid of the Day Pass a few years ago. It used to cost $5.50 and you got unlimited rides for 24 hours and it looked and worked like this. It even was valid for a 1-way ride to RR, but not to Trenton.

    The sham of a One Day Convenience Pass *not a Day Pass* is $6 and gives you 4 round trips and that's it. The bang for the buck is pitiful compared to what once was. This puts Philly at a disadvantage to other cities in regards to ease of use for tourists.

    Phoenix, LV, all places in FL and TX are not cities. ATL is a southern car city. Isn't NO one big bar all within walking distance (never been)? Haven't been to B'more in 10 years, but it wasn't much then and is still Philly's little brother town. LA has a surprisingly good transit system for being such a car dependent city. Their system blows Philly's away in many respects.
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  5. I don't know that ease of use for tourists is something septa should aspire to above other goals. For high-traffic events like Beer Week, special passes seem easy enough to handle. And anyway, a tourist doing a little web research might *somehow* develop the impression that septa is the worst transit system in the world and opt to rent a car instead. Really though, 8 rides for 6 bucks is a great deal and more than sufficient for the tourist who isn't specifically trying to cover every inch of the transit system. And such a person would likely be happy to spring for a weekly transpass anyway.
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  6. "I don't know that ease of use for tourists is something septa should aspire to above other goals." Did you really just type that?
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  7. Sure, and I believe it. Given a choice of priorities (and that's what we have), I'd rather see the cost for regular commuters dropped or service to non-tourist destinations increased. Catering to tourists at the expense of residents perverts the purpose of public transit generally. It should be focused on getting people from where they live to where they work. In a city of 1.5 million people (plus many more in the broader region), tourists are not the biggest area of growth, and they're already amply served by hotel shuttles and cabs. And the vast majority of the major area attractions are walkable from Center City hotels. That SEPTA should serve residents first shouldn't be a controversial point.
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  8. SEPTA's goal should be to provide a useful and efficient mode of mass transit for all and not one party over another as you've suggested.

    If I recall correctly, ridership was on a downturn for a good while as a result of a poorly run operation. It's only been a double whammy of higher gasoline prices and the economy being in the shitter which changed things. I haven't seen the recent trends of ridersihp, but I'd be very curious to see them (anyone in SEPTA listening? I'd love to peek at some numbers).
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  9. "SEPTA's goal should be to provide a useful and efficient mode of mass transit for all and not one party over another as you've suggested."

    Of course, in a perfect fully funded world. But you have to make hard choices otherwise and that means establishing priorities.

    I'd like to see numbers too, but I think numbers were actually on the rise until recently when they've begun to decline, in part due to unemployment rising. Septa watch has some numbers: http://septawatch.blogspot.com/2009/03/septa-ridership-gains-slow-down.html
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How has SEPTA failed you?

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