Nexus has teamed up with a group of four business students to work out how they can promote the green credentials in order to further boost passenger numbers on the Tyne and Wear Metro network. The students are studying at Northumbria University’s Business Clinic and were tasked with capturing the environmental credentials of the network as a unique selling point.
The students – Ella Craggs, Nathan Binns, George Dawson and Elliot Cowie – carried out an in-depth audit which focused on those environmental credentials and created a survey to understand the travel habits of Metro users as well as potential users. This survey discovered that both users and non-users are conscious of climate change and willing to change their transport habits for some journeys although were unaware of the environmental credentials of Metro.
Metro remains one of the faster recovering light rail networks in the UK but structural changes to society since the pandemic has changed the way people travel. Although passenger numbers have continued to increase, Nexus anticipates that without further intervention it will never reach the levels seen at the start of 2020.
As part of this project the students came up with a range of recommendations in three tiers:
- Gold – launch a targeted physical marketing campaign making use of billboard advertising located on private transport routes, posters and increased engagement with local schools via an art competition to coincide with the introduction of the new fleet of trains
- Silver – targeted social media campaign using platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and engaging with prominent social media influencers
- Bronze – focused updates on the POP app showing the environmental benefits of using this form of transport
Helen Matthews, Head of Corporate Planning at Nexus, said: “We were really impressed with the work that the students produced. They understood the brief well and came up with some novel recommendations that we can take forward as we seek to promote the environmental benefits of Metro travel to a wider audience. We’re confident that this project with the Business Clinic will enable us to achieve our goal of increasing passenger numbers to levels seen before the COVID pandemic – and perhaps even exceed those levels.”