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Councilmember Elvig stated the key here is what are we doing to raise ridership. <br />Mr. Olson reiterated we did a survey and brought that back to the Council for discussion. <br />Senior Planner Gladhill talked about the different marketing that has been done. <br />Councilmember Elvig asked if we are doing this on a regular basis. We could put a "ride our <br />bus" message at the end of every Council meeting. <br />Deputy City Administrator Nelson stated that we have talked about a "get on board" campaign — <br />for bus and rail. We have done a lot of things we talked about. She did not know if we have <br />seen great gains from any of these efforts. Maybe we should tap into finding out how to spread <br />our efforts to glean results. We can revisit that and see if there is a desire to tackle marketing. <br />Councilmember Elvig stated he would like to do that. "Get on board" seems more like for rail — <br />maybe use just "ride our bus" instead. <br />Councilmember McGlone talked about the sign (marquis) plus all the talking on camera about <br />the bus service. He suggested doing more of what we started and advertising it at each City <br />Council meeting. <br />Mr. Lazan gave an update of the timeline for the marquis sign. <br />Ms. Nelson added that we promised we would have the sign up by Game Fair. <br />Mayor Ramsey stated, getting back to increasing ridership — do a survey with the riders, quickly, <br />as they get off the bus and then give them something for answering the questions. He added that <br />he would like staff to check into two more stops downtown as well. <br />Councilmember Backous stated that there would be a captive audience on the bus so maybe we <br />should have them fill out the survey on the bus. <br />Mr. Olson reported there was great participation in the Last survey — 97 percent. <br />Councilmember McGlone commented that there are multiple kinds of riders — the daily riders <br />and the event riders. • <br />Discussion ensued relating to things that could be offered from local businesses for filling out the <br />survey and a direction was given to have staff do some marketing about how much one is saving <br />riding the bus versus driving <br />Consensus of the Council was to keep on with the bus service, no fare increase, keep the <br />contractor the same, and work on marketing. <br />City Council Work Session — June 7, 2011 <br />Page 10 of 14 <br />