City of Bend: Don’t Stick Out Parking Campaign
An ad campaign focused on improving safety and decreasing traffic congestion due to oversize vehicles extending into the travel lanes of the main streets through downtown Bend.
Role
Visual Designer
Platform
Web / Social / Print
Tool Stack
Adobe Illustrator / Adobe Photoshop / ArcGIS
Background
Downtown Bend was experiencing increased traffic congestion and safety hazards due to vehicles parked in angled spots along the two main streets extending into the travel lanes. A major complicating factor we had to consider was politics—a majority of the vehicles that extended into the travel lanes when parked were big pickup trucks. The City did not want to give the impression that it was discriminating against the owners of these large pickups, who generally were from more rural areas around Bend, have lived in Central Oregon for a long time, and were conservative. At the time, Bend was experiencing a major population boom. It was one of the fastest growing cities in the US, with an average of about 9 people moving to the City each day—primarily from larger metropolitan areas like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles. This influx of people drove up housing prices, increased traffic, and—as the majority of the newcomers came from large cities—began to shift the political makeup of Bend from red to blue.
The challenge was to create an ad campaign that was apolitical and didn’t point the finger at one group, but focused instead on improving safety, decreasing traffic, and provided a solution for those whose vehicles simply didn’t fit.
Learnings
The biggest lesson learned from this experience was the value of messaging ahead of warnings and citations. The political fallout could have been avoided had we timed the messaging to go out first.
Research & Roadblocks
The City conducted a downtown parking study and found a number of complaints about drivers having to swerve into the other lane to avoid parked trucks extending into the street.
In response to the feedback, the City’s parking management company began issuing warnings to overlong vehicles—over 140 in one month—but did not provide a solution to for these vehicle owners. The situation quickly became political issue on social media and in the local news, with large truck owners blaming the City for favoring those who drive smaller vehicles.
Implementation
I worked with the department that oversaw parking for the city—Economic Development—as well as the Communications Department to come up with a campaign that focused on the safety and traffic congestion issues. We also chose to highlight different types of offending vehicles—large Sprinter vans as well as vehicles with trailer hitch bike racks—to counter the belief that the City was discriminating against our local farmers and ranchers and their big trucks. Lastly, we needed to provide a solution: a map showing where overlong vehicles can park in downtown.
The resulting collateral included a small flyer to be included with the warnings the parking management company left on offending vehicles, handouts for the front desk at City Hall, and web graphics. The materials included:
A variety of offending vehicle types, so that the City wasn’t singling out pickup trucks
A map showing parking locations without length restrictions
Clarification around how few parking spots were length restricted—only about 7%.