A recent bid by the East Lancashire Community Rail Partnership (ELCRP) for a grant from the Designated Community Rail Development Fund (DCRDF) has been successful.
The grant for £3,570 will help support a marketing campaign to promote the new Blackburn to Manchester via Todmorden service that started in May 2015. The campaign will include:
Local radio adverts on Bee Radio, 2BR & Revolution;
Email using Northern Rails database;
Posters at key stations along the route; and
Continuing to develop the use of websites including Community Rail Lancashire’s and the Todmorden Curve landing page on Northern Rail’s site.
The campaign’s aim is to develop an autumn/winter awareness campaign targeted at commuters. In particular, two key audiences have been identified namely car drivers and students. For car drivers the campaign aims to make them aware of the advantages of rail over being stuck in traffic jams on the local motorway e.g. journey time, hassle free and ability to do some work and for students about making them aware of the opportunities to reach colleges/universities in Manchester and Salford without the need to change trains. This is particularly the case for students at Salford University.
This targeted campaign will be developed and managed by a partnership consisting of Northern Rail, the East Lancashire CRP, Lancashire County Council and Burnley Council.
The target is to increase commuting journeys so that they account for 15% of all journeys as part of this campaign i.e. an increase of about 15,000 journeys per year. The effect of this campaign will be monitored through the data regularly supplied to Lancashire County Council.
Notes:
Bee Radio (96.3fm; 106.5fm and 107fm) and 2BR (99.8fm) between them cover the target area of Accrington, Padiham, Rose Grove and Burnley. It also covers Nelson and Colne. 2BR is the main local radio station for East Lancashire (2BR.co.uk). ‘The Revolution’ covers parts of Manchester up to Rochdale.
The DCRDF is a fund provided by the Department for Transport and managed by the Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP) and is designed to help the development of community rail lines designated through the Government’s Community Rail Strategy.