In a drive to help people take care on train journeys, Avanti West Coast has brought station facilities at Stafford, Staffordshire, to life through its ‘Take care. Get there.’ campaign.
The campaign uses artwork to draw attention to those parts of station buildings that can improve safety by giving them human characteristics in posters and signage to get people’s attention.
The campaign is based on collaboration with Richard Shotton, who is a behavioural science specialist.
His approach applies psychology and behavioural science to help solve business problems, including positively influencing how people move safely about railway stations.
Among those parts of the stations brought to life are lifts, stairs, and handrails. Posters and signage have been personified with bespoke artwork to highlight how parts of station buildings improve safety.
The designs include bespoke wraps on the lifts at Stafford station and at other stations on the West Coast Main Line giving these parts of the stations a leading role in the Take Care. Get there. Campaign.
By raising awareness of building features often neglected by customers, the campaign aims to make it easier for those unfamiliar with particular stations.
Brightly coloured posters and signage on the station’s lifts, platforms, stairs, and handrails have become icons of safety as part of the initiative, with each object in the poster designed to resemble a face, with two eyes and a mouth.
The posters have also been given a voice to speak directly to customers, with speech bubbles revealing handrails longing to be held and lifts feeling empty without customers and their luggage.
The phenomenon of pareidolia where humans are hard-wired to pick out patterns, especially faces, from randomness is used to grab attention.
Parts of the station building that have a similar appearance to eyes and a mouth have been translated by Richard Shotton and Avanti West Coast into illustrations for a suite of posters and large scale artwork.
Research from George Loewenstein, a Professor of Economics and Psychology, was used for wording that incorporates a sense of positivity and light-heartedness around safety, ensuring key messages are delivered in the most effective way.
The simple messaging and noticeable artwork have been designed to provoke an immediate reaction and improve the visibility of safety features at Stafford with Carlisle and Penrith soon to benefit from similar installations.
According to a survey of 500 rail users in the UK by Avanti West Coast about their behaviour in stations, 84 per cent of rail users admitted they took their luggage when using the stairs. The Take care. Get there. campaign aims to change this habit and encourage the use of lifts and their location, so more people choose a step-free route when carrying bags and suitcases.
There is an ongoing programme of providing lifts at stations across the network, with the latest installation including Bridlington in East Yorkshire and Bolton in Greater Manchester.
“We recognise stations across our network are different and people may not be familiar with the environment around them, while others may sometimes become distracted. This campaign aims to get customers to take notice and make it easier to navigate their way.”
“By bringing to life the unsung safety features of our stations, we hope it will encourage our customers to take care of themselves, so they can get where they need to safely.”
Dave Whitehouse, Director of Safety, Security and Environment at Avanti West Coast
Responses
It all seems like signage “window dressing. If they were really worried about safety they should institute a more robust and transparent policies for when things go wrong in major way ( the causation not necessarily been their fault) . I am referring to what happened at Preston Station, last September, when Network Rail closed the line to Scotland. Avanti had no provision for bus replacement, accommodating passengers who were stranded and had no where to stay, hardly any staff on the ground. I wrote to my MP asking him to contact them to see if they had policy on this and was the policy in the public domain. They ( Avanti) never clarified the issue. Remember, this is the same Avanti who left passengers dumped at Oxenholme Station, late at night and unable to get out!
They installed the fancy new branding on the lifts that then promptly stopped working on platforms 1, 3 & 4, maybe it would be better for Sarah to concentrate on the fundamentals like working lifts, locks on toilet cubicle doors that have been missing for months now or having a ticket office open in the morning?
On Tuesday 27th August we were able to ascend to the bridge from Platform 1 but the lift down to Platform 4 refused to work. We struggled with our cases down the steps and one minute before our train was due to arrive we were told by a member of staff (no p.a. announcement) that it had been diverted to Platform 1. This meant struggling back up the steps to cross back to where we started from. We presume the platform alteration was because the lift wasn’t working but the majority of passengers were already there and had to struggle up the stairs again. It was not a good start to our trip.