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A Transit Ad That Puts Car Commercials to Shame

12:01 PM EDT on October 8, 2013

This new ad from Västtrafik, Sweden's second-largest public transportation company, has all the well-worn cliches of a good car commercial: the baritone narrator, the stunning landscapes, the empty roads. What's different about this ad is that what it's selling will help preserve that natural scenery, rather than pave and pollute it.

If only public transit in the United States had the same marketing bucks behind it that car companies do, maybe people wouldn't be spending $42,000 -- not much less than the median American household income -- on a used GMC Sierra.

Which is not to say that there aren't any good transit commercials stateside. This won't likely be dominating the airwaves during the big game, but it's another good spin on the car ad:

Angie Schmitt@

Angie Schmitt is the author of Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America, and the former editor of Streetsblog USA.

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