Would you take the train to work?

Imagine you live on the north end of town, close to Pioneer Park, maybe in Dunlap. You get up in the morning, wear your corporate uniform, and hop in your car, but instead of driving all the way downtown to your office, you only drive to the rail crossing at Pioneer Parkway. There, you find a parking lot with a small train depot — a “park and ride.” You park your car, head into the depot and have a cup of coffee and pick up a paper at the newsstand.

Then the train arrives. You get on a 45-passenger commuter railcar that looks something like this:

DMU Railcar

The railcar takes you downtown, making stops at a few places (like Junction City) along the way. The car may run right down by the riverfront, or it could run along a track that would be built down the center of Jefferson Street and meet up with the CityLink transit center at Harrison.

As you’re traveling, you enjoy a smooth ride during which time you can read the paper, check your e-mail, conduct business on your cell phone, or just relax. No driving hassles, no fighting traffic. You enjoy the same ease going home after work. Evenings and weekends, you can take the same train to basketball or hockey games, concerts, Civic Center or other downtown events, shopping in the Heights or at the new and improved Junction City, etc.

If the service in this scenario were available to you, would you use it?

That’s what the Illinois Prairie Railroad Foundation would like to know. They’re investigating the feasibility of commuter rail in Peoria, and they’re betting that people would love it. So, I’d like to do a little non-scientific research and see what my readers think of the idea. What say you?

Bradley searching for new mascot

My wife is an alumnus of Bradley University, so we got an e-mail today announcing that, while Bradley will be keeping the name Braves, they apparently are considering ousting the Bobcat mascot in favor of a new one:

[T]he University is currently considering developing a mascot to accompany the Bradley Braves name. A mascot and associated athletic logo may enable the University to better capilitize on the University’s strategic marketing capabilities.

Bradley President David Broski has appointed a mascot selection committee to solicit ideas for a Bradley Braves mascot from students, faculty, alumni, and the community.

The committee has established two requirements: the new mascot:

  1. must equally represent both genders and
  2. must not have any Native American representation. Ideally, the Braves’ mascot would be representative of Bradley University’s and the region’s history or tradition; original (not used by many schools); visually aggressive but not frightening; and compatible with the university’s colors of red and white.

The time has come to ramp up the campaign again for the perfect BU mascot:

Fighting Squirrel

Picture credit: Peoria Pundit

“Peoria” doesn’t play in Peoria? Oh, the irony

The “Word on the Street” column Monday had this tidbit of information regarding naming the new museum. So far, all we’ve been told is that the name didn’t “test well” in focus groups. But what does that mean? Now we know:

Apparently, it’s not that people don’t like Peoria. Unfortunately, we’re unknown to a majority of the focus groups they interviewed in southern Wisconsin, northern Indiana, St. Louis and Chicagoland.

“Sixty-nine percent said either they didn’t know enough about Peoria or Peoria sounded like a small town to them,” said Woith, adding that proponents want a museum name that will be attractive to tourists far and wide.

So, from this we can deduce that the museum folks are concerned that people won’t come to the museum if it has the name “Peoria” in it because people have never heard of it or think it’s a small town. So, they’re going to call the museum something meaningless, like the “AMAZEum.” Presumably, people from Wisconsin, Chicago, and St. Louis will think that any museum with a name like that is fantastic and must be visited, so (I’m just guessing here) they’ll want to know where this incredible AMAZEum is. They’ll look for an address and perhaps directions on how to get there. Now, where are the museum people going to tell them it’s located? Just outside Chicago? A suburb of Rockford?

But beyond that, I wanted to point out the sheer irony of the situation. You know the phrase you love to hate: “Will it play in Peoria”? Wikipedia has a good entry on that phrase:

The phrase initially came into fashion during the vaudeville era, believed to have been first asked by Groucho Marx when putting together a new act. The belief was that if a new show was successful in Peoria, it would work anywhere in America.

Years later in the 1960s and 1970s, Peoria was deemed an ideal test market by various consumer-focused companies, entertainment enterprises (films and concert tours), even politicans, to gauge opinion, interest and receptivity to new products, services and campaigns.

Isn’t it ironic that a city that had been known throughout the 20th century for its discernment in entertainment and sensibility for testing new products would find its own name won’t “play” anywhere in America, not even regionally? I, for one, don’t believe it.