Good buses, good politics and social media

Members of parliament measure community sentiment by several means. It may be what they get asked about when in public, the volume of phone calls their office gets or the number of emails. Their staff may also monitor social media to see which posts get high engagement and which do not. 

Where do buses fit in on the latter? 

To get a rough idea I looked at the Facebook page for two MPs who represent diverse working class areas in which living costs is a major issue. The seats concerned are Mulgrave (Eden Foster - 1.3k followers) and Melton (Steve McGhie - 8.4k followers).

Both seats had recent bus service upgrades (upgraded 7 day 800 in Mulgrave, new Route 452 in Melton) that both MPs posted about on their Facebook pages. 

I counted the number of reactions they got and compared them to the four immediately previous posts. 

On Eden Foster's page the 800 bus item was the most reacted to post of the five surveyed. This had about 20 per cent more reactions more than the next most popular post. I had to go back 15 posts to find one with a higher number of reactions so the Route 800 item was likely in the top 10%. 

The Route 452 bus item on Steve McGhie's page was also a good performing post. By a very high margin compared to the previous four. I had to scroll back over 30 posts before I found one that had higher engagement (238 reactions). That one was also transport themed; in this case the West Gate Tunnel. 

It's only two MPs sampled but this reaction test shows that if politicians want online engagement they could do much worse than to talk about improved buses and other transport projects. This also ties in with housing and cost of living narratives. 

On the latter, when it comes to transport, by far the most expensive trip is that which cannot be made by existing public transport services. This makes public transport coverage and service improvements that expand the range of trips practical by public transport throughout the week so worthwhile.