In advance of a potential merger of public transportation services, South Portland has agreed to combine branding and marketing of its bus service with Shuttlebus/Zoom and Portland METRO.

According to Jennifer Puser, transit and energy planner for the Greater Portland Council of Governments, who unveiled the plan to the South Portland City Council at a Sept. 9 workshop, the plan includes creation of a unified brand with a common logo and color scheme for all services, a joint website and a “coordinated customer service” center, to include a single phone number for information on all three bus lines.

Because the City Council had City Manager Jim Gailey sign a memorandum of understanding in July 2012 to launch a joint planning effort, no additional vote was needed. “A nodding of heads” was all that was needed at the Sept. 9 workshop, said Gailey, in order to allow the plan to proceed. The council unanimously endorsed the plan.

Puser said ShuttleBus/Zoom, which serves Biddeford, Saco and Old Orchard Beach, also has endorsed the plan, as has the York County Community Action Corp.

Implementation could begin as soon as next month, pending approval by the Casco Bay Island Transit District and the Greater Portland Transit District, known as METRO. The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority is a supporting partner in the effort, she said.

“The goal is not to take over your brand, but develop an umbrella brand,” said Puser, noting that the cost to outfit each service with a common logo, still to be finalized, should not exceed $500 per vehicle.

“The branding and marketing committee appointed by the respective agencies recommends developing one logo to be used in a variety of ways including all promotional materials, transit guides and web information by all of the providers in order to tie the services together,” said Puser. “This logo is not to supersede each providers’ existing individual logo. It was acknowledged that the train and ferries cannot put the logo on their vehicles and vessels, but they can use it in a variety of ways including kiosks in the lobbies of their waiting rooms.”

South Portland was represented on the committee by the operations manager of its service, Rick Seargent.

Puser said it’s not yet known if a consultant will be hired to come up with the new logo, or if some sort of public design contest would be used. The common color scheme will be phased in over time, she said.

“It was recommended that the committee work with a designer to come up with a color scheme as different colors construe different messages,” said Puser.

The common website will begin with a “splash” webpage featuring an overview of all transit options in the area and links to each of the seven existing providers, using the new common logo. A second phase will include development of a new shared website for the three bus lines, with each able to access and update the site as needed.

Despite the apparent low upfront cost of the common branding, Art Handman, who took over as director of the South Portland bus service in July, said more money, as yet unspecified, would be needed to fund joint customer service operations.

The plan also calls for a joint customer service center to operate daily from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. to take calls for all three bus services, while calls about train and ferry service would be referred to Amtrak and Casco Bay Lines’ own customer care lines.

Handman, a past president of the New England Passenger Transportation Association, has been actively involved on the transit committee of the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System, a regional transportation group in southern Maine, which met in November 2012 and again in April to lay out the unified branding plan.

He was hired to a one-year contract by South Portland, paying him $45 per hour, following the retirement of longtime transportation director Tom Meyers in anticipation of an eventual full merger of the three bus lines.

“I didn’t want to go out and hire someone and then all of a sudden we’re moving toward a consolidation,” said Gailey at the time. “I felt I needed to have some flexibility, in fairness to any individual I might hire. Having a short-term replacement who could do the job and Art can far and away do the job if you look at his background I felt that would be the best scenario for us for the next 12 months.”

In May, the Southern Maine Area Regional Transportation (SMART) steering committee capped a three-month study, voting unanimously to recommend the merger of the three transit programs and announced plans to hire a consultant to create a cost-benefit analysis of the merger.

Planning and staff time for this joint branding project is funded by a Federal Transit Administration grant that continues through fiscal year 2014.