Today’s Headlines

  • DOT Plans to Go Ahead With Eighth Ave Bike Lane (Villager) 
  • MTA Tests Subway Digital Message Boards (2nd Ave Sagas) 
  • Bus Drivers Prone to Assault From Fare-Evaders (News) 
  • Zero Tolerance for Cellphone Use on NJ Commuter Buses (NYT)
  • Port Authority Says Truck Driver Used Vanishing Plate to Evade Tolls (News) 
  • Cycling Booming Around the World, Except Where It Isn’t (WaPo)
  • Chinese Move on High-Speed Rail, Bus Rapid Transit (TRE, China BRT)
  • McCain Ad Casts Obama as Friend of Big Oil … (Radar) 
  • … as Palin Woos RNC With Calls for More Drilling (Grist) 
  • Manhattan-Size Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Canada (AP)

  • Not really the same thing as the digital displays in the story above, but there’s a bus stop near my job in busiest Midtown with a digital display–and all I have ever seen on it are advertisements. Look, I’ve heard people here stick up for the MTA’s operations, but man, sometimes, especially when compared to their one or two international counterparts I’ve seen, it seems like the MTA can’t do one damn thing right.

  • Jay D

    CB4 is ridiculous in its opposition to the cycle track on 8th Avenue. For the record, I’m gay and I really enjoy biking.

  • Niccolo Machiavelli

    I guess I’m guilty for sticking up for the MTA so I’ll do it one more time. What yields more revenue and advertisement or an additional service enhancement to the customer in this case a service announcement? Well the answer is the advertisement unless the additional service enhancement increases ridership by enough to offset the advertisement revenue. When the system is at capacity already the additional ridership is only a concept while the advertisement revenue is real currency.

    The MTA can’t raise fares, can’t receive congestion pricing revenues, can’t get more state and local general tax support and have to pay off the bonds they sold when the economy was booming. More advertising revenues, from station naming rights to a constant barrage of digital messages is one of the few alternatives to continue to pay for the $1.40 per ride fare. Telling you when the next bus is coming is not as important as paying for the service.

    The MTA should sell the Union Square naming rights to T. Boone Pickens.

  • Max Rockatansky

    re: MTA signs, why can’t they do both? Advertise and announce the arrival time – it will keep people looking at the sign longer which is a selling point for the advertisers. New Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!

    I bet T Boone would take the deal if he could put up a wind farm in Union Square.

  • Niccolo Machiavelli

    The wind farms would be better placed on the roofs of the buildings, I’m just guessing.

    Yeah, both advertising and information, sure, whatever. But given your druthers which pays more? It has come down to that. Soon there will be a monitor everywhere your eye can set anyway. How about the “smart” highway signs, “you are in heavy traffic”?

    My only real issue here is how everything gets to be how stupid the MTA is. Subject any other agency or corporation, public or private, to the sort of institutional scrutiny applied to the MTA and see how stupid their priorities seem. Take the Cable Company, NY-1 Time-Warner, please.

  • Shemp

    If it’s a bus stop it’s the city’s sign, not the MTA’s.

  • Niccolo Machiavelli

    Who cares Shemp? If it is remotely connected to the MTA and there can be a fault assigned to it of any type, sin of omission or sin of comission, it will be the MTA’s fault. That is one of the purposes of the MTA.