METRORail Red Line

[editor]

6 minutes ago, samagon said:

maybe the city should get rid of the ridiculous rule that bans advertisements on public transit, create more income streams.

I for one would love to see the fun advertisements that Pusch and Nguyen could come up with.

That made more sense pre-COVID.  

Chicago used to have a massive advertising program on its trains and busses.  Demand was so high that if an ad agency couldn't get space on a placard, it would sometimes hire actors to walk around a train to talk up their product.  As a keen observer of advertising, it was very interesting to watch so many brands trying to get exposure on a single transit system.  It approached Tokyo levels.

When I went to Chicago post- COVID, there were almost zero ads left on the trains and buses.  From what I've read, the whole ad industry is going through a major shake-down that's affecting every medium from social media to web to TV and on.

Also, I'm not sure it's completely correct to say that advertising is banned at Metro.  I've seen several advertising campaigns on the Red Line.  The most recent one was for Dick's Sporting Goods, which included wrapping trains, and comping fares with big Dick's stickers over the card readers.

[BeerNut]

1 hour ago, editor said:

 As a keen observer of advertising, it was very interesting to watch so many brands trying to get exposure on a single transit system.  It approached Tokyo levels.

Yea Tokyo level advertising is crazy.  I went on one subway car that was promoting a mobile game.. there were video screens, banners hanging from the ceiling, and posters on the wall.

[004n063]

7 hours ago, samagon said:

maybe the city should get rid of the ridiculous rule that bans advertisements on public transit, create more income streams.

I for one would love to see the fun advertisements that Pusch and Nguyen could come up with.

I would add - our fares are extremely low, and we get what we pay for.

[rechlin]

One thing helpful for keeping the world safe for the blind is tactile pavement.  Houston doesn't do a very good job of this, but some cities try very hard to accommodate the blind with tactile paving in all high-pedestrian-traffic areas.  It seems most common in Japan but I've seen it used fairly extensively in parts of the UK too, and some US cities use it also.  This means putting different textures on the sidewalk to indicate things like intersections and ledges and things like that.

For the ledge at rail stations, the pavement is supposed to have an "offset blister" pattern.  MetroRail mostly gets this right, but several stations incorrectly were built with regular "blister", where the dots are on a regular grid instead of rotated 45 degrees.

Last week Metro finally replaced the panels with the correct offset blister pattern (now in bright yellow) at Wheeler Station, which was one of the stations with the wrong pattern.  Thank you Metro for finally addressing this thing that has annoyed me for many years!