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Transit advertising--- Wrapped LRVs and Buses.

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[quote user="Paul Milenkovic"] Madison Metro claims that bus wraps contribute a substantial amount of money to the bottom line.  Not enough to elimnate the required subsidy, but enough that it could make a difference between balancing or not balancing the yearly budget.I am OK with bus wraps from the standpoint of the outside looking in.  A one-theme bus ad in some ways is less an eye sore than a hodge podge of messages plastered on a bus.The problem I have with the wraps is from the inside looking out.  Bus windows are more than for looking at urban scenery.  You want to see out to tell whether you are approaching your stop, and you want to be able to do this whether you are in a seat or standing and hanging on to a stanchion.  Looking out through the wraps is like looking through cheese cloth.  You can see out, but the view is both dimmed and blurred.  From that point of view (pun intended), bus wraps are annoying.  If they could wrap the bus (or LRV I guess) with a billboard that didn't cover the windows with that cheese cloth effect, I would be 100 percent for it for the money it brings in to the transit agency.[/quote]I second the observation that the problem is from inside the bus looking out.  Not only does wrapping the bus make it difficult to see, especially at night and on cloudy days, but on a low light day the atmosphere inside is depressing.  Painting over the windows is the big problem.  Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), the "T" in Fort Worth, and Capitol Metro in Austin wrap some of their buses.  As a regular rider I get the inside impact.  Interestingly, DART does not wrap any of the light rail vehicles or the TRE equipment.  Only the buses are wrapped.  I asked DART why they wrap the buses, since it appears that a prominently displayed sign below the windows or on the back would do the trick.  They claim the wrapping produces better results and the wrappers pay more for it.  When I asked them for the marketing research data to show that the wrapping is more effective, they gave me the deer in the headlights look.  They don't have any data to support wrapping or painting the whole bus.  They have been sold a bill of goods with money attached to it.DART wraps the buses because they are mostly used by low income people who lack the know how and political leverage to complain.  On the other hand, it has not wrapped the light rail vehicles because they tend to be used by middle class commuters who will complain and know how to do it.  I have fought back.  I send a letter to the advertisers advising them of the impact of wrapping on transit riders and telling them that I will not buy their products or services because of it.  If enough people followed suit, I suspect the advertisers would change their tactics.
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