Home
»
Trains Magazine
»
Forums
»
Transit
»
Transit advertising--- Wrapped LRVs and Buses.

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="MILW205"][quote user="Samantha"][quote user="henry6"]  [quote user="Samantha"] DART wraps the buses because they are mostly used by low income people who lack the know how and political leverage to complain.  [/quote] Well, I beg your pardon!  Sorry, but transit advertising has been around for almost as long as there has been transit.  And your comment is very derogatory (elite snobbery?) to so many who ride commuter trains lined with advertising cards from stations with platforms full of advertising.  And a lot of those commuters are not low income people who lack anything!  As far as wraps blocking views from the inside.  They don't.  Windows are already tinted dark because of air conditioning and for eliminating the need for shades or curtains of old.  You can't see out at night or on dark days not because of a wrap but because of the windows.  Same with most automobiles now adays.[/quote]Transit advertising has been part of public transit for as long as I can remember, which is nearly 65 years.  But for the most part it is has been confined to advertising inside the vehicle, in panels over the seats, on the outside of the vehicle, and at the stations.  Painting over the windows is a recent practice at least in Dallas and Austin.I said that most of DART's bus riders, as opposed to the train riders, are low income with exceptions.  Many though not all of the train riders are middle class.  In other words, with exceptions, the people who ride the city buses tend to come from a different socio-economic stratum than the people who favor the trains.  In Dallas, at least, most of the people who use the commuter trains come from middle class suburbs.  The commuter rail stations and trains have no advertising.  None!If you rode any of the buses in Dallas or Austin that have been wrapped, you would know that screen painting the windows severely blocks the ability to see out of them.  Again, as stated, I ride the bus three days a week.  I know what I am talking about, as opposed to many people who have an opinion about the joys of riding transit but who seldom if ever use it.  [/quote]I think Gardendance hit the nail on the head by raising the issue of visibility.  If you were an advertiser, would you choose: A) advertising on trains/train stations that are typically grade-separated and seen by just the riders themselves and perhaps a few people in cars (when rail crosses at grade, if at all).  --or-- B) buses/bus stops that are seen by both the riders and myriad other people -- pedestrians, bikers, people in cars driving along the streets, etc.As for the issue regarding a correlation between buses and a lower-income constituency, it seems logical: bus networks are cheaper to create and are more flexible than rail; for a given amount if money, a city can provide more bus service than rail, thereby providing a denser network of transportation options to people who need it most.  Looked at from a slightly different angle, if the bus network focused on wealthy areas at the expense of poor areas, wouldn't there be cries of "underserving" the poorer areas?Ultimately, wraps could be a matter of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.  I respect that you don't like wraps, and God bless you if you want to complain about them.  But as a daily mass-transit user, I appreciate the colorfulness/variety that they add, I don't have a problem seeing out the windows (as a bonus, wraps even help keep things cooler in the summer), and I view the extra revenue -- even if it is minimal -- as "every little bit helps".   [/quote]If screen painting the windows does not reduce visibility from inside the vehicle, why do the transit agencies not paint the driver's side window, the windshield, or the passenger door windows?In Dallas the trains go through town on a transit way.  They are seen daily by thousands of people.  Moreover, with the exception of the Central Expressway tunnel, they run above ground.  Most of the routes parallel roadways where motorists can easily see them.  They are seen by many more people, on a per unit basis, than the buses.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag