October 25, 2007
Waiting for the Bus is About to get TOTALLY RAD
We have incredibly exciting news about bus shelters! The city just reached an agreement with Clear Channel, your favorite company, to provide bus shelters and advertising and revenue. It's a complicated relationship, and totally boring -- like, alt-weekly-level boring -- but here's what it all means to you, the common man on the street:
- New shelters will speak NextMuni information out loud, will have a beacon for waiting passengers to notify approaching vehicles, will contain recycled and sustainable materials, will be solar-powered, and are supposedly graffiti-resistant, which we'll believe when we see.- 3,000 bus poles with solar-powered signs will be installed at transit stops where there are no shelters within seven years from the date the designs are approved.
- At Muni's request, Clear Channel is required to provide a self-sustaining Bicycle-Sharing Program. It can be provided by a different vendor if Clear Channel can't get it going.
- Clear Channel may install an additional 400 shelters and 111 kiosks.
- Clear Channel will pay $5,000,000 up front, then annual payments of $500,000 in admin fees, $200,000 in marketing fees, and $265,000 for the Arts Commission. Revenue sharing will be 55% for the first 15 years.
So ... whaddya think about that bike-sharing dealio?
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I'm concerned, intrigued about sitting on so much San Francisco butt-warmth.
Uh what is the bike sharing dealio plan?
Clear Channel sucks. I can't wait to vote no on Prop K. It won't really do much... but it'll make me feel good.
Yes on A! No on H!
Clear Channel, the folks that bring you Rush Limbaugh and the All-Stars of RightWingRadio, presents the SF bike-share dealio! Also, free money, world peace & rainbows that don't smell like shit!
Expect it sometime in 3129 CE or 256 MY (Martian Years) for you Martian tourists visting the Bay Area!
The new shelters also cure cancer.
The bike sharing thing I just saw in Paris looked pretty cool, and was used extensively. Then again, Paris has an amazing subway system that--get this--is a network around the city, rather than a funnel to a single street. Those wacky cheese-eaters!
Mr. Mayor is eyeing that bus shelter model just like the rack on that chick from his drunky days. He must like it a lot.
Count me as a skeptic on the bicycles - if it ain't bolted down, somebody steals it in this town (especially things with wheels)
I think the shelter design could be improved by incorporating the smell of freshly baked cookies. That would cover up the stench of the the bicycle sharing program when it meets its inevitable death.
I agree. I think it's a great idea, but unfortunately, a lot of the people here do not possess a Parisian mindset.
Isn't this the bike theft capital of the world, anyway? Sure seems that way. This will just provide more bikes for the hoboes/crack fiends to steal and then re-sell.
can't they just use the money to instead make the subway more functional, as referenced above? I'd love those bridge and tunnels who flood my neighborhood with drunk drivers on the weekends to have a viable public transit alternative.
Bike sharing can work if there is a rental system (Velib, Call A Bike) that bills thhe user if he steals it. But I agree, the bad guys will probably find a way to break it. And SFPD won't do shit.
I hope "self sustaining", as it refers to bike sharing, means "not taking any funding from Muni."
Meanwhile, the big question: will the Nextbus signs be visible from further away? They need to be much, much bigger than the current ones.
Oh, and they should speak Nextbus info out when someone pushes a button, not just randomly. That would get annoying really fast.
Didn't Seattle do a bike-share thing that lasted a few days until all the bikes were stolen and repainted?
The only place in America this could work is a small-enough college-town kind of place with civic-minded residents, like Madison, WI or Burlington, VT. In SF? Forget it. The crackheads would steal so many bikes the first few days, they'd be able to start their own bike-sharing service.
Yo, the bike sharing thing is gonna work just fine. People who jump on the sharing thing are going to make some money. This sort of feel good inc, clever party trick is what the Gavster's people are good at. Y'all just got to figure out which sharing scheme the ClearChunnel people are favoring (there are only a few viable options), then see what sort of infrastructure they'll use.
The bikes will weigh a ton and will be impossible (at first) for the crackheads to steal and part out. They will only be able to sell cut up bike chunks for scrap instead of channeling them to the bike parts mafia to be shipped elsewhere. The question is, will people be able to pedal the battleship tank-bikes up an down SFs hills.
I've seen a nextbus pushbutton thing at the duboce church 22 and J shelter. It sounds pretty good... for 1997! I think that they are hiring voice over robot, Joshua from WarGames. Must be a union thing.
SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?
I think the bike sharing thing is a great idea...when folks get tired of waiting for their bus, they can say "Fudge it," and ride away. Probably only to get hit by the bus they were waiting for.
Why didn't they combine the "safe injection" concept into the shelters, reserving a small private area in each to shoot up?
Then the addicts could take a bus or bike, so as not to endanger others by driving.
Maybe the next generation of shelters will be made entirely of large plasma panel walls. That way 3 or 4 different commercials can play at the same time for the trapped passengers waiting for a bus.
how long before those speakers are announceing adverts in between arrival times? Any provisions for this?
I have a horrible vision of waiting for a bus while being forced to listen to an nonstop loop of radio-style advertising
There is a great article about the user-friendliness, success, and security issues related to the bike sharing in Paris from the New York Times on October 14th, called PARIS; Finding Liberté on Two Wheels
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01EED6113EF937A25753C1A9619C8B63
Will they be adding any bus shelters? I live in the Outer Sunset and we have hardly any.
The reason public bike sharing in San Francisco can't work is simple: The bikes will all be stolen within a week of launch.