Old: Bus Stop – New: Transit Shelter
Woohoo! Here good news for those of us keeping car free DC. From the WashPost:
Clear Channel Outdoor and D.C. transportation officials announced that the Phoenix-based advertising company will install 788 bus shelters throughout the District. Officials said the bus shelters will have up-to-the-minute bus-arrival information and will be linked to a Web-based monitoring system that will track operations and maintenance of the shelters.
Now isn’t that cool? Bus stops with bus arrival information, so you know how long you have to wait. And check out the different stylish shelters they should be putting up. Now there is only one little catch to get all this by 2009 at no cost to the D.C. Department of Transportation: a contract that gives Clear Channel Outdoor exclusive rights to advertising at the new shelters for the next 20 years.
Aahh, this will be so nice. Now let’s see how long it really takes them to install…
Hopefully, this won’t be like the bus information panel in the shelter for the 38B near where I live. There’s a little marquee with the time of day and some ad for a company claiming to provide you with bus schedule updates, but no actual updates.