Sunday, January 27, 2008

A message from the MTA

The MTA will install these electronic message boards at Queens bus shelters to keep passengers abreast of transit conditions:

a) in the next few months
b) within 5 years
c) right after they post the MTA Bus schedules (a.k.a "never")

If you answered "c" you'd be correct.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who got the contract
for these new bus shelters anyway?

What was wrong with the old ones ?

Now the glass roof design offers a new opportunity
for vandals who are intent on throwing stones!

This is how the MTA spends its money.....
on pretty-fication instead of improved bus service ?

Anonymous said...

The term bus shelter is an oxymoron; there is no shelter from wind or rain with these new things. Yes, indeed, it would be interesting to see who held that contract.

Anonymous said...

this is just putting a badage on a broken leg.

Anonymous said...

...and no shelter from the sun either, which can be scorching in the summer when you're waiting about for a sluggish bus. I've seen commuters opt to stand under trees instead.

Anonymous said...

These contraptions will be a vandals delight. Available for repeated destruction 24 hours a day. How many "shelters" have been vandalized and remain so for weeks?

If the MTA were actually serious and wasn't in the business of letting idiotic contracts for its favorite kickbackers, it would create a computer-driven audio response unit that would handle thousands of simultaneous phone inquiries. Each "shelter" has a unique ID. That and the bus route ID could be entered by cellphone, and the system could respond instantly with the estimated time of that bus' time of arrival at that shelter.

Did you ever call your bank or credit card issuer? It's all audio response unit.

So, MTA would only need to adapt an old and tested technology. Oh! No big dollar kickbacks. Forget it!

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure asking when shelters with message boards offering guaranteed incorrect information will be ready is the right question. The L train waiting time messages have proven to be useless; the 45 Road/Court House Square 7 stop has a multitude of digital clocks, all of which seem to offer a different time. Even if the info is accurate, how does that make the bus or train reach you any faster?

Anonymous said...

Atlas Mall is contempating putting them in their property at every corner. However they have not been able to find anyone shopping in their property to look for the bus home.