April 24, 2008
Corporate Subway Considered, Water Too Cheap, McGuinty Talks Trains
"Next stop, Quarter Pounder" is something you could be hearing on the subway in the future, as City Council agrees to look at selling station naming rights to corporations. However, TTC vice-chair Joe Mihevc calls the study a "waste of time" and says the idea should be rejected, presumably because he's polled all 1.5 million riders and knows that they'd rather pay higher fares than suffer the indignity of a subway stop named after a basketball shoe instead of a 19th century Brit. Say, what if they sold the naming rights to Subway? Everybody wins!
The Province is considering charging higher fees to companies that bottle and sell water from Ontario lakes and streams. Starting next year the fee will be $3.71 per million litres of water. The water sells for about two bucks a litre…so that's a margin of about…hmmm, one hundred million percent. Yeah, we can probably do better.
Premier Dalton McGuinty says that bullet trains are the future of transportation. Except in other countries, where they're the present.
A Sikh temple in Mississauga that received $250,000 dollars from a so-called provincial government "slush fund" has lost its charitable status after failing to file an information return with the Canada Revenue Agency. Whatever happened to the good old days when you could phone a cabinet minister, tell him, "I'm feeling multicultural this morning," and get a cheque for quarter of a million by noon?
Federal Immigration Minister Diane Finley is having her security beefed up by the RCMP, apparently because she's been threatened by criminal groups, who are angry about legislation which cracks down on foreign exotic dancers. A spokesman for organized crime said, "Everybody knows that all meetings between gangsters and crooked cops have to happen in strip bars. What are we gonna do if there's no dancers?"
Photo by JPhilipson.
|
Steve Munro just posted his thoughts on yesterday's TTC decision. A snippet:
Mr. Munro followed his remarks by noting that corporations could sponsor streetcar stops much more cheaply than subways.
A bullet train from Quebec City to Windsor is a no brainer .... unfortunately our government has no brains, but that isn't helping.
Also, naming rights for subway stations is an affront to public space. We have a right to advertisement-free public space! Whatever happened to the commons!
Tuds
The TTC has displayed an extreme inability to interact with corporations in a way that makes any sense at all or benefits commuters, so we can not only look forward to Pepsi Station, but the naming rights will only bring in half a million dollars after 12 years and give Pepsi resale rights and exclusive vending machine contracts on the platforms.
It'll happen.
It makes me kind of sick that the TTC is considering selling the naming rights to the station. Does everything in our society have to be a fucking advertisement?
Why don't we just change the name of Toronto to the CITY OF ROGERS or THE CITY OF BELL or maybe the CITY OF THE TEACHERS PENSION!
This has generated at lot more discussion over at blogTO. (Tangent: since getting rid of guest accounts and forcing everyone to register, Torontoist doesn't really get the regular big discussions anymore.)
Rek, your horizons are too small! Think outside the box. Station names that change monthly (or weekly), depending on the sponsor or product!
Sure, there will be a few minor upgrades to the stations names. Need pixelboards or LCDs in place of the tiled-in names. And the on-train map displays will have to get upgraded to LCDs, but just imagine--the transit map as a living document.
I'm pretty sure the platform-level vending machines will get nixed due to security concerns, like the heavy ceramic garbage bins of old. If vending machines appear anywhere, it will be above the platform level -- where the Gateways and other concession stands are.
(rek: I'm completely okay knowing that comment threads like this one are a thing of the past on Torontoist.)
For those who mention Yorkdale as a corp sponsorship - the nearest road to the station is actually Yorkdale Road...
the 680 news article on "bullet" trains. Existing VIA trains top out at 160km/h where the track permits. While 200km/h would allow "high speed" status to be claimed, the new generation ICE and TGV trains run to 350km/h.
(The Shanghai subway, on which our Glorious Blondness was pictured this weekend, runs at 431km/h but is horrifically expensive and not interoperable with the existing networks, whereas ICE/TGV/AVE/Shinkansen could if they met Canadian buff strength standards and the track had electric overhead provided.)
bah - strike Shanghai subway and insert maglev - brainfade there.
I rode one of France's high speeds once. Wicked cool.
I for one would like to see "Coxwell by Cialis", "Fairmont Royal York", "DuPont Lycra" and possibly "Wilson ProStaff".
Ditch the street names completely and make life a living hell for anybody visiting from somewhere else. Just assign random product names every week.
i hope all opposed didn't vote for the city council currently responsible for our state of financial ruin...
I get it, too many ads (agreed) but what other things can we start doing to generate much-needed capital? At least consider these ideas. No real integrity to protect in a transit station is there?
And we already allow complete ad wraps of buses and station interiors. What about the couple mil we kicked in on the Museum station? It's ok for that "business" (they have singles nites for crying out loud, somewhat commercial-ish)
Perhaps if we're go going to decorate our stations in themes:
1. let corps pick up the tab
2. it sure beats the bathroom tiles
The naming of public spaces has always been the prerogative of the people who hold the money and the power and can afford to subsidize them. In the middle ages it was the Church so everything was named after saints and popes during the European colonial expansion, soldiers and politicians (still reflected in most important Toronto streets and hence subway stations) and when the early 20th industrialists were building their fortunes it was "Rockefeller" this and "Carnegie" that.
Why should we be any different? Just saying, is all.
Being named for something/someone notable isn't even remotely the same as said entity doing the naming itself, for profit, with a logo or ad on every surface.
rek:
I think it's a far more delicate distinction than you're making it out to be. In every case the named thing is intended to promote and aggrandize the entity that paid for it, whether it be government, church, tycoon or corporation. The principal thing is that things change much more quickly nowadays, so the nomenclature always seems cheap and commercial, rather than historical and interesting.