Friday, February 27, 2004

 
VERY CROSS AT THE INTERSECTION.
External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/nyregion/27BUTT.html?th

The New York Times today reports that, In New York City, almost all of those buttons with signs telling pedestrians to press them for a walk signal aren't hooked up to anything, and haven't been since the late 1980s. Those intersections are now controlled by computers. However, a relatively small number, about 750 of them, do still work, and you will never see a walk sign, until a pedestrian presses the button or a car comes to the intersection.

The article explains that "At $300 or $400 per intersection, it would cost about $1 million to remove the disconnected mechanisms," and that there's always a more pressing need for that money.

But how much would it cost to leave the buttons and just take down the "To Cross Street Push Button" signs or just paint over the signs or even just slap a "disconnected" sticker on the signs at those intersections where the buttons are disconnected? I'm going to guess that would cost much, much less, perhaps no more than a few dollars per intersection. If that's still too much money, then why not sell the signs to advertisers, and let them cover the costs of repainting? Remember, the intersections where the buttons were disconnected, are those where there was too much foot traffic for the button to handle, so they'd be quite attractive to advertisers, who'd have a truly captive audience and no other ads around to compete with. I'm not normally in favor of increasing the amount of advertising I'm exposed to, but this is one rare case where it would be better than the alternative.

This is The Official Record. 12:01 PM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2004/02/very-cross-at-intersection.html


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