Fun With Surveys: Help The City Of Philadelphia Pick Out Street Furniture
Contrary to what a quick survey of your favorite homeless people, with their refrigerator boxes and soiled couches, would lead you to belive, street furniture is not the discarded remains of old apartments and dead relationships. Rather, it’s the stuff, usually put there by the local governing body, that populates the pavement: Bus shelters, benches, trash cans, and so on. Center City, as it happens, doesn’t have all that much in the way of street furniture these days. But all of that could change soon, as city planners are currently putting the call out for feedback:
“By the end of the year the City will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to provide, maintain and sell advertising for bus shelters in Philadelphia. The RFP will also invite proposals for additional pieces of street furniture. Street furniture is the collective term referring to objects and pieces of equipment installed on streets and sidewalks that are intended for public use. Transit/bus shelters and newspaper boxes are examples of street furniture currently in use in Philadelphia. Let the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities know what you think by completing this survey.
Survey link:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229S67Z8US3 “
The survey is interesting enough just for the possible scenarios and items it provides; on one hand, a couple of well-placed bike shelters or publication corrals could come in handy in certain areas, but on the other, massive sales kiosks could really have a way of junking up any pavement they stand on. And in any case, it’s not like you have a bus to catch. Take the damned survey already.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Just the thing our beautiful downtown – an urbane and historic pedestrian wonderland if there ever was one – really needs: hundreds and hundreds of eye-level billboards shouting at me to buy shit.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I can’t tell in the examples in the survey if those are static displays of advertising, or do they change/rotate? The one from Chicago saya amarque at the top that says “City Information” but below that is an advertisment. Is there info on the other side we can’t see? Does that ad scroll to some actual information of some sort? (That I would find more acceptable than a static advertisement.)
You can’t tell, so I’m voting against what may be just more billboards.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Fun fact: CBS Outdoor and Clear Channel have more say than SEPTA in where bus shelters are placed based on how much exposure they’ll get. Standing in the rain waiting for your bus? Well, you should bring a ton of friends in the target demographic with disposable income to stand with you and maybe you’ll stay dry.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Just to be clear- we already have a street furniture contract, with CBS outdoors. So the bus shelters, newspaper boxes and such that you see are already provided to us by them in exchange for ads. The question here is- what furniture do we need, how much of it, and how much advertising is palatable. It’s not a science, which is why public opinion is so important. And schmoe is right when he says that SEPTA has little impact on bus shelters being cited. The goal here is to find places that are mutually agreed upon by commuters and advertisers.