Why the TTC’s Engineers Killed Billboards in Subway Tunnels
There is a lack of understanding of the basic operation of our signalling system. If a driver has seen a previous RED it is very much expected he will have stopped at it and not after it!
-TTC engineering staff to Sidetrack “Technologies”.
In a huge victory for rocket riders, the Toronto Transit Commission’s engineers have rejected a proposal to install billboards in Toronto’s subway tunnels on the grounds that the ads would be a safety hazard, create distraction for subway drivers and cost the TTC more than it would earn.
The ads would resemble video screens to passengers looking out the windows of moving subway cars.
Sidetrack “Technologies” CEO Rob Walker happily degrades subway passengers by calling them a “captive and extremely targetable audience.” He explained to Marketing Magazine in January 2007 that the TTC rejected Sidetrack because “the TTC has other priorities.” The true story is delineated in Freedom of Information documents obtained by IllegalSigns.ca which paint a stark picture of Sidetrack’s ill-fated TTC proposal - a picture of TTC engineers fed up with an advertising company’s irresponsible obfuscations, non-responses and downright unprofessional attitude to their straightforward queries about rider safety, economy and engineering. Sidetrack even suggest subway drivers could run red lights and gave TTC engineers canned answers to specific engineering problems that were cut and pasted from discussions Sidetrack had with other transit authorities with entirely different subway systems.
If Sidetrack were installed in the TTC, there wouldn’t be one place left where a rocket rider could look to avoid unwanted ads. Sidetrack was approved for a test installation under CBS’s advertising contract with the TTC, but the deal fell through over Sidetrack’s incompatibility with the TTC’s systems and the company’s amateurish attitude towards the concerns of the TTC’s engineers.
The whole Sidetrack affair likely has CBS’s staffers wondering why they ever got into bed with a bit player like Sidetrack “Technologies” in the first place.
Now let’s take a look at the communications between the TTC’s engineers and Sidetrack’s engineering staff. This data is from a question and answer spreadsheet, the TTC’s questions are on the left and Sidetrack’s “answers” are on the right.
The TTC can’t afford the investment
The TTC already wasted too much money on this crap
The TTC will lose money on this, has no resources for this and Sidetrack’s not answering our questions
Would you please just give us an answer?
Transit buffs will break into the TTC to vandalize Sidetrack
Derailed trains will crash into Sidetrack
(but that’s ok, says Sidetrack, because the signals are “very much more protrusive” than the ads…. except you need signals to run a subway, you don’t need tunnel-spam)
Sidetrack just doesn’t understand the TTC’s signals. The installations are too long and will interfere with the wayside signals.
Duh, at the TTC we actually stop at red lights and go much faster than 45kph
Sidetrack still doesn’t get it. The TTC uses wayside signaling. W-A-Y-S-I-D-E
No wonder Sidetrack doesn’t get it. Sidetrack just copied and pasted answers from questions posed by other transit authorities
We say YAY for the TTC’s engineers!
July 16th, 2007 at 6:19 am
While I’m fairly indifferent to whether the TTC wants to put up advertising in tunnels, I don’t see anything particularly unprofessional about this correspondence.
It makes absolute sense for Sidetrack to want to keep discussions about safety separate from those about contracts and revenue. Safety and security issues would have to be the first priority, and if they couldn’t be resolved, potentially long and protracted negotiations on the commercial side would be a waste of time. This is entirely appropriate project management methodology.
As to cutting and pasting from other documents, without revealing what was cut and pasted, it’s impossible to say whether any erroneous information was delivered as a result. If not - if the cut and paste was just boiler plate that would apply anywhere - then it doesn’t make much difference.
Nice rant, though.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Patrick, do your own count and publish it in a comment on this page. How many questions from TTC were directly and fully answered?
July 16th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Joe
I actually agree with Patrick in that how much a system costs is not pertinent to a safety Q&A. Cost-benefit *is* a contract point, and there is always a certain amount of time and money spent evaluating proposals of this nature - sometimes you have to spend money to make money. In fact, if TTC isn’t spending money evaluating proposals, this might be why there is so much advertising on TTC and yet they don’t seem to make much money.
But if there are no available workcars to transport the bill posters, Sidetrack just won’t work so Sidetrack puts the cart before the horse by claiming that resources are a contractual issue. -Rami
The alarming bit is the blase attitude of Sidetrack towards differences between TTC’s systems and other systems - that is absolutely a safety point and not something to be fobbed off, although TTC is cited as not providing certain agreed data which might have improved their response.
Accordingly, I would only consider the answers from “Transit Buffs will break in…” down to be pertinent to what seems to have been the point of the exercise. On that basis alone there seems to be a lot of hurdles to jump before getting to the question of cost apportionment in the lead off excerpts.