Naming rights for Public Transit

I'm sure that readers of this blog will be very much aware of the benefits and long-term and indirect economic advantages of public transit. Yet politicians, obsessed with the short-term impacts and direct costs, continually seek out the cheapest stop-gap token effort. Lack of government support all to often means that the transit systems in our cities are often less than optimal - a handful of buses when what is really needed is an extensive underground metro system. Most of the state owned buses in Sydney are plastered with advertising, inside and out. However, the privately owned buses have very little advertising - go figure... Frankly, I wish there was more advertising on the bus I ride into work - it'd give me something to read and hopefully even lead to some kind of improvement in service.

I've often wondered why the governments don't approach the owners of shopping centres, large residential/vacation accomodation towers and major work places for partial sponsorship in return for routing train/metro lines and locating stations within walking distance of (or directly under) their entrances.

It occured to me, that it might even be worth their while negotiating naming rights for train lines or even the entire transit system within a city. It might be just that I'm a massive transit geek, but I'd go well out of my way (to the point that it would influence my decision to travel to Atlanta) to ride "The Coca Cola Ribbon" and would start salivating if a red and silver train turned up, carrying a couple of drink vending machines. They could even rig the ticket scanners at the gates to accept a Coca Cola barcode (scanned by a device capable of sensing the heat of the can) as an alternative to a conventional ticket/smart card. They earn over $2 Billion a year, and spend ludicrous amounts on advertising.

My dad would catch the first plane to San Francisco to be one of the first to ride the iTrain to Cupertino, especially if it connected to a train named after Google (sorry, they've got enough resources to come up with their own ingenious name).

With annual sales topping $400 billion, Walmart (or even just one of the Waltons) could easily afford to sponsor (or even build) "The Walmart Trolley" or "The Walmart Way" - deliving groceries to a station near you.

I'd love to see some of the iconic Australian brands step up and help provide some high quality public transport closer to home. RM Williams could steal the thunder from the Sydney Opera House and Uluru with "The Retro Metro" ("The RM" or "The Retro" for short). If the owners of the Q1 tower on Queensland's Gold Coast chipped in enough cash, perhaps they could name it "The Q Tube" (which could be shorted to "The Q"). I'd love to commute to work on "The Dreamworld Coaster", even if it didn't do any loops or pull high G's.

Surely if large corporations made substantial contributions towards public transit they'd be able to negotiate some carbon credits based on the number of cars they were removing from the roads. BHP - "The Big Australian" could provide (some of) the extra funding needed to complete Sydney's North West Metro (or "The Big Train"). Okay, so their annual profit is only half of the ammount that Morris Iemma had at one stage budgeted for the project, but especially given that it's looking less likely that the govenernment will cough up with any of it, even a token gesture from BHP would be appreciated.

If an oil company was interested in improving their public image could "The Crude Tube" buy them some brownie points with the greenies? Funding "The City Slicker" would represent a drop in the ocean for Exxon Mobil.

I understand that all of these big corporations need to answer to their share holders - but will the share holders be prepared to answer to our grandchildren in decades to come when our air is unbreathable and our streets packed to the point where their daily commute into work takes up most of the day? Perhaps some of their share holders will read this blog, but I'm sure that most of them find themselves cursing at the amount of traffic clogging up our roads on their way into work each day.

Is it just me? Do you think that there's a limit to the amount of advertising you could tolerate on public transit? Can you think of a catchy name that could be applied to your local transit system by a wealthy corporation (or person)?