I suspect that these were changed because paper is missing a very important feature desired by NYC, ads.
It seems like then most likely reason they would roll out such expensive maps is so they can display ads and “recoup” their costs.
This would infuriate me greatly if I was rushing through the subway, trying to figure out my stops and it switched over to an ad for a few seconds.
However, displaying in different languages would be nice.
It frustrates me when orgs, especially ngo and gov, will incur some needless or not very necessary cost, then layer on some new burden like ads to try to pay for the expensive new thing. Thinking critically about cost and benefit helps in planning and avoiding these types of situations.
Highly cynical response. It pretty clearly states in their reply that one of the main motivations is to eventually display more real-time information like outages and maintenance. Not easy to do with static paper maps. In fact when I was living there, they had a bulletin board in every station that had to be updated by a human posting a flyer when their were outages.
Real-time information on real-time displays, static information on static displays. Maps are extremely cheap, change rarely, and should be everywhere. Don't remove the map from in front of my eye while I'm using it in order to warn me about maintenance that doesn't concern me, or give me a terrorist warning I've heard a thousand times.
Not cynical, realistic. I'm not american and was hugely surprised at how little digital information is provided in the NYC Metro compared to other large public transportation systems (Berlin, Paris, London) and that the few screens I came across spend a good part of the time displaying ads instead of service information (e.g. when the next train is coming). I understand the need for ads, but they could perhaps have printed maps next to the ad screen and cheap LED screens for service times or split the screen in info/ad sections.
We have those kinds of screens plastered all over public transport in Scandinavia too.
We have an extensive public transport system especially with busses, but now there are up to 12 screens of inescapable news and advertisements with short blinks of actual info in each one.
It's infuriating and reminds me of the dystopian scenarios in Verhoeven movies. I distinctly remember seeing the subway scene in total recall from 1990 and thinking, that's a bit extreme.
> when I was living there, they had a bulletin board in every station that had to be updated by a human posting a flyer when their were outages.
They still have that and it's a perfectly good way to get a quick look at what changes are being made to your train for the weekend or a coming holiday. Cheap, analog notices like that aren't bad just because it's not displayed on a futuristic interactive touch screen.
Definitely cynical. Both in guessing intent and not believing the official posts at all. I think my cynicism is warranted based on years of experience with NY subway.
It will be cool if this time it’s different. But usually it’s not stupidity, it just will make sense once they start trying to make money.
It seems like then most likely reason they would roll out such expensive maps is so they can display ads and “recoup” their costs.
This would infuriate me greatly if I was rushing through the subway, trying to figure out my stops and it switched over to an ad for a few seconds.
However, displaying in different languages would be nice.
It frustrates me when orgs, especially ngo and gov, will incur some needless or not very necessary cost, then layer on some new burden like ads to try to pay for the expensive new thing. Thinking critically about cost and benefit helps in planning and avoiding these types of situations.