This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Today there is an article in the Times about the MTA quietly releasing RFP’s for branding subway stations, a la stadiums, to make up for a projected $1 billion shortfall. Would you want to take the “L” brought to you by Nike to Barnes & Noble 14th Street/Union Square? I sure wouldn’t – it is enough that there are huge advertisements already on the subway platforms and in the train cars; but to start naming stations after the highest bidder is just commercialism gone amok – even in a city of huge commercialization.
Others have pointed out that different stations are already branded: Times Square (New York Times), Rockefeller Center, Yankee Stadium (but it does stop at the stadium) and Columbia. But these entities are uniquely New York City institutions; the companies who will invariably win the bidding war will be large corporations (who else could afford the price?) with little, or no presence in New York City. The Dells and Apples, Nike’s and Adidas’, the car manufacturers, eBay, Amazon.com – you name it. No Dr. Z 23rd Street Station, no Nathan’s Coney Island Station, no Katz Delancy Station. There is a difference between local entities having station names, and huge, faceless corporations based outside New York (both geographically and spiritually) gobbling up stations as a line-item on an advertising budget.
But, doesn’t this discount the fact that New York City has the highest ad per square mile? You are already innudated by countless ads, what about one more? Would you like your fare raised instead? These are good questions, but they sidestep the issue.
I can live with the advertising all over the city, and what is currently in the subways, but we have to draw the line somewhere. There must be a different way that the MTA can raise funds, without raising our daily MetroCard fare. The Times reports that the MTA moves the equivalent of all Americans flying in an entire year, but in only 11 weeks! In three years the MTA moves the “equivalent of every man, woman and child on the planet!” So, if the MTA is bigger than the airlines, and the airlines were bailed out, then it stands to reason that the Federal government must help out New York, right?
Well, you would be wrong. New York constantly gets less money in Federal aid than we send to Washington in taxes. For every tax dollar sent to the Federal government, New York gets only $.85 back in funding. North Dakota, with less people than even the Borough of Brooklyn, gets $2.02 back each year (mostly due to military contracts I suppose)! I am all for income distribution, but let’s distribute it fairly. Both highways and airlines are hugely subsidized, all I am asking for is similar attitude broaden to a system which moves more people than a four lane highway.