I just realized something a little while ago.

[conuly]

Some years back, half the buses on the Island were covered, in the spaces where the ads ought to be, in Christian graffiti. You know the sort of thing - Bible quotes and blah blah blah about Jesus saving us and so on.

All in the same sharpied handwriting.

And eventually I got tired of it and shot off an email to the MTA complaints department. They sent back a form letter asking for the specific bus line, to which I replied that it was epidemic on all Staten Island buses and that given the uniformity and the sheer amount of graffiti per bus it really must be somebody at the depot.

And do you know, that worked? Within a month the graffiti was gone and never came back. I should've filed that complaint a lot earlier rather than gritting my teeth every time I got on the bus. Live and learn, I guess.

Comments

[rmc28]

You remind me of a similar lesson I learned this summer. Late last year, the council rolled out new electronic signs to a bunch of bus stops that didn't get have them, so people can see when the next buses are due, linked to the real-time tracking system. Helpful! Except that these signs also had a rotation through a bunch of top BBC headlines, so if I wanted to check how the next bus was coming, I had to grit my teeth through a bunch of news headlines, either reminding me of stuff I was trying to avoid, or useless without context, or actively scary[1].

Anyway I grumbled to spouse about it, and with a couple of friends, and Older Child grumbled with me a couple of times, but early in July I was at the stop with my whole family and 10 minutes to wait and Older Child was grumbling and I thought "OK, let's actually grumble at someone who can do something". So I dug out my phone and found a contact email at the council, and spent the rest of the wait and half the bus journey painstakingly typing out a polite request on my phone to turn off the headlines on the bus stops. And a fortnight later they were gone!

(I have some concern about oversight in the council, both of how the headline service was turned on in the first place and how they got turned off at the request of me, J Random Citizen, but they are gone!)

[1] "Merkel victim of attack" was one: I was thinking what the FUCK? How? Who? Where? This can mean nothing good for international politics! Then I looked it up on my phone, it was a cyber attack on politician emails.

[gwydion]

FTW!!!

[wpadmirer]

That is SO cool. GO YOU!

[cactuswatcher]

You certainly deserve a pat on the back for speaking up. Maybe it was just luck that it got to right person at the right time, but still, if nobody complained...

[swingandswirl]

Go you for speaking up, and yay that it was resolved so quickly!

[movingfinger]

My guess is that the headlines were turned on by default in the equipment---no one made a conscious decision to include them in your service. (Possibly they are supposed to be placeholders for a feed from the transit agency containing information scrolls like "67 BUS REROUTE SAT 8/31 SUN 9/1 FOR FESTIVAL --- THIS STOP CLOSED --- NEAREST STOP HIGH ST X WILLOW.")

But what a weird feature to include even as a demo in something with one job first and foremost: posting bus arrival times.

[adafrog]

That's good that complaining actually worked.

[archangelbeth]

Yay for success!

[conuly]

Indeed. I might not have been the first complaint, of course.

[greghousesgf]

awesome!

[silveradept]

Excellent. There's enough God-graffiti in the world as it is, we don't need more people taking it on themselves to deface public transit that way.

[chez_jae]

See something, say something

:D