Meg Maguire

President, Scenic America

PPS partner Scenic America is the only national organization dedicated solely to safeguarding natural beauty and community character. In this letter to the Washington Post, President Meg Maguire argues against a recent plan to commercialize the DC Metro system.

In February the Metro Board will consider selling the visual and audio rights to our beautiful mass transit system to commercial advertisers. (See "Advertising Industry to Hitch Ride on Metro," Washington Post, Metro Section, November 14, 2003). Few citizens have heard of this cuckoo scheme. Why? Metro has held no public hearings nor conducted any studies of the impacts of this radical proposal on transit riders.

Why should citizens object to this particular revenue-generating plan?

• 1. The Metro subway system was designed in keeping with the monumental tradition of architecture in the Nation's Capitol. A limited number of advertising displays are carefully integrated with minimal visual intrusion. Metro's public spaces are part of our common public realm and therefore, should not be for sale.

The proposal uses old-fashioned zoetrope technology to flash brightly lit moving images in the tunnels, creating a disturbing visual strobe effect inside subway cars.

• 2. Once again Metro wants to wrap 100 buses and 20 trains in vinyl advertising, thus legitimizing graffiti as a publicly supported activity. Metro tried this once before and the public objected.

• 3. The proposal under consideration uses old-fashioned zoetrope technology to flash brightly lit moving images in the tunnels, creating a disturbing visual strobe effect inside subway cars. If you try to read, work or rest, you will be greatly disturbed by the cascade of moving images reflected from the window onto your book, newspaper, or closed eyes. The Epilepsy Foundation notes that for about 5% of the people who have epilepsy, exposure to flashing lights/images can trigger seizures.

• 4. The proposed video screens, with their annoying advertising jingles and flashing images, will further bombard passengers with unwanted, repetitious and distracting audio messages. And is there a free speech issue here? Metro will force people to listen to commercial speech while banning private passengers from playing or performing music.

• The recent public outcry about the September, 2003 NFL event on the National Mall shows that Washington residents strongly oppose overwhelming commercialization of public space and public events.
• Increasingly, top places to live and work are cracking down on poorly controlled commercial signage. Scenic America has documented over 750 cities and towns in America that have stopped new billboard construction, 120 of which are in the state of Texas. Four favorite places for tourists to travel and spend money are entirely billboard free: Alaska, Maine, Vermont and Hawaii. And municipalities in all the areas affected by Metro have strong local sign ordinances that Metro's proposed plan would violate.

• 5. Cluttering the landscape at train stations and parking lots with commercial banners is in direct violation of local municipal laws that strictly control outdoor advertising. There is growing evidence that people throughout the country are fed up with excess commercialization of the landscape and the cityscape.

There is growing evidence that people throughout the country are fed up with excess commercialization of the landscape and the cityscape.

• 6. Vendors in the stations, while meeting rider needs, could nonetheless pose an unacceptable security risk. Most businesses need locked storage, boxes and trash cans (presently limited in the stations as they pose a security threat). Furthermore, huge billboard-style banners will obstruct sight lines on the platforms.

• 7. The proposed commercial advertising assault in Metro is contrary to emerging academic research on the adverse effects of environmental stressors on task performance. Dr. Roger Ulrich, an internationally acclaimed environmental psychologist has studied the effects of environmental stressors on peoples' ability to solve problems and maintain attention. (Ulrich, Roger, et al. "Stress Recovery During Exposure to Natural and Urban Environments." Journal of Environmental Psychology, 1991)

Before taking radical steps to commercialize our Metro system, at a minimum the Metro Board should:

Hold extensive public hearings on the proposal during which citizens could preview a full scale model of what the Board proposes and present their views.

• Invite testimony from prominent environmental psychologists to predict the health impacts of urban stress on transit users.

• Produce an Environmental Impact Statement. Metro's actions are dramatically, and, we believe, deleteriously, affecting public space, human stress and essential services.

• Thoroughly analyze the security implications of commercializing the transit system.

By the time the public actually experiences The Utterly Altered Metro, it will be too late to undo the damage. The Metro Board should look for other ways of raising revenue rather than selling what doesn't belong to them - our field of vision, our hearing, our safety and our pride.