[zimpenfish]

> information that only changes infrequently, but often enough to offset the high cost of the panels vs. just having someone put up a new print

Bus advertising. According to people I worked with back in 2010 that were working on LED panels for buses[0], changing the vinyl advertising on a London bus took something like 3 days. Which is a long time for a bus to be out of service.

An e-ink panel is a great solution - lightweight, zero power use until it needs changing, and the refresh rate doesn't really matter.

[0] Didn't succeed because LED panels at the time were big, low-res, bulky, and extremely power hungry.

[michpoch]

> changing the vinyl advertising on a London bus took something like 3 days

That sounds like wrapping a whole bus with an ad. Hardly something an LED or e-ink display could replace.

[toast0]

There's a mix, a quick search took me to https://londonbusadvertising.com/ which shows wraps, which aren't going to be replaced with a display. But also rectangle panels which could be replaced with displays.

Those panels might very well be vinyl for outdoor durability, but I don't see why they'd take 3 days to swap out, unless it's a scheduling/transport issue, for example a bus operator needs to drop off day before, so the ad company doesn't have to schedule around when the drop off happens, and the bus operator picks up the bus the day after, because they don't want to schedule around when the ad company finishes; now your one hour swap is a multi-day production.

A full wrap, could be a 3 day process though.

[anigbrowl]

I'd love this to be banned. Not only is it a visual eyesore form the street, it devalues public transport's brand, and in many cases it makes it hard for people inside the vehicle to see where they are.

[TeMPOraL]

I love our buses in Kraków, Poland. They mostly don't carry any advertising on the outside, but when they do, it's advertising the fact that the bus is fully electric, zero-emissions, and part of the new all-electric fleet. It's low-key, aesthetic, and basically advertising public money being well-spent on improving QoL for citizens.

(I may be wired weird; I'm also happy when I see signs on stuff saying it's been financed by Local Program X, Subprogram Y, with support from EU Program A, Subprogram B, Function C, blahblah. Unfortunately not everyone cares to make those look aesthetically, given that the information is only placed because it's a condition of the grant, but it usually looks OK and IMHO sends a positive message.)

EDIT:

Trams here have been seen carrying exterior ads for private businesses every now and then, less so now than in the past; these days, it's mostly either default coloration or some temporary "this train is new and awesome" ad.

Bus stops, however, are another matter.

As for internal screens, sometimes ads find their way onto the "bus TV" and "tram TV" displays. Most of the time, it's a mix of tourist trivia, air quality report, PSAs (safety warnings, transit etiquette), and transit org's own ads (showing off new eco-friendly fleet, job ads). There's a separate set of screens that show a map (OSM!) and the route with upcoming stop markers, but unfortunately, half the time they're broken - either the map or route indicator is frozen, or they get desynced from each other, or reality. Voice announcements seem to be a separate system and are usually reliable, though every now and then they desync from reality too.

I sometimes wonder who's maintaining this and if they'll take a volunteer (or part-time contractor) to help them keep the indicators working.

[nottorp]

> I may be wired weird; I'm also happy when I see signs on stuff saying it's been financed by Local Program X, Subprogram Y, with support from EU Program A, Subprogram B, Function C, blahblah.

Do they also carry the name of the local politician who runs the program? That should raise some eyebrows...

[guappa]

In copenhagen all the internal screens show ads instead of the next stop.

It's very useful to get lost.

[zimpenfish]

> That sounds like wrapping a whole bus with an ad.

They were talking about the standard landscape side panels. Didn't make much sense to me either but that was why the bus companies were throwing money at them to get LED panels working (aside from the financial bonus of being able to book multiple ads for the same bus, obvs.)

(As an example of how efficient TFL's advertising swapping was - there was a poster at Deptford Bridge DLR advertising a Gorky exhibition in 2010 that wasn't changed until late 2017/early 2018. And all that involved was opening the street-level case to put in a new poster!)

[rbanffy]

Not one, but it can be covered in screens. This has been demoed in cars for some time now.

[dspillett]

> Bus advertising.

If what I see on busses around here (York, UK, and occasionally other cities) is anything to go by, bus-side advertising is dying on its arse. Most of the busses I see are carrying adverts for sales that ended months ago of films “in cinemas now!” that stopped playing on the big screen a year or more ago. If bus-side adverting were in a healthy state I'd have thought new content would have replaced those long ago.

[m463]

wonder if temperature and durability will be issues on the side of a bus...

[zimpenfish]

> wonder if temperature and durability will be issues on the side of a bus...

They were in 2010 with the panels we had running in New York. I think at any one time, >50% were off the road with issues (dirt, vibration[0], temperature, power supplies, etc.)

[0] e.g. the CF cards holding the OS would eventually just work themselves out of their slots.