Advertising’s coming back to Charlotte city buses. And it’s coming to light rail cars – an option not available in 2001, when the governing body for the Charlotte Area Transit System voted to remove the ads from bus exteriors.
Category: advertising
Want your face on the side of a bus? Now it’s possible
Advertising’s coming back to Charlotte city buses. And it’s coming to light rail cars – an option not available in 2001, when the governing body for the Charlotte Area Transit System voted to remove the ads from bus exteriors.
Your face on the side of a CATS bus?
Carolyn Flowers, CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit System, tells me today that she expects the issue of advertising on CATS vehicles to come up at the Wednesday meeting of the Metropolitan Transit Commission. Here’s a link to the agenda.
Former CATS CEO Ron Tober nixed the advertising early on in his tenure. He told me he thought it was important, in launching a new transit service, for it to look professional and clean. And certainly, the Lynx Blue Line has been very successful. I am not sure how much of that is due to the lack of advertising placards and how much to other factors, though I suspect the latter.
That said, they should look into the advertising. With the half-cent transit sales tax revenues dropping to 2005 levels, I think they could trade off some pristine appearances in exchange for some cash. Flowers said the most recent estimate, at least a year old and done by the City of Charlotte, said ads could bring in from $590,000 to $2.6 million a year. (Transit sales tax revenues this year are projected at $57 million, with 2010-11 projections at $59.4 million.)
(Note: Flowers’ father died today in California. She’s traveling to the West Coast and expects to be gone several days.)