A new program for L.A. City bus shelters could include digital advertising.
If you like blinking signs and digital advertisements, you’ll love when the City installs them in the bus shelters at the corner of Carey and Sunset, the corner of Temescal Canyon and Sunset and in front of the high school across from Bowdoin.
People who live in the condominiums near Simon Meadow might consider the digital advertising a type of night light — and at the quiet corner by the Palisades High baseball field, the flashing advertisements could serve as a beacon to warn motorists about deer and other wildlife that cross there.
Remember PaliHi’s digital announcements sign at the corner of Bowdoin and Temescal Canyon Road? It was upsetting to a few people and was eventually removed. The new movie/advertisement blinking messages would provide light once again on Temescal near PCH.
The Pacific Palisades Community Council has issued a letter to City officials (including Councilman Mike Bonin) that it opposes digital advertising. Palisades P.R.I.D.E. also submitted a letter requesting that the program be shut down.
Alas, despite extensive opposition, the Board of Public Works Commissioners issued a Request for Proposals.
The Westside Neighborhood Councils also sent a November 23 letter to Mayor Eric Garcetti, Bonin, Councilmember Paul Koretz, Executive Director of Streets LA Adel Hagekhalil and Greg Good, president of the Board of Public Works Commissioners, objecting to digital advertising: “We strongly object to the City issuing an RFP for the STAP program – the proposal to add digital signs with changing images in bus shelters or other street furniture — or making decisions as to the specifications of street furniture or scope of the program without making a dedicated effort to seek input from local councils, community leaders and the public. . . .We are deeply concerned that the design of this program has been built upon input from the industry and without broad public/community input.”
Bonin co-sponsored a motion in City Council calling for establishing “parameters of digital advertising and/or digital displays to ensure compatibility with their surrounding environments, traffic safety, and land-use zones such as specific plans and scenic highways.”
At Wednesday’s Pacific Palisades Business Improvement District meeting, David Peterson, who represents P.R.I.D.E., suggested that the BID look into digital advertising and possibly place it on a future agenda and vote to take a position. (The BID, a nonprofit, was formed to “making our Business Improvement District community, a clean, friendly place to work, shop and do business, by providing cleaning and marketing activities.”)
BID member Rick Lemmo (a Caruso Senior VP) cautioned that before taking a position they should find out if digital advertising signs are actually proposed for any bus benches within the BID boundaries (which don’t include Temescal Canyon Road).
There’s a bus shelter kitty corner to Fire Station 69 at Carey and Sunset, but it was quickly proclaimed as the Corpus Church bus shelter.
Peterson suggested, “If something is going on that’s just outside the district (and this is by about five feet and it is also directly across from the district) and it could impact the district, then it’s something we should be involved with.”
(Editor’s note: The City’s existing street furniture contract-including bus shelters-is expiring at the end of 2021 [in place since 2001], and the City is developing a successor program. Currently the City has a franchise agreement with Outfront JC Decaux, LLC, where the City grants that company the right to install and maintain street furniture in exchange for the right to use it to display paid advertising. There has been no cost to the City for the current program.)
I am puzzled as to why the bus shelter at Carey and Sunset is called a Corpus Church bus shelter. Besides that, I very much oppose any digital advertising anywhere in our community.