No, please, no more advertising on the Metro. Right now, the ads in the cathedral-like stations and on the trains are few and widely spaced. Nice. I know Metro is strapped for cash, but draping the train exteriors completely with ads (like you see now on buses) and placing lighted ads inside subway tunnels? Oh, well.
It’s a dramatic departure for a transit system designed by Army generals to appear spic and span. Newsstands and shops have never been permitted inside stations, as they are in other subway systems. Advertising has been banned at Metro-owned bus shelters. And it is illegal on trains to play music without wearing headphones, let alone hang a monitor to broadcast commercials.
“I’ve seen a sea change from an earlier attitude which had this ideal, pristine environment where advertising was the bane of existence to today where you have this panoply of ideas, many of which I consider exciting and appropriate to raise revenue for a system strapped for cash,” said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who chairs the Metro board.