City Plan Commission: Not lovin’ these signs.
The City Plan Commission took up the ongoing debate over the large advertising signs that accompany the city’s new bike share stations, even as it gave the green light for the third phase for the project.
Commissioners in their regular monthly meeting Wednesday gave unanimous approval to five more stations of the planned 30 station bike share system but only after nearly 30 minutes of discussing some complaints.
The loudest concerns center on advertising that apparently for the public is unexpectedly large, featuring an international brand — McDonald’s — advertising food seemingly at odds with the perceived healthful mission of the program, and the location of those signs near city schools.
Commission Chair Ed Mattison said that he’d received between six and 12 calls from residents who expressed concerns that the bike share signs are much larger and intrusive than expected. While he said the calls might not be a representative sample of feelings around town, he said, some admonished commissioners for not talking more about these details. He said one caller even characterized the signs as “scary” because they’re big enough for someone to hide behind.
“I think everybody who called me said they approved of the idea and that the bicycle part looked pretty good, but they felt that New Haven has traditionally avoided this sort of advertisements on the sidewalks unlike many other places which have a lot of this sort of thing,” he said. “I think everybody started off with the proposition that these bike things are great when we first heard about this and you gave us a demonstration. I don’t know if we should have been more awake to what we were actually buying.”
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Mattison: Signs are unexpectedly intrusive.
The City Plan Commission took up the bike share program on two previous occasions, approving nine bike stations in November and another 10 in January. The first phase was unveiled Tuesday. Phase one and two stations are located in downtown, Dixwell, Newhallville, Fair Haven, and Hill North.
On Wednesday, commissioners ultimately approved five more stations that would expand the program, which will eventually include 300 bikes. Phase three expands the system further in downtown, specifically at the State and Union train stations, in East Rock, Fair Haven, and the Hill.
Mattison noted that people were upset that the McDonald’s ads promote inexpensive food that is not particularly healthful.
Mattison said he was a little upset with himself because he didn’t think very hard about what the signs might actually look like or how they might appear to people. But ultimately he’s not sure that the commission would have made different decisions even if they knew that the signs would be as they are given that the advertising is really what pays for the program.
Traffic, Transit, and Parking Deputy Mike Pinto said that when the bike share program was making its way through the aldermanic approval process and eventually the City Plan site process, no one hid the fact that the signs would be large four-by-eight panels. Big advertising was the trade-off for making sure that the system could exist without any funding from the city. And though people have heartburn about McDonald’s, he noted that the brand is a major advertiser with New York City’s transit system as well as the Olympics.
Pinto (at left in photo) fills in commission on ad guidelines.
Pinto said the guidelines for advertising with the city’s bike share excludes obscenity, grossly misleading or false information, tobacco, electronic cigarettes, and firearms. But it does not exclude fast food. He also noted that the location of stations near schools was at the request of some alders.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand said he first encountered one of the McDonald signs over on Audubon Street and was “taken aback,” particularly because such a large sign would usually have to be approved by alders. He said he had forgotten that such signage was associated with the new bike share program.
“I agree with you Mr. Chair that there could be an element of buyer’s remorse here when you see a schematic and it doesn’t have the actual advertiser in it that first buys space,” he said. “It doesn’t hit you as seeing the physical object in three-dimension in real life. So when I saw it, I was like, ‘Whoa that’s a big McDonald’s advertisement right here on Audubon Street. How did this get approved?’
“It got approved because I and others of my colleagues approved it although we certainly didn’t have any say, or didn’t exercise any say, about to whom the company would sell that space,” Marchand added. “It was certainly eye-catching.”