Naming Rights as a Revenue Tool for Transit

[Doady]

There are many sports venues that sell naming rights to generate revenue. Transit agencies and municipalities also have an opportunity to do the same to increase the quality of service and attract new riders. The naming rights can be for routes, stations, a particular part of the network, or even for the entire system.

For example, TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) can become TD Transit (Toronto-Dominion Transit), and the logo can be changed to green square to match with TD Bank. Alternatively, the naming right could be just for the subway system, the TTC Subway becoming the TD Subway.

There are many other opportunities. TTC bus route 7 Bathurst being renamed 7 Up is another obvious fit. The 41 Keele bus serves a Walmart Supercentre, that is an excellent opportunity to get Walmart to become a sponsor. Of course, 41 Walmart servicing Keele Street might be confusing to riders, so the street can also be sponsored be renamed to Walmart Street as well. Bathurst Street would become Up Street.

The sponsorship doesn't have even to come from a major international corporation. For example, there is a Valumart directly beside Woodbine subway station, which can be sponsored by them and renamed to Valumart Station without causing any confusion riders. It might actually make it easier for riders if they already know where the Valumart is.

Either way, whether from increased revenue and resulting service increase, or from improved wayfinding, corporate sponsorships and naming rights have opportunity to greatly improve the experience of transit users and lure potential users onto the system.

[Busy Bee]

Or we could just all die

[llamaorama]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Or we could just all die

Next station, Frito-Lay Doritos Xtreme Fajitas Concourse at the Mountain Dew Baja Blast station.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Next station, Frito-Lay Doritos Xtreme Fajitas Concourse at the Mountain Dew Baja Blast station.

Welcome to Metro, I love you.

Now arriving at Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho Station.

[Cirrus]

This comes up from time to time. The issue is, the entire point of urban names is that their permanence is what gives them power & value as a tool for both orientation and marketing. They lose that value if you change them more often than about once every 40 years.

Therein lies the problem. Corporate sponsorships are fickle. They come & go every couple of years. If you start renaming too many things in your city every couple of years, the names very quickly lose their value, and you're worse off than before. Nobody will pay for it, and you've destroyed the power of names in your city for a generation at least.

So you can do naming rights on a very tiny handful of extremely famous destinations. Stadiums are fine because any region is only going to have a couple of huge stadiums, so their name is actually not that important (people will know them as "whatever we're calling the gigantic stadium this year"). But that doesn't work for mundane things like streets, transit stops, neighborhoods, etc, because those types of places do actually need unique and reasonably permanent identifiers. The value of their names plummets to worthlessness if it isn't unique and reasonably permanent.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

The issue is, the entire point of urban names is that their permanence is what gives them power & value as a tool for both orientation and marketing. They lose that value if you change them more often than about once every 40 years.

Sears Tower is still Sears Tower.

Go fuck yourself, Willis!

[SIGSEGV]

It's June 1, not April 1.

But I say we name roads and highways for corporate sponsors prior to transit stations. I-55 can be renamed to the Federal Expressway after FedEx.

[jmecklenborg]

Why not sell the naming rights to the interstate highways? To the states? To cities? To the rivers and mountains and parks?

[Busy Bee]

Or to peoples names? Why have a traditional name when you can be corporate sponsored? I have first dibs on Amazon 123456789

[thoughtcriminal]

We have this to an extent in Philly. NRG energy company bought the naming rights to the subway station at the stadium district, so that's called NRG station. Before that, it was AT&T station. Penn Medicine bought the naming rights to the regional rail station at their campus, next to Franklin Field. The subway station at 30th street station is now Drexel station, as it is near Drexel University's campus (not the magnificent 1930 McKim, Mead, and White station, but the subway station adjacent to it.) Penn and Drexel's campuses are adjacent to each other in West Philly. Both are long term institutions that aren't going anywhere, so it makes sense for them to name transit stations at their campuses after them, for a nice fee. And of course, there's Wawa station, on the Media/Wawa regional rail line.
People freaked out a bit when SEPTA started doing this, but if it's done right, people get used to it and it's no big deal. It makes sense as a revenue source as long as it doesn't cause too much confusion and the name doesn't change too often. If they get like a 10 year or more term, that's long enough that most people are fine with it.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by thoughtcriminal

People freaked out a bit when SEPTA started doing this, but if it's done right, people get used to it and it's no big deal.

Except it's never okay. Even the naming of art museums and college buildings for donors is super-sleazy.

"And you can thank the wanking eighties, if you wish, and digital sequencers, too, for proving to everyone that technologically "perfect" rock--like "free" jazz--sucks rockets. Because order sucks. I mean, look at the Stones. Keith Richards is always on top of the beat, and Bill Wyman, until he quit, was always behind it, because Richards is leading the band and Charlie Watts is listening to him and Wyman is listening to Watts. So the beat is sliding on those tiny neural lapses, not so you can tell, of course, but so you can feel it in your stomach. And the intonation is wavering, too, with the pulse in the finger on the amplified string. This is the delicacy of rock-and-roll, the bodily rhetoric of tiny increments, necessary imperfections, and contingent community. And it has its virtues, because jazz only works if we're trying to be free and are, in fact, together. Rock-and-roll works because we're all a bunch of flakes. That's something you can depend on, and a good thing too, because in the twentieth century, that's all there is: jazz and rock-and-roll. The rest is term papers and advertising.”

[mhays]

If I was a company, would I even WANT naming rights? Would I be blamed for how dirty the station is, or when the train is late? People think more about stuff that pisses them off than they do about things that quietly work well.

The Philly idea sounds terrible. Unless the sponsor IS the neighborhood, like a university, then any sponsor name for a station just causes confusion.

I could see cleaning and station amenities provided by a sponsor however. They get to advertise, we get bathrooms. But the station is still called Main Street. (Not security, which needs to be a public function and it'll lead to controvery anyway.)

Stadiums, btw, get a lot of money because their names get broadcast to millions of people across the country and sometimes the world. Transit system sponsors would mostly hit locals.

[iheartthed]

Detroit already did this with the QLine:

Rocket Mortgage (then known as Quicken Loans) bought the naming rights to the line, and announced the name in March 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QLine

[ColDayMan]

Conversely, Cincinnati HAD the Cincinnati Bell Connector -- naming rights ended in 2022 -- and is now simply known as The Connector.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connector_(Cincinnati)

[wanderer34]

Naming right for train stations and transit systems are pretty iffy, if you ask me. SEPTA is the worst offender in this regard. For the many stations that have naming rights (Jefferson Station, NRG, Temple, Drexel), I could see Temple and Drexel getting away with this since their campuses are close to the stations. There's really no Jefferson campus close to the former Market East, so renaming Market East Jefferson station has always been a head scratcher, but I live for the day when NRG (formerly AT&T station), can reuse it's Pattison name again, or use the NRG logo aside the Pattison name, since there's no NRG Ave in Philly, but a Pattison Ave exists. And if the naming rights is working, where's the improved quality, and what about the subway and regional rail expansions? If anything, I don't see it as increased revenue, but just another way to line the pockets of a few executives!

[thoughtcriminal]

Originally Posted by wanderer34

There's really no Jefferson campus close to the former Market East, so renaming Market East Jefferson station has always been a head scratcher,

Jefferson Hospital is less than 2 blocks away, at 11th and Walnut. Plus the Jefferson Tower at 11th and Market, practically on top of the station

Originally Posted by wanderer34

And if the naming rights is working, where's the improved quality, and what about the subway and regional rail expansions? If anything, I don't see it as increased revenue, but just another way to line the pockets of a few executives!

Please. Septa might be closing a few funding gaps by selling some naming rights, but no one is getting rich from this.