OK, I have doing some work on these for some time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edelman/sets/72157602171242536/

We should't need to buy a product in order to support our transit system. Raise taxes if need be. The money is coming out of our pockets one way or the other. Why must every municipal structure be renamed for a brand?

I'd even go so far as to suggest some sort of bikeshare arrangement in those tourist areas, with pods at key points of the F-Line. More tourists on bikes may mean fewer tour buses, which is all for the local good.

The external bodies of the trains should be kept off-limits, since the unique mix is the tourist golden goose.

I thought that study had settled the wrap issue, but I see they are starting to do it anyway.

In the case of Zürich and Melbourne, the sponsorships not only helped pay for the maintenance, but answers one of the top questions, of what city this supposed to be? As I've seen happen over and over again, once you open the door to sponsorship it becomes a slippery slope.

It never starts with selling ads, you do special deals with only appropriate and fitting sponsors, like Zürich and Victoria which you can, justifiably, point to as examples where it worked well and then the next time around you push it a step further, it's not just the city which the streetcar is from, it's "San Francisco company or a good citizen might be willing to sort of adopt that car in exchange for some recognition," and after a number of years it's nothing more than standard ad sizes.

It ticks me off to no end that PBS and NPR programing runs ads for oil companies and big box retailers during programs about the havoc being done by oil companies and big box retailers. I once got all the way up to the NPR ombudsman over a Walmart ad saying how much they care about their community in a break following a segment about Walmart sinking small town economies and was told it wasn't an "advertisement" it was an underwriter message or some such term because they defined an ad as having a call to action, specific offer or mention a sale or deal. In that example what Walmart was selling was themselves and took advantage of a loophole left by NPR to run an editorial about themselves exempt from any of the usual fact checking that would have been done by the news staff.

I don't see what's happening here as any different. I recently came back from Barcelona, where this is no advertising inside their vehicles or in their Metro subway. I was impressed by the feeling I was not being taken advantage of as a captive audience and I was in a place where the city took enough pride in itself that it wasn't going to nickel and dime me for more after I'd already paid my 1.50€ fare.

Because the MTA is run by people who clearly aren't interested in a serious discussion on how to create stable revenue sources, we can expect more of this half assed thinking. Yet another example of how when you let Newsom call all the shots, the end result is showboating BS.