Metro's TransitVue Monitors Start to Fail, as Expected

In late 2008, The Bus Bench portended that Metro's TransitVue monitors would soon start failing: "Worse is that barely one year later, TransitVue's three-year guarantee of their monitors is already showing signs of wear and imminent death. Why? We are not sure, but news of the plasma screens' impending demise is not greatly exaggerated." -BusTard, 21 October 2008.

Here are two videos that exhibit the predicted problems:

29 December 2008 at Union Station

 


03 January 2009 at Pershing Square

Despite threats from the employees and/or owners of TransitVue, or whatever may be the true company's name, there are two years remaining on a three-year guarantee. And the mistake of The Bus Bench calling the LED screens "plasma" bears little relevance to the problem that straphangers are being kept in the dark. The Bus Bench predicts that there will be more threats than monitor maintenance, and that such threats will do little to obscure the truth of the obvious problems.

-BusTard

Comments

[Shawn]

I thought that these monitors were a waste of money from the beginning. Some people for whatever reason have been comforted by them, but other than identifying if the approaching train is red or purple they really serve no useful function.

What I mean by that is they don't provide any information that you can use. They show scheduled departure times and not actual which is already fairly ridiculous in this day and age. Our trains are mostly on time so it's not that noticeable. But even if they did announce some sort of delay we can't do anything with that information. We can't ride a different series of subway lines to our destination. We just have to wait.

The fact that they are already failing just makes it all even worse.

Oh and the last bit of ridiculousness is that they show phone numbers for the Sheriff's Department when cell phones don't work in the subway.

[browne]

I never understood the whole phonenumbers when your cell doesn't work either. I'm thinking if someone gets murdered do they want us to run up stairs and call the sheriffs. I am I going to remember the number after I have run up 50 feet, because you know if something happens the pt gods will shut off the escalators and elevators and the cameras, well we know no one is watching those.

Browne

[anony]

The lifespan of regular CRTs is bad enough, but plasmas and LCDs have even shorter lives. The appropriate technology is LED arrays like they sell at those Korean sign shops on Vermont. Those things not only last a long time, but as a big customer, you can get them designed so the arrays can be repaired. If they use the very bright ones, the effect is impressive.

[Shawn]

Well they are supposed to be having these things installed on the light rail lines at some point. Hopefully they rethink that at least.