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Moving Violations

by Alexandra Ringe | Issue #16

BillboardI am probably the staunchest defender of bus travel you will ever meet. For divorce reasons I spent much of my childhood riding the NJ Transit bus from one part of south Jersey to another, a three-hour round trip every weekend. The bus took me where I wanted to go, comfortably. I read a lot, played innumerable games of Uno with my brother, and, if those activities gave me a little motion sickness, I looked out the window to regain equilibrium.

These days I still choose the bus whenever I leave New York. I still look out the window whenever that queasiness comes on, and I still prefer travelling this way. However, as a full-grown adult without a bus partner as entertaining and familiar as my brother, I understand the potential problems with going Greyhound, namely sitting next to strangers whose bodies cross the boundary between our two seat cushions (due to physics, not rudeness), and the extremely small subset of this group that falls asleep all over me no matter how much I try to wiggle out of the way. This feature, coupled with unattractive upholstery and the slightly noxious smell of disinfectant, compels me to admit that the best part of the bus ride is looking out, not looking in.

Thee Billboard Transformed Last summer I rode a bus that made me think that the bus people–that is, bus executives–have forgotten the importance of looking out. I was taking Greyhound to Atlantic City to visit my mom and found myself boarding a bus that was completely encased by an ad. Giant capital letters covered both sides of the bus, from the wheels to the roof. I had never seen anything like it–the windows were completely covered by the words PAUL HARVEY, NEWSANDCOMMENT, THE MOST LISTENED TO MAN ON RADIO, along with Mr. Harvey’s mug. The bus didn’t look like a Greyhound at all, or even a bus, for that matter. It was a Harveymobile.

Once inside the bus, I settled into my customary window seat, from which I had an excellent view of the back of the Harvey ad: a black plastic film that coated the glass and had tiny circles cut out of it in rows upon rows upon rows. The dots were meant for seeing, but they made everything outside appear dark, although it was a bright summer day. It was as if I were wearing deeply tinted sunglasses, and non-prescription at that–the world beyond the bus looked furry. As we hit the open turnpike, I could make out trees, cars, Ikea, but important questions remained: What kind of trash is that on the median strip? What does that bumper sticker say? What is that kid doing to his sister in the back seat?

If I had sat close to the driver instead of eight seats back, I might have been able to see litter, bumper stickers, and sibling interactions–the windshield was completely dot-free. As it was, I spent the two-and-a-half hour ride hoping that this bus was part of an ill-fated experiment to which I would never be subjected again.

I have since learned from Richard Howser, director of advertising and promotional sales at Greyhound, that this window-smirching technique is known as a "bus wrap" and that Greyhound is very excited about it. He declined to say how many buses are now wrapped for fear of giving away trade secrets, but he assured me that there are "quite a few, and we’ll have more."

Why? The bus that is all ad "can be in a lot of places that some of the billboards are not today." And it is "really impactful"–"you’ve seen the billboard fifty times and you don’t see it anymore. . . . You don’t see it [the bus wrap] every day and therefore you see it." Of course, Howser’s "you" here is the commuter inside a car, not the commuter inside the bus.

As for vision obstruction, Howser volunteered that with the bus wrap, "You can see out but you can’t see in." When I pressed him on whether the plastic has any effect on the view from inside the bus, he answered, "No–very very minuscule. In fact with summer coming everybody’s going to love it because it’s slightly tinted." Is it like a screen? "It’s got little bitty tiny holes in it so if you’re real close [his emphasis] to it you can see it, but if you’re not it just looks like there’s nothing there." (Incidentally, I don’t know how you can avoid being "real close" to the window on a Greyhound.)

Howser’s corporate clients pay Greyhound $10,000—$12,000 to wrap a bus, then a monthly rental fee of $4,000. These companies are also wrapping local buses. Recently, I’ve noticed two private New York City bus companies with wraps: Queens Surface Company and Liberty Lines, which goes between Manhattan and the Bronx. I talked to a few Liberty Lines regulars to find out if Howser is right that the ads’ impact on the passenger experience is negligible–perhaps my eyes are abnormally sensitive to distortion. One commuter declared that "you can see everything" through the wrapped windows and went on to say that she likes the admobiles because they are "kind of artsy." Another agreed that "you can see out" but described the window as having "women’s hose stretched over it." He thinks the wraps are "awful–it’s the corporatization of everything."

Unfortunately, both of these commuters had to catch their bus before I could get their names. I spoke with Ellen Lavino a little longer. She understands why the ads are catching on. When she rides a wrapped bus, "I can see people outside on the sidewalks staring. They [the ads] really attract attention." Lavino despises them, though. "I hate trying to look out. In broad daylight it’s only fuzzy, but at night and when it’s raining it’s like they blacked out the windows. There’s a reason why they don’t put them on the windshields."