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City awards pact for 350 bus shelters
Tuesday, March 21, 2000 By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Pittsburgh's latest claim as an international city could derive from an unlikely source: its bus shelters.
Nearly three years after City Councilman Jim Ferlo first proposed the idea, the city has finally awarded a contract to a private company to build and maintain bus shelters citywide at no cost to the city, in exchange for displaying advertising on them.
The company, Adshel Inc. of New York City, has built similar shelters in England, France, Denmark, Norway, China and Australia, as well as in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
In Pittsburgh, the company has agreed to erect 350 bus shelters citywide -- some of them heated and lighted -- over the next two years and hire a local work force to clean and repair them.
The city will receive 10 percent of the advertising revenue derived from the shelters, a cut that's expected to reach more than $2 million annually over the 10 years of the contract. The company will also donate 10 percent of the ad panels themselves to nonprofit and public service groups.
During the 10-year pilot program, 300 shelters with advertising panels will be erected in business districts while another 50 without ads will be built in residential communities. The new shelters would be in addition to the 170 Port Authority bus shelters already in the city.
"The Port Authority has done an excellent job upgrading and maintaining its shelters," Deputy Mayor Sal Sirabella said yesterday. "But this was an excellent opportunity for the city to get state-of-the-art shelters at no
cost, that also create jobs and income."
But City Council could still dump the program.
Councilman Gene Ricciardi introduced measures last week to repeal the bus shelter program and council is set to debate the repeal this week. It's not clear why the councilman wants the program discontinued, and he didn't return calls yesterday.
The city issued requests for bus shelter proposals in September and four companies responded, including Adshel, Lamar, which owns Martin Media, Outdoor Advertising and Gateway.
Sirabella said a five-person city committee unanimously chose Adshel because it is the only company of the four that specializes in shelters, rather than advertising, and offered the most attractive list of amenities with its shelters. Those amenities include 100 bike racks, 15 information booths, 100 trash cans and one self-cleaning automatic toilet.
The company committed to use 100 percent city-based firms to construct the shelters and subcontract at least 50 percent of work to minority-owned and woman-owned firms. It also promised city residents would get preferential treatment in hiring.
Adshel will perform all maintenance and repairs to the shelters. They will be inspected and cleaned every five days, and repaired and cleared of graffiti every two weeks. Snow and ice will be removed within 24 hours.
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