Other Cities’ Transit: Moscow fare payment, NYC musical turnstiles
Photo by Special*Dark
We always kinda expect New York City’s MTA to be years ahead of Muni (and BART, for that matter). True to form, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy has a plan for musical subway turnstiles in the Big Apple.
“I’ve been fighting for now 14 years to try to do this, to make all the subway turnstiles make music. I want to make every station in New York have a different set of dominant keys, so that people when they grow up, later on in life, will hear a piece of music and be like, “Oh that’s Union Square.”
So when you go through the turnstiles, there would be a thing that would make a beep of a certain note. And it would have a random note generator that would be based on a percentage, so that the root note would be a higher percentage of going off, then the third, then the fifth. And during rush hour in the bigger stations, it would hopefully make a really beautiful piece of music.”
Read more about Murphy’s killer idea on The Atlantic’s Technology site.
Spinning the globe 180, we never really expect the Russians to do, well, anything better than we do here in the Bay Area, other than borscht, of course. Lo, via True Activist, a video about a Moscow subway ticket machine that will give you your ticket if you exercise.
Holy fitness regimen! Would you squat for your Clipper card?
The Moscow ticket machine that accepts exercise (30 squats on a platform that are counted on a screen) as payment for a ticket is cute (but it is also a promotion for the 2014 Olympics).
Yes, musical turnstiles is a good idea. But if it is the same music every time at a concrete metro station, wouldn’t it become boring for the passengers? As for Moscow metro experiment it is excellent. I would also recommend to add 10 pull-ups as an alternative to 30 squats.