Wow! I wonder if that'll work? I always thought part of the problem was weird station acoustics.

Trust a city agency to spend so much on something as simple as speakers. Even totally integrated, coordinated, top-of-the-line, large public address speakers.

There are what, 85 stations? Some are quite large, and will need more PA capacity than others, so let's round it up to an even 100.

That's $188,000 PER STATION! For a PA SYSTEM. I understand economies of scale, and the relatively low demand for PA systems of this variety, but really... I bet you could hire two engineering school grads, give them half that for a budget, and get a communications system that does everything it needs to. Then the remaining money could be spent on more trains, buses and staff.

Thanks for the hot tip. Post reported this over a year ago!

Washington DC...

1. Your math is wrong. If 85 stations, it's 221,000 per station.

2. Your concept is utterly wrong. First, this includes the TV monitoring system upgrade (homeland security anyone). Second, it's not just replacing the speakers. You have to replace wiring, probably amps, adjustment, etc. Also, it presumably includes installation. This is not just driving a Molybolt into a wall and hanging a speaker.

Simplified viewing of a project, like this, is very Fickerish.

Will this make the Spanish announcements clearer?

Catcher50:

He did say he was rounding to 100 stations, so his math is correct. I agree there is more to it than speakers and some wire.

Fickerish??

So we'll soon be able to understand the announcements? Nice.

"Fickerish" - I love it! Think we can get that into circulation?

CB...

Sorry, I missed the rounding, for which there was no excuse (either for my missing it, or for the rounding).

Fickerish (adj.), describes a concept or idea that, on first blush may seem beneficial, but on further exploration is a disaster. From Old Capital Arena & MoCo. politics, a loud, annoying individual...Robin Ficker.

Yes, h3, I'm certainly going to try and get it into general circulation. Marc Fisher, any help here?

My uncle is constantly sending Fickerish e-mail forwards to the family listserv. If only he'd apply his critical thinking skills before hitting the forward button.

Gosh, Catcher50, this is fun! I'm going to do my best....

I know this is off topic, but can I apply Fickerish to Bush's decision to invade Iraq?

Thanks for the update, Dr. G. Glad to hear Metro is doing this, the sound quality and intelligibility of the announcements really varies from station to station. At some stations, it is nearly impossible to hear/understand what is being said. Especially in this day and age, we need to be able to understand announcements. If buses are running from Pentagon City instead of Pentagon Metro, due to "police activity," as recently happened, we certainly need to know as soon as we enter the Metro system.

I have no problem with bilingual announcements. Does anyone know whether the subway system in Montreal features both English and French? I imagine it does. (Although I don't have time to Google this to any extent right now, a quick search led me to an interesting site with some of Montreal Metro's security FAQs.
http://www.metrodemontreal.com/faq/security.html )

catcher50-

Thanks for the explanation. I like it!

"Sorry, I missed the rounding, for which there was no excuse (either for my missing it, or for the rounding)."

Rounding and estimating are wonderful tools. When someone asks you what time it is do you say 5:26 or 5:30? 3,862 people died in Iraq or 4,000?

Montreal's were Francophone-only, as of 2003.

Intelligible announcements at Metro stations will first require that station employees learn to speak into microphones properly. The new technology isn't going to help much with that.

"Intelligible announcements at Metro stations will first require that station employees learn to speak into microphones properly. The new technology isn't going to help much with that."

Amen. Most sound like they have a mouthful of marbles.

i was told that a couple years ago, Metro actually had training sessions to teach their employees how to speak standard american english. i heard they taught EVERYBODY (even those mumbling americans), becuase it was more of a ... how do i put this... subculture problem than a non-english speaker problem.

i don't know if that's true though. If they did, they must not have been very effective. does anyone know if metro actually did this? if they haven't.... maybe they should.