How many QMS advertising panels in Sydney are near a Telstra public telephone? | Hacker News Reader

How many QMS advertising panels in Sydney are near a Telstra public telephone?

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94 pointsmbo36 comments

And many of these new panels and wide phone booths provide extras accessibility issues. https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/zk9ooj/city_of_sydn...

https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/zb3k8k/have_your_sa...

> And is the City of Sydney engaging in a municipal tit for tat?

No doubt. I remember a story here on HN about politicians making traffic worse on purpose by extending red light times just to force people to look at more ads while they wait. I don't think these people have any limits or scruples. Always assume they are corrupt.

>I remember a story here on HN about politicians making traffic worse on purpose by extending red light times just to force people to look at more ads while they wait. I don't think these people have any limits or scruples. Always assume they are corrupt.

I'd be very interested in seeing this. Does anyone have a source?

Yes, I managed to find the source in my comments history.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901055

> In a past career I was a civil engineer

> I learned about how traffic light green times (how many seconds a signal stays green for one direction vs. the cross street) usually have a "right answer" from an engineering standpoint

> has to do with maximizing traffic throughput and/or minimizing delays to each individual vehicle

> And then the mayor of the town shows up out of the blue and says no, this direction is going to have a longer wait

> I'm going to delay people intentionally

> so that when they're stuck in traffic, sitting there, they'll have more of a chance to see signs/placards of, and contemplate patronizing, nearby businesses, whose owners are my political backers

Citation desperately needed.

What does happen is yellow light times are shortened, to cause more red-light violations to generate revenue from tickets and profit for colluding businesses.

https://www.salon.com/2017/04/05/this-may-have-happened-to-y...

Found the comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901055

> In a past career I was a civil engineer

> I learned about how traffic light green times (how many seconds a signal stays green for one direction vs. the cross street) usually have a "right answer" from an engineering standpoint

> has to do with maximizing traffic throughput and/or minimizing delays to each individual vehicle

> And then the mayor of the town shows up out of the blue and says no, this direction is going to have a longer wait

> I'm going to delay people intentionally

> so that when they're stuck in traffic, sitting there, they'll have more of a chance to see signs/placards of, and contemplate patronizing, nearby businesses, whose owners are my political backers

I haven’t seen them recently but “billboard truck” were a thing. A truck who’s only purpose is to literally have advertisements on them. ( they have no storage)

They are a thing in my city. They even leave the billboard parked in some strategic place and drive away.

This is a good example for why all work communication should be via auditable email. I suspect that trying to do things like this is a major reason leaders want people in office.

> I learned about how traffic light green times (how many seconds a signal stays green for one direction vs. the cross street) usually have a "right answer" from an engineering standpoint

There's a "right answer" but only with respect to what kind of traffic you care about. Most cities default to prioritizing car throughput, which is about the most spatially inefficient way of moving people.

Some traffic lights don't even detect waiting bicycles. You have to wait until a car comes up behind you, otherwise it will be red indefinitely.

There was a stoplight right by one of my old apartments which never would detect my motorcycle so I’d always have to make a right and U-turn if I didn’t want to wait until a car showed up.

Never seen a traffic light that can detect a bicycle, I’d just ride up on the sidewalk and press the crosswalk button if no cars were around.

There are new style ones that have some kind of motion detecting camera or radar or something. There's a little LED that lights up when it sees you.

I believe in California they are required to detect bicycles.

The old EM ones will detect my bicycle just fine as long as I stop directly over the seam in the pavement. The newer ones are optical

20 years ago, in Vancouver, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that the coil in the pavement did indeed detect my bicycle, so there is certainly no engineering reason it can't be done.

Yes. Would be interesting to learn about all these tradeoffs. The point though is that all those interesting traffic engineering concerns were invalidated because a politician wanted citizens to look at his backer's advertising.

Fascinating and reminiscent of the comedic absurdity portrayed in the “Utopia” tv show!

As someone with many family members and friends in the public sector in Australia, I've learned not to bring up Utopia as it's too painfully close to reality.

Having worked for several state government departments, I describe "Utopia" as a documentary.

I find it fascinating that not only are there still public telephones in Sydney, they are actively being deployed.

Calls from public telephones are now free, they now also provide free wifi.

It does seem that the legal benefit of free space and electricity, and the commercial benefit of high foot traffic locations is too great for Telstra to simply give up these installations.

The electricity is not free (it would be paid under a low consumption unmetered arrangement, similar to things like public BBQs or traffic lights).

Telstra is contracted to provide payphone service under the Telstra USO Performance Agreement with the Federal Government, at a cost of $44 million.

Today I learned there are public BBQs in Australia.

Almost every park has one

There are in the US too, but you have to bring your own fuel (coal/charcoal).

Note that "BBQ" in Australian usually means a flat grill, not what I am told it means in American.

Not just Sydney, but all across Australia.

I’ve never seen one being deployed. Nor have I ever seen anyone use one.

Telstra makes use of existing ones as wifi APS for their subscribers.

This is all fear mongering imo

I recently discovered that they have their own phone numbers, and you can ring them up

How do you find out the number of a particular phone?

This is an example of why I love OpenStreetMap so much - you never know what amazing things people will use the data for once you’ve mapped it!

Could be for data connectivity? These phone booths usually provide wifi

I think there is a good chance this is the case. There would likely be unused pairs available at that location that could provide a wired data service to the billboard.

And then I think the fact that they're always unobstructed by the phone booth is meaningless too. If you're going to put a billboard next to a phone booth, obviously you're not going to want to deliberately obstruct the billboard.

Only way to find out! Does openstreetmap has wifi mapped, is there correlation?

AFAIK Telstra phone boots include a wifi hotspot. Or at least they usually do (I'm not sure if all of them do but I would imagine that this is usually the case in urban areas).

We know each other! He's a friend from work.

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