Kobe bus stop naming rights get more red light than green light
Kobe thought it was on to a good thing when it decided to sell the naming rights to bus stops on the municipal government-operated routes, but city officials are now scratching their heads since the main interest is coming from less savory parts of the city, according to Shukan Jitsuwa (3/23).
Bus stop naming rights in the port city will be sold to the highest bidder, who retains the authority to call the place whatever they like.
Kobe is currently testing the process on nine bus stops located in the city’s Nagata and Suda wards.
“We’re looking at eventually selling the rights to name each of the 690 bus stops within the city network,” a spokesman for the Kobe Municipal Government’s Transport Bureau tells Shukan Jitsuwa.
Kobe started calling for bidders on March 2 and says response has been “exceptional.”
What the city hadn’t expected, though, was where the interest in naming bus stops is coming from.
“Transport bureau officials were hoping that major companies with buildings that could serve as landmarks would be at the forefront of bidding,” a municipal government insider tells the men’s weekly. “What they have ended up getting is mostly bids from places like brothels, fortune tellers and loan sharks.”
City officials say strict ethical guidelines will be applied to the naming of bus stops, but members of Kobe’s netherworld say that won’t perturb them, and that they’ll come up with names that will be wholesome even if their businesses aren’t.
“If you think of it as an advertising cost, the naming rights are cheap,” the owner of a Kobe brothel tells Shukan Jitsuwa. “We’ll have a pretty hard think about a good name to use and then make our bid.”
It seems fairly certain that if things don’t change, Kobe could end up with some fairly raunchy names for its bus stops.
What prompted discussion of naming rights in the first place is the precarious financial state of Kobe’s municipal bus service, ever since the Great Hanshin Earthquake almost flattened the city back in 1995, leaving it 1.3 billion yen in the red.
“We figure that selling off the naming rights have the double effect of bringing in additional revenue, as well as creating a tighter-knit community,” a city transport bureau desk jockey says. “We only hope it will go a little way toward clearing up all the debts.”
Kobe citizens, though, aren’t entirely impressed with their city’s newfound entrepreneurial exploits.
“Looking at the state of the finances at the moment, the bus stop naming idea is nothing more than a drop in the ocean,” one irate Kobe citizen tells Shukan Jitsuwa. “They should be selling the entire bus network and not just the names.” (By Ryann Connell)
Popularity: 1% [?]
Our Random Articles
More Links
No Comment
Popular Articles