I'd also much prefer it to be plastered with a university, museum, or other "public" advertising scheme as opposed to being corporate advertising. Seeing the new LRT station at Don Mills and Eglinton plastered with science stuff to me would be far more unique and interesting than seeing it plastered with BMO financial posters and stuff.
I'm in the same boat and think it has to do with information overload in today's society. Adverts that inform or teach are so rare nowadays (remember the Canadian Heritage or Hinderland Canada commericals?), and we tend to turn out all the other visual spam.
The main issue I see using 'public' advertisers is that, it's not actually tapping into a different money source, it's the public people paying for increased involvement in a redesign.
How much money can naming rights actually bring in? What percentage of the TTC operating budget would be covered by naming rights? My guess is that it would be minuscule, and not worth the cheapening of the overall system.
The new advertising deal garentees a minimum of $27 million a year for the next 12 years system-wide, compared to an operating budget of $1,507 million; 1.8% of operating costs and ignoring the capital investments that the money would actually mostly go towards.
Remodelling Dundas Station could easily cost upwards of $20 million. Over a 12-year term, that's $1.667m a year Ryerson would have to fundraise, or $50 per student. What about hitting up Rogers' for half and calling it "Ted Rogers School of Management Station"?
London doesn't seem to have a problem North Greenwich station always showing up as North Greenwich for the O2 on all the maps and documents - can't say I've taken the tube that far east though ... not sure what they've put in the station.
The original name in 2000 for the O2 Arena area was the Millennium Dome and the original station name was Millenium Station. In 2001, after the "Millennium Experience" the station reverted to "North Greenwich" and the area suffered political idleness. When the sold the Arena naming rights, in 2005 for £6 million-per-year, part of the deal the the resoration of the Tube's tourist branding.
How about we just sell the rights to exclusive in-station advertising, but keep the names. Let one company/organization adopt the station and install some creative and semi-permanent (but removable) advertising...
If we change the names, we'll enter a cycle of name changes and that will be confusing (plus imagine the cost of updating the city-wide station maps and signage)
We've already done this with "station domination" campaigns. As it's an existing technique no new revenue would be generated.
