I’ve always assumed that smart city information stations located away from a city’s major plazas and thoroughfares would get the living shit beat out of them by tipsy or angry members of the general public.
Putting $30,000 (or whatever) units on a sidewalk in Jackson Heights or the Bronx just … seemed … risky.
So it is eye-opening to see a screen at the entrance to the subway station at the many-billion dollar Hudson Yards development – near the Javits Center – that went a few rounds with someone and lost. Bottom has been kicked in, I guess, and then duct-taped. And someone, possibly a city employee thinking he or she was being helpful, pasted on a city map – since partially torn off.
This is an area still in development, but not exactly out of the way.
Not sure I have a point here, other than showing what can happen. Choose your locations wisely, and when you source hardware, assume the worst of the general public, and find displays and enclosures that will, borrowing on the old Timex watch pitch, “Take a licking and keep on ticking.”
Update – Fixed! From an MTA friend: