#visualdiary11

[akcadle]

The Problematic Stake in the Ground example I’m using this week is the Southwest Transit Light Rail System that will connect Minneapolis, MN to Eden Prairie, MN, a suburb about 30 minutes west of the Twin Cities. The photo is a section of the light rail in Eden Prairie that narrowly passes by a residential apartment and condominium. This project began in 2019 and at the time was projected to be finished and transporting passengers this year. Since then, the project timeline has been pushed back to 2027 and the budget for it has been overrun from the original $2.20 billion to $2.74 billion to include more stops and renovate current stops along the line. The council in charge of the project and other committee members are steadfast in their beliefs of the project, but the public opinion, especially in the suburbs that the line travels through, have been declining from the onset of the project. The Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) audited the project in 2022 and found that the Met Council “was not fully transparent about project costs and delays” and found that the project will cost about 38% over budget (Strate, 2023).

References

Strate, J. (2023, May 3). The $2.74 billion LRT project. Eden Prairie Local News. https://www.eplocalnews.org/2023/05/03/the-2-74-billion-lrt-project/

[laurennbradford-blog]

Problematic Stake in the Ground

While I understand Apple’s commitment to innovation and sleek designed products, I and not a fan of their recent switcharoos with the removal of the headphone jack and the different chargers that are no longer compatible with the other apple devices. 

[laurennbradford-blog]

Problematic Stake in the Ground

In a city nicknamed the Motor City, you can see how the addition of bike lanes has made commuting by car more than a hassle. While I do see the necessity of safety for bike riders, the recent surge and locations of them have caused many in Detroit to think this is just another way the mayor is gentrifying the city. In an effort to increase several forms of mobility and connect riders to commercial corridors, busy streets are having their traffic cut in half to make room for the bike lanes.

[nice-lines]

Visual diary #11 | Commuter train

Such potential.

Austin, TX. Is growing daily. People are moving to the state capitol in record numbers, which means the cities infrastructure is quickly being put to the test. To help combat the growing traffic congestion, a commuter train was installed to help ease the amount of drivers on the road. This was a fine solution, except for their stake in the ground being that they wouldn’t prioritize the trains stops or the amount of parking space dedicated to commuters.

The city added the train, but didn’t allocate enough money to make the train truly useful. So instead of a series of trains taking commuters all over north, south, east, and west Austin, there is a single line of track that runs north-south. If you happen to live or work close to the rail, it could be useful. But for the vast majority of commuters who don’t, it doesn’t seem to be a good option.

Residents were excited about the idea of a commuter train, but the actual development and priorities proved to make it unusable for most.

[insowmnia]

Mcdonalds put a stake in the ground when their creators wanted to build a restaurant that was fast, casual and easy. They missed the mark on the healthy side of food, and single handedly caused a generation of unhealthy fast eating standards. As the community around them has evolved, mcdonalds has left it’s stake in the ground as the fastest, not so healthy, option in the market. A redesign of this product could bring healthy and affordable food to the world. 

[insowmnia]

Lululemon put a stake in the ground that work out apparel could be trendy and fun. Where their stake became problamatic, is that they limited their market share to cater to wealthy, attractive people who the CEO bluntly claimed to be their customer. That he didn’t care if other customers didn’t feel welcomed because lululemon wasn’t made for them. This statement singled out a majority of shoppers, opening up a gap for other companies like fab fit fun to become a player. Their stake in the ground went from being fashionable and trendy, to exclusive. 

[creativecollectionnk32-blog]

Visual Diary #11 | Problematic Stake in the Ground

People often forget about the time when the Vine app was extremely popular, it sort of just fell off the face of the Earth. Vine was twitter’s other video sharing app and I have researched some reasons as to why it failed in such a popular social media time period. 

I found an article that listed 5 reasons why Twitter’s Vine fell to its demise. 

1. Lack of audience ownership

2. Slow reaction the market

3. Twitter Cannibalism

4. Lack of commercial viability

5. (Too) rapid growth

These reasons don't seem to be enough on their own without explanations. I thought all along that it had something to do with the 10 second cap and all of the video sharing platforms were expanding their time limitations. Apparently, there was more to it than that. You can see the link here. https://www.dmnews.com/channel-marketing/social/blog/13042360/5-reasons-why-vine-failed

Basically, there were several factors as to why it failed. One of the main reasons that stood out to me was the fact that Vine never gave an advertisement outlet for businesses, which is possibly the largest driver of today’s video sharing platforms. Making your platform–that you don’t charge a membership fee for–available for advertising is what makes you money and therefore allows you to stay afloat. Basically they had all of these users and no partnerships with other companies which was a big miss-step on their part. 

Since I wasn’t aware that Twitter owned Vine, this next main factor seemed funny to me. In 2015 twitter launched it’s own video sharing capabilities and basically became the largest competitor for Vine. It makes sense why they didn’t try to save Vine, since they were a part of their own downfall. However, they did sort of lose their “stake in the ground” status when Snapchat and Instagram became wildly more popular than Vine. Twitter felt its best chance was going to back to its own roots and developing the video platform within. Although they did this, they still aren’t considered the highest ranked platform when it comes to video sharing. Vine grew very quickly but didn’t have enough juice from the business aspect to remain relevant.

[nice-lines]

Visual diary #11 | Toll-booths in Austin, TX.

Too expensive to be useful.

If you drive on the toll roads around Austin, TX. you will pass empty toll-booths when merging on and off the freeways. The cash toll-booths have sat vacant since 2012 because it is too expensive to tear them down.

The toll-booths were operational from 2006 to 2012. During that time, drivers would pay with cash or card. Every exit off a toll road has the booths, many having multiple stalls to accommodate heavy flows of traffic. Today, billing is handled automatically, charging the drivers TXtag account. Instead of opening all the lanes for traffic to flow, all drivers are funneled to a single lane of traffic going past a single toll-booth.

The problem with these booths is how quickly their use became outdated. They were expensive to install and were built around an idea that quickly became antiquated with the rapid developments in camera technology. I think the designers should have done more research and anticipated the automated future we were headed towards. Instead, drivers face longer traffic delays and useless toll-booths at every exit.

References:

Hammons, Adam. (2017, June 5). “Old cash toll-booths in Austin standing useless because of price tag to take them down.” Retrieved from https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/old-cash-toll-booths-in-austin-standing-useless-because-of-price-tag-to-take-them-down