Tories want to rename LUL Lines

I would imagine that Eric Pickles will be along to stomp on any local authority that is using public money to advertise itself. If he has 50 fits about local council newspapers he'll be putting himself in hospital due to anger and stress about council sponsored stations, trains and trams. An operator can decide to have varied liveries if it wants to but this all costs money.

I'm not particularly convinced about wider sponsorship on the tube. The high footfall stations are already plastered from top to toe with themed advertising on platforms, poster sites, gates, escalator shaft panels and escalator panels themselves. Most of it is garish and creates a blur with the aesthetics, passenger information and wayfinding. Proposals to rename stations permanently are unlikely to be value for money because TfL would never get a big enough contribution from the sponsor that genuinely represents the brand value exposure for the sponsor. In other words the private sector will always win. Shorter term renamings bring all the disadvantages of high cost, confusion and repeated rebranding and restickering / replacement of wayfinding, in car line diagrams, tube maps, publications, internal documentation etc etc. This costs at least a six digit number every time and would have to be covered by the private sector sponsor. I know some have deep pockets but do we really want the Tube associated with companies responsible for the most irritating advertising on television - banks, insurance companies, pay day loan companies - or companies with dubious trading or manufacturing processes? There will always be someone, somewhere who is going to be offended by whatever is done by a sponsor and does TfL, and the Mayor for that matter, really need the distraction / bad publicity?