I agree. As if we're not bombarded with enough advertising as it is.

It seems that municipality managers are after money and forgot every thing about social responsibility.

Waterloo has had these ads for about two months now, and it is only a temporary 90 day fling. Apparently the paint is removable, and "environmentally friendly" but I believe a bit of pocket cash is useful considering the short term life of these ads. I don't know about London though, however Waterloo has 100% of the cash intake going directly to trail maintenance. I don't know about some of you, but I don't mind seeing a few egg ads sparsely located on the trails to get some better maintained trails.

Look I'm a bike commuter and avid cyclist. do cyclists pay fuel tax to repair roads etc? NO! Should we? Maybe. Unless you can get someone to advertise to help off set the cost for all the cyclist that thank they need a bike lane to ride their bike.

You want a bike lane you don't get directly taxed for it, so get use to being "sold to." Otherwise get in there and ask you city to set up a registration for the bikes to pay for bike lanes/paths. Then you'll find out there aren't enough bikes to afford the lanes. So guess what get use to it.

Bike lanes and paths are a huge money loser. find out a way to make it financially sustainable and you won't have to worry about getting sold to.

Um, MarkR, taxes pay for bike lanes. So yes, you are directly taxed for it.

Personally I don't really see this as such a big deal. Treehugger seems to be taking an anti-ad stance on this. I feel that treehugger needs to pick their battles better. You guys wear yourselves too thin. You go after everything at once and it's just not a winning strategy. Pick your battles.

Now, that doesn't mean you guys can't post stuff like this and make it aware to people. Just don't take a stance on it. And of course you can completely disregard what I'm saying because this is a blog and it's your opinion and all that good stuff.

Anyway, it's just an ad. What? You got something against eggs? I love eggs. And advertising is what makes the world go round. Think about all of the free services that google offers because they make ad revenue. Think about all the web sites that operate because they make ad revenue. If bike lanes can bring in some revenue by advertising on the pavement (something that doesn't cause any harm whatsoever), then let them do so. Maybe it'll bring about more bike lanes. Big deal. It's not like they're blocking your view of that beautiful black pavement.

Now billboards and other eyesores, you can probably argue a decent case why we shouldn't be throwing them up all over the place. But c'mon, pick your battles. This one is a waste of energy in my opinion.

Pretty soon this world is going to look like the city in Blade Runner.

That's funny putting an egg on a bicycle with the slogan "get cracking". But when a bicyclist gets smashed by a car and the bloody corpse lands on top of one of these ads and somebody takes a picture of it and it becomes an internet meme the egg council or whoever is behind this will fire the person who thought this up.

Where I live there are banks of payphones on all four corners of the intersection. I've never seen anybody talking on any of them. They install the phones to make money from the ads on the sides. Somebody decided that advertising signs were okay as long as they were stuck on phones even if the phones weren't needed in the first place.

I'd be in favor of advertisement on bike paths if the advertisement money was used to pay for new ones.

Advertisement on existing paths, not so much.

At least the ad in question is imaginative... and if it were part of investment in funding further bike lanes or other safety improvements for cyclists I think it's OK.

When I went in to buy textbooks the other day, I found that the store has a new "feature" -- a flat-panel setup playing a constant loop of ads ON THE FLOOR.

Well if we compare blade runner to this it seems to me there are less ads in blade runner than todays marketing shrills are doing.

the phone never rang in blade runner you had the ad blimp and ads all over the city but none on the sidewalks.

looks like our marketers are slipping.

D~W

Treehugger has no right to complain about anyone else's ad creep as long as they have advertising in their space. I'm sure your excuse is that they are promoting green companies and products (mostly), but they are still ads. Please remove all banner ads and advertisers link lists from your site. Please stop serving cookies for advertisers to track my movements on the web. And while you're at it, stop invading my privacy with your cookies to track my movements on your site.

I'm of two minds on this. I hate ads, but I appreciate the need to pay for this kind of thing. Imagine if you had to pay a cent every time you used Google, instead of getting ads returned on your results?

Toll booths on Florida's Turnpike already have advertising for auto insurance companies, while the Road Rangers are plastered with stickers for you to read while they help broken down motorists.

I'd much rather have bike lanes with ads than no bikes lanes at all.