San Francisco Bus Stops Get High-tech Makeover

If you happen to live in San Francisco, arguably one of the most wired cities in the country, you probably have multiple options for getting online or otherwise accessing information. By 2013, you'll have even more digital data ports of entry, as the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) plans to roll out 360 Wi-Fi equipped bus stops powered by solar energy.

A blog entry by GigaOm gave me the heads up, but it's also reported in a recent article published by Popular Mechanics. According to the PM article, the rooftops of the bus shelters will be covered in photovoltaic cells, which will power the Wi-Fi hotspot, LED lights and digital information kiosk. Leftover power will be pumped back into the grid.

Each bus stop will cost about $30,000 to build and the 360 bus stop shelters will put an estimated total of 43,000 kilowatt hours of energy per year back into the city's grid. Clear Channel has a contract with SFMTA to pay for the shelters in exchange for advertising space, so city lawmakers don't have to grovel for scarce funds to pay for the project.

The image above obviously is one of the city's famous cable cars, which have nothing to do with the planned high-tech bus stops. But doesn't it look cool?

Photo courtesy of Robert Estremo, via Wikimedia Commons