David W. Dunlap/The New York TimesThe Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to install as many as 120 new information and advertising kiosks with 46-inch interactive display screens in the subway system this summer.

Coming this summer to as many as 120 screens around New York City: "On the Go!"

David W. Dunlap/The New York TimesColin O'Donnell, chief operations officer of Control Group, at a prototype.

Thrill to your own personal journey underground, as bright ribbons of color snake through the boroughs, showing you how to get from here to there on the subway. Marvel as Gordian knots of "police investigations" and "earlier incidents" are cut by service updates. Then -- submit to the commercial messages.

Dozens of 6-foot-4-inch stainless-steel kiosks are to be installed in 19 subway stations in the next few months in what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority calls its "On the Go! Travel Station" program. They will replace some of the poster-size paper maps on platforms, mezzanines and turnstile areas, and also cut down on notices that sometimes proliferate to the point that they look like wallpaper.

Each kiosk will have an interactive display screen, measuring 46 inches diagonally, that can help riders navigate the system. The kiosks will also inaugurate a new kind of luminous, kinetic advertising that will be hard to avoid and almost impossible to ignore. Straphangers waiting for trains to arrive will be pretty much captive audiences. Who knows, though? Deep in commuting tedium, they may welcome a few minutes of diverting commercial video.

In any case, it will be possible to stop the ads with a single tap on the screen by anyone who wants to consult a map or service bulletin.

"Above all else, the screens are a customer communications device," said Paul J. Fleuranges, the senior director of corporate and internal communications at the authority, "so customers have to have at their disposal maps, service status, trip planning and other services that are just a tap away."

The kiosks were designed by Antenna Design, which also designed the MetroCard vending machines and the R142 and R142a subway cars. Thirty will be manufactured by MRI Inc. and programmed by CBS Outdoor, which already controls subway advertising under a 10-year contract with the authority. Between 47 and 90 kiosks will be manufactured by Comark Corporation and programmed byControl Group, a young and growing technology firm.

David W. Dunlap/The New York TimesThis is not an actual ad, but an example of the kind of advertiser that might appear on the kiosks. The service bar at the top of the screen will always be visible and the ad can be stopped with a tap on the screen.

As licensees of the transportation agency, CBS Outdoor and Control Group are to purchase the kiosks for about $15,000 each and furnish the software and programming. They will deliver the kiosks to the authority, which will own, install and maintain them, and supply power and data to them. Until the companies recoup their cash investment, they will be entitled to 90 percent of gross advertising receipts generated by the kiosks. The other 10 percent will go to New York City Transit.

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