Obviously that's shorthand for something like "What [most] people [mostly] want" ....
Are you sure though? Let's assume it was up to you, and you had a choice between $27 billion worth of the improvements mentioned in the article -- mostly aesthetics -- versus choosing $27 billion worth of making your commute time shorter and/or making service more reliable (eg off hours).
You'd really choose the fancy signs and USB chargers over the shorter commute? Really?
"End of story" seems pretty final to me. Either way you're only expressing what you want.
Since you're focusing on trivialities, you obviously skipped a things in the article. They're spending $27B on 1,025 new subway cars with a significantly upgraded layout: Bigger doors and roomier, open-ended layout will fit more people and make it easier to find a seat, make it faster to load/unload people, plus be friendlier to wheelchairs. Those are big changes, not aesthetics. Since they're upgrading things they might as well add some superficial nice-to-haves like wifi and USB chargers, because they're cheap and it's 2016.
It's time to modernize, even the surface details. The NYC subway experience is an embarrassment, especially when you compare it to the subways in other, nominally poorer cities/countries that care more about public transit.
If you want to complain about something meaningful, complain about the lack of wheelchair access to stations.
Are you sure though? Let's assume it was up to you, and you had a choice between $27 billion worth of the improvements mentioned in the article -- mostly aesthetics -- versus choosing $27 billion worth of making your commute time shorter and/or making service more reliable (eg off hours).
You'd really choose the fancy signs and USB chargers over the shorter commute? Really?