The first priority for Bus shelters ought to be marketing transit

Bus shelter, Baltimore.

When I went to Baltimore for Artscape, I took a number of photos, including this bus shelter in the Charles Village neighborhood. We all know about bus shelters and advertising, in fact the DC Department of Transportation has contracted with Adshel for the next round of bus shelter construction (I don't like the design but that's another story).

But DC area bus shelters are missed opportunities to promote transit.

Bus Shelter in Brookland, affixed with a DC bus map.

While a number of DC bus shelters now have bus maps for the system, bus shelters are great places to put transit promotion materials, to reach not only the people who use transit, but the people who might not, who can still see the materials as they walk by the bus shelter.

Map, Farebox Newsletter, and Artscape promotion.

Closeup of the Farebox Newsletter from MTA, posted in the bus shelter on University Blvd. near St. Paul Street in the Charles Village neighborhood adjacent to the Johns Hopkins University campus.

Baltimore does a much better job with this than the Metrobus system.