A public art idea for secondary and tertiary bus stops

From time to time I write about bus stop public art projects. I haven't been thinking about that so much lately, because DC has committed to a particular program with Adshel. In many respects the program is excellent (new and more bus shelters, opportunities for commercial districts and neighborhoods to include information about their areas, which can be updated annually, a bike rental program, and money, which DC will use to fund the Great Streets program), but it does stress uniformity.

At the Regional Bus Conference a couple weeks ago, one of the presentations was by a person from the Cleveland area's Regional Transit Authority. I haven't tried to track her presentation down, but it was based on this publication, Transit Waiting Environments, which I wrote about last year, in the entry "Bus Shelters Revisited."

But one of her major points (I don't have my notes with me) is that there is a typology of five different bus stops:

-- Basic (pole and sign)
-- Bus stop with seating
-- Bus stop with shelter
-- Community destinations
-- regional portals (such as at a subway station or the Takoma-Langley Park transit center).

At that meeting, I wasn't really thinking with my public art hat, so I needed this article from the Detroit News, "Students craft a friendlier Ferndale: Cranbrook art project dots city with colorful bus benches," to link the public art potential to Type 1 (basic) and Type 2 (bus stop with seating) bus stops. In fact, the presenter showed us this image which should have gotten me thinking.
Image from Transit Waiting Environments.

But why not consider what ideas and initiatives along the lines of what Cranbrook Art School students did in Ferndale, Michigan? This could provide another way to add pizzazz to transit marketing, especially of the bus system. It's a great way to promote art in the public realm, and a way to engage students into thinking more broadly about--and riding--transit.
David Coates / The Detroit News. Robert Kilgore of Southfield rests on one of Ferndale's eight new benches that are part of Cranbrook Academy of Art students' "The Bus Stops Here" project. These orange-and-pink stools are on Woodward.
David Coates/Detroit News. Some of the new benches make reference to the lanes of a road, the wings of a bird and the hull of a ship. This bench is on Nine Mile Road.

Public art treatments at bus stops. Image from Transit Waiting Environments.

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Index Keywords: transit; public-art