Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Friday, October 02, 2020

Futuristic bus stations for Montgomery County BRT fail to address comfort

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  Updated and re-dated: Originally published on Wednesday September 30th. 

1. I wasn't accurate in describing the bus shelters as not having walls. They do have walls but they aren't flush with the "ceiling" of the shelter so they will still let cold air and rain in. 

2. The Post has a nice piece on the new bus system, called Flash ("The D.C. region’s most ambitious try at bus rapid transit is coming to Montgomery County"). 

3. One particularly interesting element to me is that instead of having bike carriage through a rack mounted to the front of the bus, it's inside the bus. (I seem to recall something similar in San Jose, California...).
Montgomery Planning’s Dave Anspacher secures a bike on board. Flash buses are the county transportation department’s first to allow bikes to be secured inside the bus during the ride. (Photo: Montgomery County Department of Transportation)

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Flash bus station at the Briggs Chaney Park and Ride. The stations feature elements that look like the nesting canopies of trees. (John Kelly/The Washington Post) 

The Washington Post reports ("Futuristic bus stations dot Route 29 for Montgomery’s new Flash system") on Montgomery County's new bus shelters for the forthcoming bus rapid transit system there. 

The shelter has no walls.

From the article:
Starting next month, articulated Flash buses will carry passengers up and down 14 miles of Route 29, between Burtonsville and Silver Spring. There are 11 stops, and most of them feature distinctive metal, stone and wood “stations” designed by ZGF Architects, a Portland, Ore., firm with offices around the world, including in D.C. 
What do these stations look like? Imagine broad, cylindrical tree trunks — their metal “bark” pierced with holes and lit from within — from which emerge metal branches. Atop the branches rest tilted canopies sheathed in wood. 
I think they look pretty cool, even if Flash buses won’t have their own traffic-bypassing lanes. The look of the stations was helped along by a design grant awarded to the county by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The aim was to create something scalable, Conklin said. 
The “trees” can be employed in multiples, depending on the need. The trees are the most distinctive feature, but each station includes other elements. A tall tapered marker stands behind the trees. It has a route map and a screen displaying real-time arrival information. There’s a ticket vending machine — passengers pay before boarding — and terminals where riders can tap their SmarTrip cards.
I have written a number of times about how the fact that there are as many as a dozen or more different bus rapid transit, rapid(er) or express bus, or long distance commuter bus services across the metropolitan area, all with different names, systems, bus shelters (or no shelters at all), and operators, which is an indication of the failure to have integrated transit planning and operation in the DC area.

-- "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019

That seems pretty economically wasteful but as importantly, it means that bus transit doesn't read as a single system, but a balkanized grouping of transit services.

Irrespective of those problems, a problem specific to "fancy" bus shelters is a focus on forward design at the expense of comfort.  

DC can be hot, cold, wet, and blustery, and bus shelters without walls (and usually no heat in the winter and no misters in the very hot and humid summers) aren't  well suited to provide comfort to riders.

True there is shelter from the sun.  But that's not enough.

Granted it is possible to change the design to add walls to the shelters, and even heating and cooling.  But that would require significant retrofitting.

It's a shame that this aspect wasn't considered from the outset.

Another point I try to make is that transit stations and shelters are key marketing touchpoints for transit systems.  

Granted these visually arresting shelters show that design matters, even if it comes at the comfort of actual riders.

But outcomes matter too.  And failing on comfort is a fail.

Also see "Bus shelters as social spaces, as potential vectors for virus: Seoul's new anti-covid bus shelter."  A lot more can be accomplished with transit infrastructure than is generally achieved. 

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6 Comments:

At 2:35 PM, Blogger scratchy said...

They look like that came off the jacket of a 70s album by the group YES.

 
At 3:00 PM, Blogger scratchy said...

Oh wait, There are free standing glass walls, around it. I wonder how sturdy those are.

 
At 3:13 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Urg. U r right. I will have to revise to say inadequate. I was thinking about the new shelter in Seoul, or Montreal.

 
At 8:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry, but if you make them too comfortable they just become homeless encampments. They're not lounges. Shade and rain cover matter most, in addition to ease of maintenance and safety.

 
At 10:17 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Deal with enforcement, not making public spaces shitty so that people tolerate using them but not much else.

But yes, bus shelters can be a loci of activity by the homeless.

I put in complaints about this in the past. Because when this happens, it discourages people from using transit.

This was a problem on the 800 block of Upshur St. NW. Not homeless per se, but persistent loiterers on the block taking over the shelter.

 
At 3:20 PM, Blogger scratchy said...

That is why one needs to look at transportation , housing, mental health planning, and enforcement from holistic stand point.

 

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