Distinctive bus shelter at the entrance to Utah State University, Logan

The reason that I find this interesting is because when I did the bicycle and pedestrian plan for Western Baltimore County many years ago, one of the recommendations was that University of Maryland Baltimore County respectfully recognize that students use the local MTA bus system, and provide on campus shelters and related facilities.

At that time, they didn't provide any shelters at all, so students had to wait outside in the sun and cold. I seem to recall rolling through the campus a few years ago and seeing shelters, but I could be misremembering.

That's why I was a bit surprised about this shelter.  It's not just a shelter, it announces that it is on the campus of the university, it's large not small, it's much more substantial than a typical transit agency bus shelter. It's branded with the University's logo, etc.

It definitely is an illustration of my point that bus shelters are "marketing touchpoints" of transit systems ("Arlington County's bus shelters and a public realm framework of quality ," 2013), and if bus shelters are crappy that communicates very clearly that the community doesn't value transit.  

Although in this case, it is a marketing touchpoint for the University more generally, not just wrt transit.

One problem in public space management is the desire to be unique | Does San Francisco really needs its own $20,000 trash can

Flickr photo by Elvert Barnes of a trash can in Times Square, branded with a public art campaign addressing harassment of Asian Americans.

There is a big tension in public space management over maintenance--its cost, vandalism,  restrooms (an issue that I'm dealing with now in Salt Lake)--and the quality of urban design, street furniture, and the aesthetic environment of the place.

The primary reason that business improvement districts and parks conservancies ("Creating a Parks Conservancy That Fits," Parks & Recreation) were created was to provide for a higher level of maintenance and care than can normally be provided by a city or county agency, because they don't focus on just one place, but many.

Sugarhouse wayfinding kiosk/pylon.  They are supposed to be stocked with maps and there is a QR code for more information, but these resources haven't been funded or updated in an ongoing way.

(There is criticism of these types of entities over the source of money, concerns about privatization, the ability for civic input into their operation, etc. See Public Spaces/Private Money: The Triumphs and Pitfalls of Urban Park Conservancies, Trust for Public Land.)

But the cost can be exacerbated by groups seeking to be more distinctive by having street furniture unique to them, like creating their own designs for trash cans instead of buying them from Victor Stanley and branding them.  Another big thing is designing their own bike racks, instead of focusing on making bike parking better overall.

Another problem with this is creating unique appurtenances that don't work very well, as they haven't been tested elsewhere in real life situations.  For example, the wayfinding pylons created by the Salt Lake Redevelopment Authority for the Sugarhouse Business District.

A prototype of the Salt and Pepper trash can seen near the Embarcadero and Ferry Building in San Francisco. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP.

This has come up in San Francisco with their design of a new trash can that costs $20,000 per copy ("Rubbish! San Francisco’s $20,000 designer trash can struggles to contain trash," Guardian).

I'd rather buy 20 cans for the same amount of money.  And figure out how to add an evening maintenance shift. 

Years ago this came up in Arlington with the $1 million bus shelter ("Arlington County's bus shelters and a public realm framework of quality," 2013, "I guess I do have some issues with the Arlington bus shelters ," 2014).  The criticism was unfair because it was a prototype and they were testing new approaches, and at scale it would have been cheaper, but the problem is that the cost of street furniture and other initiatives by government are an easy target for anti-taxers and conservatives, and an easy story for the media.

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This is also an issue with transit systems and their heavy rail cars.  Most every transit system designs their own.  If they used similar or the same designs, likely they'd be cheaper, easier to build, and more reliable.

A PCC car still in operation in Antwerp, Belgium.  Flickr photo by Tie 62.

The brilliance of the PCC streetcar was that it brought standardization and savings to transit systems looking to save money.

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.

-- "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2016 

-- "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.

-- "Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model," 2017 

-- "Branding's not all you need for transit," 2018

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. 

Public statue with a mask, Salt Lake City

Parley Pratt statue with a mask, 2300 East 2100 South, Salt Lake City.

Parley Pratt was an entrepreneur and Mormon proselytizer.  He created a pass through the Wasatch Mountains that was eventually incorporated into the Lincoln Highway, a private initiative which created a coast-to-coast highway from New York City to San Francisco.

This little park is a memorial to him, has beautiful plantings, and a number of plaques on neighborhood-relevant history.

Bench inset in a decorative brick wall, with projected capping

Millcreek Community Center, Salt Lake County

I have been thinking about how benches can be incorporated into walls for a long time, especially as an opportunity to create sitting spaces at bus stops.

But walls/fences topped with decorative capping can get in the way of comfort if the capping projects into the sitting side of the bench, rather than being laid flush on the top of the wall.

While not an example of places with stone or brick walls on properties abutting bus stops (a typical condition in DC), this is an example of an informally provided bench next to a bus stop.

Informal bench at a Utah Transit Authority bus stop, 2100 East, Salt Lake City.  

(I haven't taken it, but a bus serving this stop goes to Park City.)

Concrete neighborhood streetlight pole

I've mentioned that Salt Lake City has what seems to be a unique program that allows residents on a street or in a larger neighborhood to band together and install a "private" network of sidewalk focused streetlights.  The city will provide grants to help this along.  But the project is organized and coordinated by residents.

It's also a lot cheaper because instead of linking the streetlights to the grid separately--usually through an underground network of cabling that requires digging up a portion of the entire street--the streetlights are connected to the grid via the electricity connection to individual houses--and that property pays for the cost of the electricity.

But I haven't seen many examples of concrete streetlight poles, which are super long lasting.  (San Francisco should use this material as it is impervious to urine for much longer period.  See "Lamp post destroyed by urine falls in street, just misses driver," San Francisco Chronicle.)

However, it's possible that these streetlights were installed by the original developer of the neighborhood, as the style is in keeping with other street furniture elements, like signage, placed elsewhere.

Why not get office buildings to install water fountains in facades as a community amenity?

A typical office building facade: 1700 K Street NW, Washington DC


An indoor water fountain and water bottle filler. A more robust design suitable for outdoor conditions would have to be created.

One of the new London water fountains outside Kentish Town tube station. Photograph: Luke Garratt/Greater London Authority

The Guardian reports that London is installing 100 outdoor water fountains in an attempt to get people to purchase fewer bottles of water ("Locations of 50 new London water fountains revealed").

For some time I've been thinking why not just install water fountains/fillers in building facades?

They can be supported from the internal piping system and it would be a community amenity and likely a lot cheaper to do and maintain.

Although in places without office buildings, free standing outdoor water fountains may have to be the primary option.

Revisiting stories: Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community and Detroit's reduction in pedestrian deaths from lighting upgrades

I wrote about this in 2014 ("Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community" and "Lighting as an element of urban design and community identity: Cleveland chandelier + Chicago lighting design framework plan design competition").

The basic idea is that in the context of an 18- or 24-hour city, you need to plan specifically and in a structured fashion for the night-time daypart, and that means planning for lighting. The Eindhoven Netherlands lighting master plan takes this further, by defining six categories of light:

• urban lighting (streets, public areas)
• buildings and objects
• art (indoor and outdoor)
• events and festivals
• information
• advertising.

Since then, I also came across a lighting master plan from the City of Bath in the UK.  Bath is noteworthy for being the pilot system of modern integrated urban wayfinding systems.

-- Bath City Centre Lighting Strategy

LED conversion to save money.  Otherwise, the focus of most local governments is streetlight upgrading to LED to save money by using less electricity ("Webinar on street lighting: LEDs, networks: Thursday March 9th").

This has got many residents up in arms because of recommendations by a committee of the American Medical Association about the Kelvin frequency of LEDs and the fact that manufactured LED lighting tends to be at higher frequencies ("When the lights go on in DC, will they be too bright?," WTOP; "Takoma Park looks to new LED lights to save money, energy," Washington Post).

Smart City initiatives/Streetlights as networks.  Some but not all local governments are also looking at conversion projects as a way to reposition streetlights as networks, and incorporate other elements.  For example, DC would like to use new streetlight systems as a way to deliver wi-fi and incorporate Shot Spotter and other public safety technologies.

-- "Smart street lighting is driving smart city projects," SmartCities World

Streetlights as electric car charging devices.  London ("Want an electric car charge point on the street outside your house? There's a £2.5m pot, but the catch is you have to apply though your council," This is Money) and Los Angeles are two of the cities looking at this.

Streetlight conversion as an element of public safety.  Streetsblog USA calls our attention to Detroit ("Detroit Streetlight Effort Dramatically Reduces Ped Deaths") where likely the streetlight conversion was driven by saving money, but is positioned primarily as a public safety initiative. The city claims a 95% decrease in annual pedestrian deaths -- from 24 to 1 -- because of the change.

Communicating benefits: public safety versus saving money as the primary message for streetlight upgrades.  One of the most important books I read on marketing and message was called Strategic Marketing for Not-For-Profit Organizations.  Its primary point is that all organizations have three publics: input which give you resources; throughput which does the work of the organization (staff); and output to whom the organization's actions are directed.  And that you should differentiate your marketing depending on which public you're addressing.

Too often government agencies don't differentiate in messaging across the publics or test what type of messaging resonates best.  Saving money is a great benefit, but might not be the most important message.

... just as the presentations around the report Building Public Will make the point that the best message for clean rivers isn't environmental stewardship but more focused on public health and the fact that most drinking water comes from rivers.

The lesson is to figure out the best message that resonates with the public, not based on how you think the public should be acting and behaving ("take care of the environment" vs. clean drinking water or "historic preservation is a good thing to do" vs. it.makes your house worth more, etc.)

Clock on streetlight in Lubyanka Square, Moscow

Note the clock on the streetlight at the right in the photo.

From the NYT article, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a Little Fish. He Had a Big Enemy."

Caption: The Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., in Moscow. Mr. Putin once ran the agency. Credit, Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times.

Small bike counter, Royal College Street, Camden Town, London

The advantage of taking wrong turns is that you get the opportunity to see stuff that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.  While walking to Camden High Street from London Euston train station, I took a wrong turn, walking down Royal College Street, which is somewhat parallel to Camden High Street.

It is the location of a main cycletrack and has a pretty simple, but effective, bike counter, displaying daily and year-to-date counts.


It's got to be a lot cheaper than the big, but very prominent bike counters like this one at the new Wharf District.  That being said, there's a place for both types.


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This post is sponsored by the donors--anonymous and named, to the GoFundMe account associated with my recent trip to Liverpool and London, which was triggered by my receiving a free registration to the International Place Branding Event one-day conference in Liverpool.  Their support is gratefully acknowledged in making this and many other posts possible.

(Donations are still being accepted.  Thank you.)

Park benches as cultural information and wayfinding devices

Designed by FitzpatrickWoolmer on the Brecon Beacons Canal for the Canal And River Trust.

Often such benches are used to display advertising, but there are plenty of creative opportunities to utilize them differently.

What's the responsibility for maintenance when a property owner installs an appurtenance in the public space for use by all?

The Apollo Apartment building on H Street NE--the building where the Whole Foods Supermarket is located--also has apartments on the back side of the property, on I Street NE.  Adjacent to the bike racks they installed, they put in a seemingly high quality public rated bicycle pump, by Cyclehoop.

But it's broken.  I discovered this a couple weeks ago and had to walk my bike over to Florida Avenue NE to reflate the tire that I tried to add air to there.

I informed them by email, never got a response, and the pump is still broken, with no sign on it saying it is out of order.

I guess I should report it to 311.  But how do they handle service requests on "street furniture" in the public space that is not maintained by the city?

A woman eating lunch sits on a brick wall by the bike station, Silver Spring, Maryland, showing the value of places to sit in an area otherwise bereft of benche

1.  I am working on a position paper/blog entry about Silver Spring urban design matters, hence some little pieces.

2. On the other side of the Silver Spring Civic Center there are plenty of places to sit, and benches along Ellsworth Avenue, so it's not like there aren't places to sit in other parts of Silver Spring.

But this photo illustrates a point made by William F. Whyte in the book about placemaking called City: Rediscovering the Center, that people don't limit where they want to sit to where planners provide benches.  They want to sit in other places, and they will make do with what's available.

Note that I think that we could make a change for the better by reconfiguring such walls as benches from the outset.

Creativity in street furniture

Instagram photo by FeeBee510.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in Oakland, the stump of a tree that had been cut down was carved into a chair. Later, someone carved into the stump chair a passage from the book, The Giving Tree.

Creative seating in the public space is an element of the public realm framework.

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Earlier this week was introduced to the website of a firm called Street Furniture, which manufactures and sells street furniture, natch, but also does public space planning and consulting work.

While they have a website for the US, the firm is based in Australia and the firm's Aussie website includes writings on public space matters in a section called streetchat.

One of the firm's newest products is called the Flower Chair, named for the chief of the firm, Joshua Flowers.

Street furniture: charm versus utilitarian design

Helios bus shelter style, Berlin.

In 2006, during the process to pick the style of bus shelter for DC in the face of the city's new bus shelter contract, I advocated for a historically-sympathetic shelter that would complement the city's historic architecture.

The company with the contract was agnostic about the style, but what passes for the city's urban design contingent was fine with the modern version of a bus shelter, arguing that it was important to differentiate between new and old.

The counter-argument would be that the value of the ensemble within the built environment can be either enhanced or diminished with each new addition, depending on the quality of the addition.  To be honest, wrt the bus shelters they are more or less neutral.

They are new so they contribute to the quality of the public space, and even though they are modernist-designed structures, they function more like background objects, and neither diminish nor exalt the city's historic architecture.

NotionsCapital calls our attention to proposed new news-stands in Paris, which along with the improvements--heating, better lighting, a digital screen on the outside for community information, will eliminate the art nouveau design adornments that distinguish the current structures “Puerile,” “soulless”: The verdict on the newsstands that could replace Paris’ iconic green kiosks," Quartz).

Newspaper kiosk, Champs Élysée, Paris. Flickr photo by Burgermarc.

This is an example of how little by little, the urban design and architectural quality of the built environment is often dumbed down.

In DC, it didn't matter with the bus shelters, because at least over the past 50 years, the city has had very simple structures.

The Paris Metro was first opened during the height of the art nouveau period and transit station design of the time reflects this style.  Flickr photo by Dvotaw.

But in Paris, when you have a coherent design aesthetic that has resulted in an architecturally distinctive family of street furniture, typified by design elements associated with the city's Metro system, eliminating the artistic embellishments of street furniture with each new design ends up impoverishing the way that street furniture contributes to placemaking and beauty in the built environment.

Bowie Street, Austin, Texas

A Bowie Street sign in downtown Austin was mysteriously replaced with a David Bowie Street sign on Wednesday January 13, 2016. The street is actually named for Alamo defender James Bowie. JAY JANNER / AMERICAN-STATESMAN.

In keeping with the theme about street names, monuments, statues, and other forms of public acknowledgement of great people, and how the definition of who or what is great is very much dependent on your perspective, Bowie Street in Austin, named for a historical figure important to Texan Independence, was "renamed" as a kind of street art, by people who created a decal to modify the existing sign to honor musician David Bowie, after the announcement of his death. See
"SXSW founder and sign maker: We changed “David Bowie” street sign," from the Austin American-Statesman.

The music industry is a key component of the city's cultural identity and creative economy, as mentioned in the previous post about David Bowie and music in the city a couple days ago, so this is an interesting and fun way to acknowledge David Bowie, albeit without sanction by the city and much faster than could occur through formal channels.

But it does remind me of how Indianapolis, associated with Motor Sports because of the Indianapolis Speedway and the annual Indy 500 event, has an honorary street renaming program focused on acknowledgement of racing car drivers.

This could be a spur for Austin to do something similar around music.

Urban design and changes to post office delivery methods

The latest proposal for "reforming" the US Postal Service and reducing costs includes ending door-to-door delivery of mail, by creating "cluster mailboxes."

-- Our Plan - Saving the Postal Service, House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
-- "Door-to-Door Mail Delivery on Chopping Block,"  CBS News

Cluster delivery has been the method of delivery for a long time in newly constructed suburban subdivisions.

However, while the figure of 80 cents per day per household was bandied about as the cost of providing mail delivery, I imagine that is an average, that it is cheaper to provide door-to-door service in dense neighborhoods and more expensive in less dense neighborhoods.

Although not according to the CBS News article, which says that the cost of delivery to city households is $353/year, almost $75 more than the cost to suburban/rural households.

But doing suburban-style cluster mailboxes in the city would be a disaster.

Although it is possible to have decent looking "street furniture" integrated into the cityscape that wouldn't be terrible.

I also think that modifying a British style phone booth could work.

In any case, addressing this issue now is paramount, or at least figuring out what these proposals mean to cities.

2.  Also, as a revenue generating measure, it would be possible to add some large boxes to these urban-appropriate cluster boxes for use by package services like FedEx and UPS (the general problem was discussed here, "City transportation departments need to set up innovation units") on a fee basis.  The use fee could go to USPS.

3.  Concerning the separate issue of closing post offices, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has a blog entry with 10 steps for advocacy campaigns focused on saving local offices.

-- "10 Ways to Fight for Your Local Post Office," PreservationNation Blog

More on community building:not painting Evanston's fire hydrants Northwestern University purple

Photo from Tumblr.

Evanston has already painted some of the fire hydrants near Northwestern University (school colors Purple and White) purple.  But at this juncture, they've decided to not paint all of the city's fire hydrants purple.  See "Evanston City Council rejects painting fire hydrants purple for Northwestern" from the Chicago Sun-Times.

I think this is a kind of street furniture and streetscape defining element that is increasingly disappearing.  E.g., Federal Highway Administration guidelines on street signs make it difficult for communities to display distinctive signage, say comparable to that in Toronto.

Toronto street sign photo by jbcurio, from Flickr.

Wayfinding with manhole covers

I have always been interested in the idea of using manhole covers as a distinguishing factor in urban environments. Here and there across the country (Minneapolis; New York City, now around Eastern Market in DC) there are good examples. Tokyo is really known for it. (See the book Designs Underfoot: The Art of Manhole Covers in New York City.)

Steven calls our attention to this blog entry, "Map Hole Points The Way," from Yanko Design.

The entry discusses a manhole cover based wayfinding system. Of course, you can also do this with "disks" embedded in the sidewalk. After all, there is something to be said for not having to wander out in the middle of the street to figure out where to go.

It's still a cool idea though.

Flickr photo of Chuo-Ko manhole cover in Osaka by jpellgen

Eugene James Martin, Not Again

Another unique image from the mind of the late visual artist Eugene James Martin.
Suzanne Fredericq: I have recently posted some video clips of his art on YouTube. (Image from the Guardian Art Blog.)

Eugene James Martin, Not Again
Originally uploaded by rllayman