Futuristic bus stations for Montgomery County BRT fail to address comfort

===========

  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)

============

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.