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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking

1.  Boston is promoting digital library access at 20 bus stops ("Borrowing books on the bus? It’s happening in Boston," Boston Globe).

It's not particularly pathbreaking.  Libraries in places like Orange County, California and Calgary have put in book lending stations at transit stations in their communities for more than a decade.

2.  But once again, it raises the issue of how to make bus stops more than perfunctory places within a neighborhood and community.  See past blog entries:

-- "Pathetic not revelatory: Quality of bus stop study in San Francisco," 2021
-- "Bus shelters as social spaces, as potential vectors for virus: Seoul's new anti-covid bus shelter," 2020

Project for Public Spaces has a report on the topic, Destination Station: Transforming Bus Stops through Community Outreach.

3.  Utah has invested in bus stops, but given the heat and sun in the summer months, the fact that a majority of stops have zero provision for shade is a problem.  And not providing a shelter doesn't work out so great in the winter either.

There are three bus stops--no shelters--alongside Sugar House Park for which I am on the board, and I hope that we can work with the Utah Transit Authority to put shelters in, and at at least two of the locations, to incorporate greenery.

Transit shelter next to a fence/golf course, E. Spring Street, Long Beach, California, 
with bougainvillea growing on top of the shelter

A few years ago, there was a public art project with one bus shelter in Everett, Massachusetts that did something similar ("Everett tried to make a bus stop pretty," Boston Globe).  But only for three days.

Rendering of “Felipe Baeza: Unruly Forms,” which will be presented by Public Art Fund next month on more than 400 JCDecaux bus shelters and street furniture throughout New York, Chicago, Boston in the United States, and Mexico City, León, Querétaro in Mexico.  Image: Public Art Fund, NY

4.  The New York Times has an article on a bus shelter public art project, "Watching for the Bus Stop Gallery."  From the article:
Starting Aug. 9, the artist, whose home base is Brooklyn, will be giving people something to think about during their own public transportation journey, or purgatory as the case may be. As part of a Public Art Fund program designed to reach people where they live or commute, Baeza will have eight of his mixed-media, collagelike paintings reproduced on some 400 JCDecaux bus shelters in New York, Boston and Chicago as well as Querétaro and Léon in Mexico. They will also appear on digital kiosks and newsstands in Mexico City.... 

And his paintings for the project — fantastic, ritualistic images of human bodies in different stages of transformation or regeneration — touch on the power of mobility. Speaking from a small office-like studio at the Getty, where he had a nine-month residency ending in June, Baeza called his subjects “unruly forms” or “fugitive bodies” who don’t conform to norms or abide by laws. Some seem to be morphing into sea creatures or mythic birds; others are on the cusp of flight.

I especially like the leveraging of digital ad networks across cities.  

I proposed something like that, although within communities, as point #10, "Create a digital community and transit information network for Silver Spring, employing kiosks and mobile applications" in "PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District" | Part 3: Program items 10-18" (2018).

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1 comment:

  1. Richard Layman8:57 PM

    https://archive.ph/b0g7y#selection-1565.0-1565.98

    Boston Globe: Cambridge installed a bus bench backward, facing a hedge. Residents complained almost immediately.

    1/9/2024

    Some other backward-facing bus stop benches in Cambridge are not mistakes, though, Warnick said. The city installed them that way on purpose in Inman Square because of “space constraints,” he said. There, some benches sit right up against plexiglass between the bench and the street.
    The best bus stops are the ones that most closely resemble train stations, featuring shelter, heat, seating, and countdown clocks telling riders how long they have to wait. And then there are those with only a pole to indicate where the bus will show up — who knows when. That was the Mt. Auburn Street stop before the bench.
    How bus stop amenities get installed and where they get installed is a bit of a patchwork process. Cities control curbs and sidewalks, while the MBTA controls the bus service.

    Bus shelters may be owned by municipalities, the MBTA, or private vendors. The MBTA has bus stop design guidelines that recommend parameters for installing amenities, including prioritizing stops with more than 50 average weekday boardings and stops that serve seniors and people with disabilities.
    Of the more than 7,000 bus stops along MBTA routes, only 713 had shelters to protect riders from the snow, rain, wind, and heat, according to MBTA bus stop data provided to the Globe in response to a records request last year. Of those 713 shelters, just 94 were owned by the T, the data show.

    Few bus stops have seating. According to MBTA data, only 124 bus stops had some kind of seating, and 101 of those benches were marked as in “good” or “excellent” condition. Pesaturo said that the seating data dates back to 2017 and also may have shifted.
    The MBTA plans to install more bus shelters, benches, and more interactive digital information kiosks with real-time service information, maps, and trip planning this year, Pesaturo said, with the goal of providing “a safe and dignified place to wait” and improving the bus stop experience. Priority will be given to locations with high ridership and service for transit-dependent populations, said Pesaturo. The agency also welcomes bus stop amenities provided by municipalities or third-party developers as long as they meet accessibility requirements.

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