I started this discussion on mastodon, but want to here too. If you could create the perfect bus stop, what would it have? Here are some of my ideas:
⛑ Safety:
- Shelters: no advertisements blocking views. Enclosed shelters must have 2+ exit points.
- Solar lights
♿ Accessibility:
- A space in shelters for wheelchairs.
- Marked wide paved section for wheelchairs & those with mobility difficulties to board a ramp onto the bus.
- Braille on bus stop signs & tactile pavement.
🚲Other:
- Bike racks
- Vending Machines
- Public water fountain
- Tiny library
Do you have more ideas?
Edit: realized the photo i added is ai, but i can’t seem to get rid of it so 🤷♀️
This post is very clearly entirely AI generated, not just the image. No normal person puts emojis in a list format like this
I mean I actually do. It helps grab people’s attention. It’s also a good way to do polls, ex:
- Anglebert’s 🎱
- And Prion Feast 🦆
- You Monkey Plate, Dr 🙊
And then like people in chat react with whatever place they’d like to go for lunch.
That would be covered in illegible graffiti, fast food trash, and feces soooo quickly where I live.
So you need a person there keeping it tidy instead of a vending machine.
That would have to be a contracted third party with truck mounted power washers. Similar to porta-shitter maintenance.
I think a lot of it stems from lack of individual community investment. Inability to own property due to awful wages leads to a lack of pride or ownership in a community. Areas that get torn apart and trashed are deprioritized by city services, leading to further trashing which destabilizes the local tax base by driving out business or discouraging new business.
I can’t sleep right now and I think I’m just ruminating on urban decay.
No problem, I hope you had a good nights sleep!
I thought more of the “madame pipi” which was a job in france where, usually an old lady, sat in front of the public toilets and kept everything tidy.
Not very cost effective in our hyper capitalistic society ofc.
That would work in an affluent suburb for a while, but not in any dense urban area with homeless.
It really needs to have: A bathroom. A water fountain. A roof. No glass walls, they will just get kicked out. Some buttons to call security. Some sort of automated connection to public services like hospitals, shelters and food distro sites, and a map of how to get there. Seating, but not the type thats easy to sleep on. Its not a homeless shelter.
And it needs to be regularly cleaned and maintained.
The ideal bus stop is one where buses stop so frequently you don’t actually need the stop to be a microcosm of city life because you’re at most five minutes away from the next bus.
Mmm, back in the 200Xs there was one bus stop like that near my work. It was incredible. You didn’t even have to think about “catching the bus” you would just go to the bus stop and wait around for a few minutes.
To give you an idea, it was never even worth it to light up a cigarette at that stop - you’d barely ever get to finish it.
Now imagine living in a city where all bus stops are like that (well, most anyway).
That’s actual “public transit”.
It’s so frustrating because all the infrastructure and willing workers are right there. We just don’t do it (because of money) - at least in my city.
I hated public transit in Ottawa when I lived there. It was so bad that I bought a car, something I’d at first thought I’d never need, just so I didn’t have to take OC Transpo anywhere. (OC Transpo is optimized for taking people from the suburbs downtown for work in the morning, and take them home in the evening. For literally any other use case it is worse than any other form of transportation other than, sometimes, walking.)
At least I thought I hated it.
Then I moved to a place that has reliable, frequent, fast public transit. 16 years after that I returned to Ottawa for a trip … and found that beforehand I only mildly disliked OC Transpo. NOW I really hate it!
And why is it so bad? Because the City of Ottawa has made two fundamental errors:
- They think their bus system should break even or possibly turn a profit. This is not what public transit is for.
- They then adopted the reversed attitude of what they should even if #1 was a thing: they won’t spend money on the bus if there’s not enough ridership … but the whole reason there’s not enough ridership is because the buses are such crap.
And what’s especially annoying about all this is that they have all the pieces to have a world-class public transit system in place. The Transitway is roads that only buses can drive on, allowing them to slip past traffic jams. The buses themselves are astonishingly comfortable (kicking complete ass against the buses I ride in that regard). Bus stops are generally located in smart places and are frequent enough that you’re probably within walking distance of a bus stop even in the middle of the suburbs.
And yet the system is so incompetent that despite those advantages only the truly desperate use it outside of two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening.
A stop button for the bus stop.
Where I live the bus does not stop if no one flags it from the bus stop. The problem is that sometimes it is hard to see which bus is coming and you have to always be on alert. A button that maybe turn on a light that show the incoming bus that passagens wants to get in. For bus stop with multiple bus lines it should show which line needs to stop.
Similarly a info panel with the buses that stops in that stop, when the next one is due and maybe even a map of the buses route. I know that with smartphones this is not such kife change but still useful I think.
I like that idea a lot. It would allow for more mini bus stops in side streets and out of the way areas, because the bus wouldn’t have to divert from the “main” route unless someone on the out-of-the-way bus stop actually needed it. It would be great for people with mobility issues, also. You could really go nuts with it if you had enough buses!
This is a bad thing - buses need to be predictable for everyone. Sure it is nice for the person who is off the “main” route. But for everyone else trying to get to their meeting on time it means sometimes they are late because the bus decided to take a longer route. Transit needs to be predictable because getting there on time is critical for a large number of trips.
Maybe yeah, maybe a shuttle service is better for disabled folks. I wasn’t imagining a big detour, but I suppose it could add up if the bus you’re on takes one or two detours between your stops.
That’s a cool idea, it could eventually help them adjust service if a lot of people are requesting buses a certain day.
Or simply act as an anonymized data source for future changes. The time when someone requests a bus is different from when someone actually gets on a bus
Busses that arrive every 15 minutes so that comfy bus stops aren’t really required.
And if not, at least that arrive on time so you can plan ahead and not come to the stop too early.
apps are not a substitute for being on time every time. The only substitue is a bus ever 5 minutes or less so you don’t bother checking the clock.
A bus every 5 minutes makes sense in cities, less so in more rural areas where the bus would be empty most of the times. I would consider a bus every 20 minutes to be enough as a minimum service.
sort of. Rural areas can’t support a frequent bus but suburban areas can support a bus more frequent than they get. Lack of service is why those butes are empty: people who tan afford a car and wouldn’t face much traffic drive instead of slaving their life to the but schedule.
note that it takes several years of frequent service for people to figure out the bus doesn’t suck and it takes a great network as well as frequency. An such no transit systen has the money needed to prove me right. Still I maintain transit doesn’t need nearly as high density as most people think. What density gives you is enough people who can’t drive to support a systen those who can would choose to use.
Unfortunately that frequent traffic is only feasible in rather dense urban, or possibly suburban areas.
Our local operator runs huge deficits outside the major hubs, and even that is just for a bus every 30 minutes, most of which are completely devoid of passengers.
Ever used a bus every 30 minutes? They force you to slave your life to the schedule. there are no quick trips as you are waiting 28 minutes for your next trip after buying your coffee. You can get to work but that is about it. no wonder most people don’t ride.
give people in that area better service and they will ride. (but probably not in numbers to pay for thth but - only the largest bendein the midele buses can pay for them selves on a reasonable fare.
Yes and i still do when I go back to my home town. People who have no other choice still use it so it’s “OK” cause everyone else drives. But in rural very sparse places it’s really not feasible.
almost nobody lives in those rural sparse areas. Forget about them and focus on the much larger numbers who live in more dense areas and yet get terrible service. Even suburbs can support better service.
Ever used a bus every 30 minutes?
Yes, for several years, and only because I had no other options. Once I got a drivers license I bought a car & first switched from bus-train-bus to car-train-bus (saving roughly a half an hour daily), but after they put high parking fees on the commuter parking I ditched public transit altogether (slightly more expensive even after accounting for the fee but cut my commute by another hour daily).
With that said, it’s simply not feasible in many areas to up the service. Personally, I think the way to go in these cases is focusing on the denser areas at first, ensuring that the service is great and enable interoperability with personal transportation such as cars and bikes so that people can enjoy the best of both worlds.
What about a hausmann style instead of this dystopian glass & concrete-steel style?
Here’s a very simple thing that many bus stops do not have. A sign at the correct height to actually see the name of the stop from inside the bus.
Yes! I would have never thought of that, but you are absolutely right.
- Some kind of “panic button” to press if you’re being stalked or something
- the stop number and name, e.g. “Stop 53: Main and Elm”. make sure those are on the major map apps so you can call your friends and tell them where you are.
Some kind of “panic button” to press if you’re being stalked or something
Maybe something like this?
https://security.ubc.ca/home/safety-prevention-resources/emergency-blue-phones/
Good point! I have seen them outside of university buildings here, but that’s it
Some way to know how far away the next buses are.
If we’re going all out, then a real time map of nearby buses
@[email protected] My city actually has displays on some bus stops that show in real time the time until their arrival. It’s also speaks them. (Kinda similar to trains), but it’s only on some bus stations.
That’s great!
It is when they work. More than once I’ve seen the time displayed jump. Next bus in 7 minutes for the next 15 minutes, then 1 minute as the bus itself pulls to a stop.
- Outlet/charging station
- A way to pay the fare, charge your card or figure out whatever the payment system is.
That is often the big hurdle in taking a bus in a new city - finding out how and how much to pay and where to buy the right pass.
Buses that actually show up at the stop.
A bench would be nice too, but thats probably asking way too much.
A bench you could actually sleep on, not these anti homeless horrible ones.
Heating or cooling depending on geographic location and time of year.
Yes!! I’ve stood at bus stop when it’s -30c (-22 f ?) and I don’t wish it on anyone.
the pic needs a line on the glass at about 1m, so less people and animals crash into it.
In NL, they’ve got bike racks with roofs next to the bus stops, I wish we had that here as well!
That would be great! No wet bikes!
