Bus Shelters

[David Greene]

Wanted to call this out in its own thread because it's an interesting topic -- more than I'd realized initially.

http://www.startribune.com/local/minnea ... 79041.html

To qualify for a shelter, the agency requires a bus stop to have at least 40 average daily boardings in Minneapolis and St. Paul, or 25 in the suburbs.

Er...what? How is that even remotely legal under Title VI?

Beyond that huge question, I've got some others:

How can we get more funding for shelters?
How can we improve shelter design?
How do we decide when a shelter needs an upgrade?

[mullen]

i know metro transit has removed shelters in areas at the request of police. the shelter at king park on nicollet south mpls lost it's shelter a couple years ago for this reason.

[transportationist]

Not to defend the policy, but a rationale may be that the because the suburbs have lower frequency, this comes closer to equalizing person time spent in a shelter.

I still think we have far too many bus stops (which reduces the number of persons per stop, and thus the likelihood of the stop qualifying for a shelter)

Also there is inadequate bus sign information, which has got to be competing at a budgetary level for resources with shelters, and should be a higher priority.

[phop]

Good good news.

Look out for hundreds of new or improved bus shelters across the Twin Cities next year, thanks in part to a major federal grant awarded to Metro Transit this week.

The $3.26 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration is helping fuel a massive increase in shelter spending next year. Altogether, Metro Transit expects to install 150 new shelters, replace between 75 and 100 shelters and enhance 75 existing shelters with amenities like light, heat and more transit information.

Altogether, $5.8 million will available for shelters in 2014-2015 -- compared to normal budgets of less than half a million.

http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/277224912.html

[twincitizen]

Can't tell exactly from that map, but it looks like southbound Blaisdell at Lake (White Castle) made the cut. That has to be one of the worst offenders in the system. I'd bet it's one of the busiest "reverse commute" stops in the system. Tons of people heading south from there in the morning. I think its neighbor, westbound Lake @ Blaisdell, is also lacking a shelter. This area probably has the same number of trips and transfers as Chicago-Lake, and just look at the vast difference in amenities. Also, we should stop wasting money on stupid things like Chicago-Lake that take buses off their routes and make them even slower.

[mullen]

Can't tell exactly from that map, but it looks like southbound Blaisdell at Lake (White Castle) made the cut. That has to be one of the worst offenders in the system. I'd bet it's one of the busiest "reverse commute" stops in the system. Tons of people heading south from there in the morning. I think its neighbor, westbound Lake @ Blaisdell, is also lacking a shelter. This area probably has the same number of trips and transfers as Chicago-Lake, and just look at the vast difference in amenities. Also, we should stop wasting money on stupid things like Chicago-Lake that take buses off their routes and make them even slower.

yes on all counts. metro transit just ignored that entire kmart area. i dont know if they were waiting for the re-do of the freeway but it's been an unacceptable bus stop for too long.

and the chicago/lake transit center is awful with the traffic and buses having to make so many turns.

[MNdible]

I'm not very excited about extending heating to a lot of shelters. It seems like this should be reserved for the busiest of the busy shelters, or maybe not at all. It just feels so wasteful... heating the outside. Also, this is another ongoing maintenance and operational cost that will have to be borne by Metro Transit.

Based on the not-too-distant past, it seems very likely that a lot of the busy non-shelter locations were deliberately removed because of crime/drug-dealing/loitering concerns. Which isn't to say that that's acceptable, just that it wasn't like nobody recognized the demand for them.

[mplsjaromir]

I'm not very excited about extending heating to a lot of shelters. It seems like this should be reserved for the busiest of the busy shelters, or maybe not at all. It just feels so wasteful... heating the outside. Also, this is another ongoing maintenance and operational cost that will have to be borne by Metro Transit.

Bus shelter heaters are infrared heaters, meaning they only heat surfaces which make them considerably more energy efficient than comfort heating. Not to mention they are effective in drafty conditions as well. A typical heater is about 750 watts, a kilowatt hour of electricity is around $0.10, so somewhere in the ballpark of $0.075 an hour to run a heater. Lets say one waits for 15 minutes using a heater, they used up $0.018 of electricity staying warm. To me the heaters provide of modicum of comfort in a reasonable application of resources.

[LRV Op Dude]

Here is a link to presentation about Bus Stop Enhancements to the Met Council Transportation Committee.

[matt91486]

I think these signage improvements look good, but I think we should just skip the Tier 1 altogether and go with Tier 2 at all stand-alone stops.

[VAStationDude]

Or eliminate the tier 1 stops on frequent routes.

[mattaudio]

At bus stops where there's really no reason to the contrary, they should take this opportunity to move to far side bus stops.

[Silophant]

Strib article on new signs. Looks like the cutoff for the better signage will probably be more than five boardings a day, which is only a third of the stops on the system. They seriously need to look at decommissioning a whole bunch of these low-volume stops.