Waiting for the Bus Doesn’t Have To Be This Bad
A bus stop in Los Angeles, originally shared in Chris Arnade’s “Why the U.S. can’t have nice things.”
It’s often said that transit infrastructure is pedestrian infrastructure. The refrain makes sense: when you exit a bus, you evolve from passenger to pedestrian. Waiting for, and walking to and from, transit is as much a part of the experience of using transit as actually sitting aboard a bus or train. And there’s a lot that can discourage prospective passengers from boarding before even considering the equipment, scheduling, and routes.
In American cities keeping pedestrian infrastructure usable is a tertiary consideration even near major rail stations like 30th Street in Philadelphia.
— Daniel Trubman, Rootless Cosmopolitan (@dmtrubman) February 28, 2024
BOTH sides of the sidewalk are closed off on this corner (the one travelers connecting to/from SEPTA's MFL and trolleys use). pic.twitter.com/7eS9hcqiy8
Yet, across North America, the experience of waiting for transit can be abysmal. Bus stops are demarcated by small, sun-faded signage and often nothing else. Prospective passengers routinely wait unprotected both from weather and speeding vehicles inches away, with nowhere to sit, for upwards of 20 minutes for a vehicle prone to delays by the combination of inefficient route design, traffic due to a lack of dedicated lanes, and unrealistic scheduling. Waiting rooms for commuter trains are notoriously never open, forcing passengers to either inconveniently wait in their vehicles or face the elements on bare-bones platforms. Subway stations in the few cities that have them often close entrances with little warning, causing straphangers to miss their connections.
It’s unsurprising that transit is, for many, regarded as a last resort. There’s little dignity in the experience.
In 2018, Streetsblog USA determined the winner of its Sorry Bus Stops contest was one just outside of Vancouver. “It’s official! The sorriest bus stop in America is in … Canada!”
A bus stop shared on Reddit with the caption, “This is the most pathetic and useless bus stop I’ve ever seen.”
A bus stop in Suffolk County, New York, which made it to the final eigth of Streetsblog’s Sorry Bus Stops contest. Its condition has since been improved.
In his essay, Why American Cities Are Squalid, Chris Arnade recounts the experience of returning stateside from Bulgaria. “Ever since I began my project to walk around the world, it has always been jarring to come home to the US, often from much poorer countries—in this case Bulgaria—to find that our infrastructure is infinitely worse,” he wrote. The journey home from the airport only confirmed his disappointment. And, for reference, he landed in New York City, which is home to the nation’s most comprehensive transit network by a longshot.
Arnade contrasts the squalor, stenches, and screams of his early-morning ride—he departed just before 5 a.m.—with the safety and cleanliness of the subways in Sofia, Bulgaria. Why can’t one of the richest and most famous cities in the world be as nice as a country with a tenth of its GDP?
That question reminded him of the uproar over La Sombrita—Spanish for “the little shade”—in Los Angeles, a shade structure unveiled for the city’s bus stops. Its shortcomings are routinely captured in candid images of bus riders waiting under adjacent shade, rather than underneath the multi-thousand-dollar protection La Sombrita (allegedly) offers. In fact, that’s its defining image on Wikipedia.
The Sombrita featured on Wikipedia. Note how it is unable to provide shade (pictured on the left) during certain times of the day, so transit users wait in the surrounding shade, instead. (Source: Wikipedia.)
But La Sombrita’s debut was viciously mocked online not only for how it fell short on actually casting shade, but the price tag that came with it. Hundreds of thousands were spent on research and each structure allegedly amounted to $10,000. For that price, Angelinos wondered why they couldn’t just get “real” bus shelters?
An example of a bus stop in Los Angeles that provides both adequate shelter and seating.
For Arnade, the answer could be reduced to cowardice:
One of the forces that influenced LA authorities, though they won’t admit it, is homelessness. They built La Sombrita, rather than a proper bus shelter, for the same reason NYC is taking benches out of Port Authority: they don’t want people to sleep there. It’s something you see more and more in American cities: a locking down of public spaces in an attempt to deal with the growth of the homeless population. A removal of resources for the majority, because of concerns over “misuse” by less than 1% of residents.
I’m not saying those concerns aren’t well-founded. Benches become unusable if someone is sleeping or pissing on them. But removing them is a cowardly way to cope with a problem that authorities are otherwise not wanting, or able, to address.
The consequences of this cowardice can be deleterious for transit. The goal, after all, of a transit system should be to offer a level of service that retains existing passengers and attracts new ones, not through sheer desperation, but because the system proves itself to be a practical way to move around town and feels welcoming and accessible. This could be a moral argument, but it’s also just as well a fiscal one. Operating transit isn’t inexpensive. But operating a system that on every front seemingly discourages use and is framed like a reluctant charity case rather than a service, ensures that farebox recovery will never be enough. And, politically, sustaining a system that is visibly underutilized is difficult to justify.
For Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn, there’s also another reason waiting for the bus is so bleak. “Elected officials and staff are sensitive to the things they can actually get money for,” he says. “So, those stroad-side bus stops are a byproduct of that funding scheme where you’re thinking about what can get funded and not what’s actually needed.”
What can get funded, he explains, is a new route that will allegedly capture riders otherwise reliant on other means, without any consideration to the route’s frequency and what it’s like to actually use it. A traffic-choked stroad will get a bus route, and on paper that will look like better connectivity and an attempt to alleviate congestion. In reality, the bus runs once an hour, the stop placement doesn’t align with commuter patterns (for example, dropping off passengers in front of car washes, dealerships, and gas stations), and the route isn’t situated within a broader network that would make sense for most riders on that stretch. “You don’t get money for giving a damn,” he added.
Similarly, cities, agencies, and electeds will welcome “bells and whistles” like WiFi, charging ports, and comfortable modern seating aboard buses in an attempt to lure “choice riders,” generally understood as higher-income commuters who more readily choose their car for trips. The opposite of the “choice rider” is the “captive rider,” who allegedly has no other choice.
These accommodations may involve flashy partnerships with corporations which can help offset some of the cost of installation and are therefore seen as an easy sell to city leaders. The problem, as outlined by a 2016 report by TransitCenter, is that they have little influence on choice riders. In fact, they ranked the lowest in priority for both choice and captive riders, a dichotomy that Steve Higashide, the report’s lead author, feels ultimately is both outdated and unhelpful, anyway.
"Transit has to compete for every rider," he said. "There’s often this assumption that people without cars have no choice, [they] have to ride transit. People are sensitive to transit quality regardless of car ownership."
In fact, the report noted that two-thirds of car-free transit riders had opted for other modes of mobility, including taxis, biking, carpooling, and borrowing vehicles in just the last month alone. In other words, these riders are far from “captive.”
It’s expected that something new receives a ribbon cutting, regardless of how relevant it is to the rider’s experience, but in prioritizing the new, transit misses the opportunity to elevate the existing.
“Transit does get money, after all. You could say it’s less than what our roads get, but it’s not a small amount,” Marohn added, echoing Eric Goldwyn, an assistant professor of transportation and land-use in New York University’s Marron Institute. “In the end, would throwing more money actually solve most of the problems or do we need to manage the existing money better?”
As Jarrett Walker of Human Transit routinely demonstrates: the highest return on investment will always be in improving frequencies. Reduced wait times between transfers and the knowledge that if you miss your connection, another will arrive shortly, offers peace of mind that few other investments do. A transit system interested not only in surviving, but thriving, would make this a long-term priority. In other words, that’s exactly where the money should go. And it’s much more of a sound investment than charging ports or a new line with little demand.
Nevertheless, the operators, equipment, and, in some cases, dedicated lanes needed to reduce headways come at an expense agencies can’t afford overnight. Making transit a little more dignified, however, doesn’t start with better frequencies, nor does it need to follow the route of La Sombrita.
It does, however, require decision makers to tune into what riders need and that requires actually riding the systems they control. After that, it’s worth looking into why transit is so expensive to address, in the first place.
For more about transit costs, check out Eric Goldwyn’s Transit Costs Project.
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.