As much as we complain about our incompetent struggles with regional transit… here’s a reminder that we’re actually doing pretty well in the grand scheme of things. There was a Streetsblog link to this UNC-Charlotte blog post that I thought was interesting.
I didn’t realize this until I read this article, but Charlotte doesn’t even have a unified transit system or regional government organization. Even though CATS was able to fund their massive light rail line through the CIG, it seems like that was only because they were within city limits; they struggle to cross jurisdictional boundaries for regional planning organizations where we’ve had our two MPOs, joint council sessions, and GoTriangle work together pretty seamlessly.
I would look at Light Rail Wake County Commissioners District 3 Candidate Maria Cervania wants light rail back in the plan, vote for her over Audra Killingsworth, who just want the status quo. She know Raleigh and Wake Transit needs to be unified and a catalyst to bring jobs and teams to Raleigh vote for her tommorow to succeed Jessica Holmes seat.
I figured he was part of the crowd (the crowd on twitter that I’m seeing through my lens anyway) that’s taking the “fiscally responsible” approach. On one hand, more shelters is more shelters.
On the other, a higher quality product ensures Raleigh’s commitment to transit. Since we have pretty favorable weather around here (200+ days of sunshine a year) I don’t see the need to rush out bus shelters. We can phase in the higher-cost, higher quality ones as we go.
Both of the final designs for this competition were done by my coworkers (one while she was at a previous firm; the other completed by a team at my current firm). The impression I’ve gotten from them is that the process to get these built was exactly what you’d expect… study after study, followed by “wait, we should study this some more!”
The initial competition included a full-scale fabricated mock-up and extensive cost analysis. Not sure why it needed to drag out so much longer after that.
The more and more I follow things like this, things going through the government process, from an outsiders perspective, you really need some kind of project “champion” to give staff or whoever the push to bring something to Done and Delivered.
There are always more reasons to study something but someone with decision-making power, council, needs to make the call and pull the trigger.
You say this is a “Watered down” version, but the original version was completely impractical. It would have been expensive to fabricate and terrible to use. I am convinced that its designer must have never actually used a real bus shelter, or at least didn’t properly consider what makes for a good shelter and made the mistake of letting form triumph over function.
My main beef with it are the solid walls if you sit on the bench and look left. You can’t see if a bus is coming, and the bus driver can’t see you. What good is a bus shelter, if you have to get up out of it to know that a bus is coming?
The new design seems to have added a perforated panel on that left wall, which will probably allow riders to see an oncoming bus, although it might be tough for a driver to see a passenger seated there, especially at night. (I would have preferred a glass panel instead.)
Absolutely, there were tons of flaws with the original entry and all of your critiques are valid concerns that were raised early on in the process and addressed in the second iteration.
And for the record, I was never a fan of them picking this entry in the first place; I thought the other finalist was much more practical. However, I think there were ways to address much of your concerns that could’ve preserved some of the beauty and simplicity of the original idea. This entry was selected largely because of its sculptural form, but most of that is gone now. It’s been watered down – even if necessarily – to the point that it’s basically an entirely different concept. So why not have picked another entry that was more balanced from the beginning?
Weren’t the shelter Alternatives put up for a public vote on some sort of online survey? Of course if you leave it up to the public, most of whom have never used a bus shelter in their lives, they’re going to pick the prettiest shiniest option over everything else. They should have reviewed and revised the designs for practicality before putting them before the public.
I think the public vote was just a vanity vote tbh; I don’t think it had much impact on the actual selection by the committee. The committee took into account constructability feedback from fabricators and cost analysis that was required of each entry. If I remember correctly, they were supposed to pick one winner, but the committee instead selected two to move forward with and study further. After a few months, they ended up selecting the one above over the other finalist, shown below.
To me, the cool part of this entry was that they had designed prefabricated modules, like a kit of parts. So for a high-traffic stop, it could be an extended version with added amenities, and in lesser used areas, it could be made simpler to save cost.
Hopefully that design gets another look when it is time to build BRT. The one approved by council lost some of the eye-popping flash of the original design but is still very distinctive and attractive. Maybe this can be the shelter for non-BRT routes, and that nifty modular one can handle the (hypothetically busier) BRT routes. I don’t think having two different shelter designs would confuse anybody too bad in terms of branding. Even the standard off-the-shelf shelter, with the structural members painted red instead of black, would fit in just fine.
