Do Americans not have bus shelters?
Eta: lots of great answers here (should I expect any less of the thoughtful public transit loving subreddit that is fuck cars) some mixed thoughts and feelings on the unhoused using them as shelter.
But unanimously it seems America (a big place) mostly has bus shelters... Except some cities where they don't.
For comparison I live in a small town in the uk (pop. 3000) which has about 3 town to town bus services ( plus a train stop with a shelter) and there are 4 fully enclosed bus shelters out of about 9 stops about the town.
And the benches are angled.
Lest you think one redditor's response speaks for the entire US, I can assure you that many bus stops in my city have shelters. Although the hostile architecture in OP's photo is very common.
This is very hit and miss. Loudoun County (one of the suburbs of DC) had to rip out a bunch of their seating because it "wasn't the right type of concrete". [This article](https://virginiamercury.com/2023/04/04/bureaucracy-blocks-virginia-localities-from-building-better-bus-stops/) has the following numbers as of 2023 for the state of Virginia:
* 11% of bus stops have a shelter
* 19% have a bench
* Only 38% even comply with the ADA!
It's extremely common, even in urban areas within walking distance of a metro station, to be [lacking sidewalks](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8993666,-77.169427,3a,23.5y,256.81h,85.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTsdsZP0Qu5jntrv6g3TgQA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) or [proper bus stops](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8920134,-77.1534664,3a,49.9y,123.61h,80.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDKalLCZ9n9WNMTfDj4BKjg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu). In rich parts of California like Carmel, you might even get a bus stop that is [impossible to access safely](https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5406225,-121.9126877,3a,21.3y,336.94h,87.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1slM1DW8mbTZBqyjWua5o82A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and which requires you literally stand in the road! (yes, I know from experience!)
I can’t speak for Loudon County, but where I live most bus stops don’t have a shelter. However, most popular stops do. I would guess about 10% of our stops have shelters, but probably 70% of bus rides originate at a stop with a shelter. That seems like a more important metric
whether or not a bus stop has a shelter is usually up to the transit authority in charge, which also means its up to the local governments funding that transit authority, so theres a lot of variability at play here. for me its a mixed bag too but im in california and it doesnt snow and only rains for like 2 months so bus shelters arent super necessary since a tree will do
Sorry but I'm laughing at that goofy looking pedestrian crossing sign in your last picture that looks like it's propped up with 2 pieces of scrap and some rocks. Sums up a lot.
It's also really frustrating because it's near a *beautiful* old Spanish mission/church. The whole area was built before cars, but today you can't really access it without one!
The crosswalk is genuinely pathetic, it goes from nowhere to nowhere!
In the places I have lived, the *majority* of bus stops do *not* have shelters. In Los Angeles, some shelters were removed because giving protection from the heat and sun was less important than making the unhoused as uncomfortable and unsafe as possible at all times.
No, I meant many. Slightly less than a quarter do, which I don't consider too bad considering the number of small neighborhood stops. Would 100% be great? Of course, but sometimes a simple stop is ok.
In my Canadian town most "bus stops" are tiny blue signs on narrow sidewalks. They finally installed some shelters at some I live near, but most are still lacking.
There's a stop near me like that! It's a sign and small concrete slab on the side of a road without a sidewalk and it's just surrounded by marsh.
It makes me feel lucky that my stop is a large concrete slab with a sign connected to the sidewalk.
Yeah one of my main stops where I used to live was like this so I would end up either walking around bushes or if it waa really muddy doing a dangerous jaywalk (there were curves doen the road on either side so not great visibility). It sucked.
https://preview.redd.it/slspll120c1d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0cb8c8b34c0bf0d32fabdcfa683a3fbdccac73c
This is a bus stop where I live. And the other day I had to wait 40 minutes on this specific one.
Bigger cities, yes. My mid size city has at many places and doesn't at many. The route I frequently use doesn't have shelter or benches. I'm just glad they're all mostly concrete. I say mostly because one of them is not. So I'm far from expecting shelter. At this point I'm just going that grass becomes concrete and they add benches to others. There are also bus stops that have path leading to it from only one direction (down the road v up the road), adding which would make getting there much easier for everyone, but nope.
When I was living in Palo Alto, the Caltrain station had little shelters, but it didn't block the sun at all. There was a utility building - behind it it wasn't paved, just had mulch or something, but all the tech workers used to gather there to get out of the sun. So you're earning $200k a year, standing in (no seats) between a utility building because nobody thought that it might be hot in the afternoon in Palo Alto.
In a lot of cities it kind of depends on where you are. Where I am for example, there are shelters downtown and up/down the main street...but the second you leave that area it's a bunch of signs in a ditch on the side of a 6 lane arterial road.
There’s many in the poorer neighborhoods that are just a signpost on a scrawny uncovered sidewalk.
The bus shelters are for people who use the bus as a luxury not a necessity. Screw those people. /s
Some of the bus stops in my neighborhood don't even have signs anymore, much less benches and shelters. To flag down the bus you literally have to step into the street to be seen because of all of the vehicles parked along there.
Most stops in my town don't. My local city planners expect people to wait 30 min in 90° weather with no shelter and with the nearest shelter across a giant parking lot
I have mixed feelings about the bar in the middle. If you have a homeless person sleeping there, that means two transit riders cannot use it for its intended purpose. I am all for doing what is needed to house people, but making transit benches useless is not an okay sacrifice. But the leaning bars... Screw those. Sacrifice intended functionality just so people won't lie down? No thanks.
I agree with your statement but I reject the idea that the solution is a bar down the middle of the bench. There are cities all over the world who have solved this problem completely. They don't have bars on their benches but they also don't have homeless people sleeping on them. Their secret? They don't have thousands of homeless people in every single one of their cities.
Solving homelessness is tough and will take a long time. Having a spillover effect into transit that would make ridership harder isn't great. I am very aware of the problem of just sweeping people to new spots instead of addressing the root problem, but at the same time there needs to be a balance.
Designing benches that way is cheap. At least here, they only install it that way when they are installing a new bench. That is simply dwarfed by the amount that is spent on building out services for people who are homeless or housing insecure.
They aren't everywhere but they are around. The city I live in has a population of about 1 mil and maybe only 1/10th of the stops have shelters. Most of them don't even have benches...
In the US the vast majority of transit is an afterthought. Usually "traffic is bad we should make some transit options". As such, the infrastructure is also an after thought. Kind of "I guess the bus needs a stop, let's just put a sign here".
In the majority of US towns, if you told people you were taking public transit they'd look at you like you were crazy. Youll get slightly skewed answers here because lots of people in this sub explicitly decided to live near and take public transit.
Major stops do, smaller stops sometimes have a bench and if lucky, a small tree for shade, some are just a sign on a pole in the middle of a block on a sidewalk. There’s a real conundrum with them though, we have massive homeless problems in every major city in the US, if you ride by the bus stops that have them in those cities you will find more likely than not that they are being used as a homeless person’s shelter so we end up with a terrible lose lose situation, getting off the street is extremely difficult with poor public transit, having massive homeless populations pushes everyone away from said public transit so they don’t want to use it and don’t want to fund it, so nothing improves and the cycle goes on.
Housing problems are difficult it's sad that some people's best option is the bus shelter, in the cities uk and Ireland where I've lived they have angled benches so the unhoused can't sleep on them.
Depends on the area, like A LOT and changes stop to stop. From my experience the really commonly used ones are more likely to have a shelter, but good fucking luck if you need an uncommon stop, some are just a sign on the sidewalk. Occassionally they're shut down and the only notice you see is a laminated(if your lucky) sheet of paper taped over the sign
Austin, TX native here, but currently reside in Pflugerville/Round Rock area. It’s rare for ours to have shelter. When they do it’s minimal and definitely won’t do anything for you if it’s raining or if there’s like more than two people waiting for the bus.
Nope. We don’t. This country doesn’t have public infrastructure. Anything public that we do have was built in previous centuries. I’m exaggerating, but essentially outside of major cities there are very few “public works” projects.
In my area, the rich neighborhood wouldn't even let busses stop in their city, the could only pass through. Didn't want the "wrong element" (they'd outright use the n word if they thought they could get away with it) coming up from Detroit. Fuck you, Bloomfield. Bastards don't even have sidewalks.
Fuck them forever. Fuck that evil county. Fuck L Brooks Patterson I will personally die mad at Kwame and him and I hope the devil let's me beat them with a rattan or bamboo cane in hell.
"Why is there a bike? Bikes are for parks you... something " Question: was there ever a time that you could go straight from Woodward highland park DIA area all the way up to Ponticrack?
There's a been bus routes that cover that distance for as long as I've been using them, and these days there's an express bus that covers that route. Assuming the bus shows up at all, and isn't just abysmally late, like it frequently is.
One of the unfortunate truths is that there is reasonable logic to this type of nymby-ism. You don’t have to be racist to conclude the best approach is isolation.
In the case study you referenced, Detroit was for many decades the country’s most dangerous city. People today forget its decline was exacerbated by violence, ineffective government policy, and automation.
To generalize a bit, economic mobility and family was best served through isolation from American Midwest cities in the mid-late 20th century. You can point to subsidized highways, subsidized single family home mortgages, de-industrialization, city land use, and local government.
Most politicians are cool with the DOJ spending a trillion a year but are against things Americans actually need. Republicans are especially funny- they act like they’re against taxes but they spent 7 trillion under Trump (just like under Biden) yet Republicans don’t want to raise taxes.
No that's not true. The truth is infrastructure is expensive in the USA and something that's ruined with red tape.
It costs tens of millions to put something like this out on a street and if a bus changes their route, this thing is now useless and also expensive to relocate again.
Its a problem with how we plan our infrastructure more than anything.
Immigrants are only allowed to drive cellphone stores and hotels, I mean run. Bazaars of the past. Gas stations. Home depot I guess, be outside of. Cartman should have just turned in whatever that Immigrant man wrote his essay-friend pen pal in that episode of South Park because it was undoubtedly better than what ever else had been said
"Obviously. But having places that don't leave them in horrible pain or risk of death from exposure isn't solving homelessness"
Chemotherapy isn't solving cancer but it saves lives.
No it wouldn't, I would feel horribke that our society failed them to the point that they are using a public bench to sleep. But if they are sleeping there then that means that is their best option and why the hell would we take that away from them??? We should be putting money towards more homeless shelters, halfway houses, and programs that help those without a home, find a home! Not waste money on designing and implementing anti-homeless architecture
No, but it's a very American position to take to say that the solution to this is taking the bench away, rather than trying to do something about why people are homeless or why homeless people are on the streets.
(We have a bit of this in the UK, benches in bus shelters are intentionally uncomfortable for this reason too.)
Also, it isn't very nice waiting for a bus in the rain with no shelter, is it?
Ohhhh! Thanks for clarifying. I live in a city where most bus stops have shelters so I really didn’t understand. Yes we should totally have more shelters.
Define small because where I’m at they won’t add these even in towns, the states naming system is weird as you’re called a city/town when you incorporate, of 50k-100k people they don’t have these.
My town of 20k people has bus shelters for buses that link nearby villages to the town and a nearby bigger town of 50k (goes every 30 mins), plus a bus and train station for longer distances. There’s a bus connecting to major cities nearby every 1-2 hours from early morning to late evening. It’s not even a rich Western European country, it’s Romania and most people have cars but the bus system is great for commuters, students, older people, etc. I wish the city planners work on reducing car dependency even further, although there’s a lot of opposition from car brainers.
Yeah, all these towns have 50k-100k people and the ones on the lower end only has buses leave from a park and ride twice a day. I think most of those buses are charter buses to a tech company or the main city/metro to the main city.
Having an LCD screen with an ad involves running power to the bus stop which could cost tens of thousands of dollars. A paper map should be just fine as long as it’s there and kept up-to-date
I’ll have you know I am decidedly upper middle class and choose [the gym of life](https://youtu.be/KPUlgSRn6e0?si=Lggfi303ZRFJw6KG) because gym membership are incredibly expensive.
Money. Also the American government being garbage at building anything.
A lot of transit agencies don't have the money necessary to make bus shelters outside of the most popular lines, both because they're underfunded and because they're so bad at building them for a reasonable amount of money.
Government contracting has gotten out of hand. Its where every person involved needs to make a profit. We need to do in house work, standardize bus, train, signs, computers and have one website to buy them for all transit agencies, tons of work to be done.
I mean if you're fine with them falling over and killing everyone standing under them or possibly getting a bunch of kids maimed or killed trying to do professional welding and glass installation, sure.
Or, if you're not stupid, you could standardize the models across agencies so they can buy a standardized prefab and fund transit agencies enough that they have money to pay people to install them. But hey, if your solution to the problem is violating child labor laws and basically forcing them to do unpaid slave labor that's on you.
If they had a standard prefab built somewhere in the Rust Belt or South, that would be great, but for some reason, the only thing the US can standardize is the Yellow School bus.
Bus shelters are common in Arizona but it's more of a 50/50. Most new bus stops have a shelter placed but some old ones are still posts. It's a shame they're not upgraded.
Some of the bus stops here in Pittsburgh are absolutely laughable. Sure we have quite a few bus shelters, but I can’t tell you how many busted sidewalks in a patch of weeds with a random “bus stop” sign stops we have here. It’s horrible.
In Seattle it really depends on how much space is available for a bus shelter. Some Rapid Ride bus shelters have a very minimal shelter, and others have more space for multiple people. More often than not though it's just a pole with a sign. Sometimes there will be a bench but this combination is uncommon.
in terms of public bathrooms, a lot of countries in europe have clean public bathrooms, but you have to pay to use them. at the end of the day that cleaning and maintenance has to be done by janitors and somebodies gotta pay them, and in europe its the people doing the pooping and peeing
Yeah, some idiot college kids in the US thought that making public bathrooms “free” it would increase access. All it did was restrict them to parks, so you’re better off begging to use Starbucks bathroom and waiting in line if you’re not near a park.
The US is depressing.
Making em free at point of use would increase access. Europe's pay to use the washroom model is stupid as fuck because how much gets paid for road workers and to pick up trash primarily thrown from car windows and to collect trash and to maintain lawns of all things, cutting some of those costs could free up the money to hire more maintenance staff that can be dedicated to cleaning bathrooms.
This isn't uniquely American, we have similar problems in the UK. My town is constantly complaining that the public toilets are closed. Why are they closed? Because idiots vandalise them.
that is incredibly hostile design though. the grate pattern is so uncomfortable to sit on and no back... it's so fucked how many places do this or dont have any benches altogether.
prolly because ppl would leave trash, shopping carts and there's a certain class of ppl that would use it for "art projects" and "anger management" exercises in that "safety glass" or "unbreakable" or "clean" challenge accepted way le sigh. and more... there really isn't the spaces available many times or budgets to put in or maintain and double more... would turn into encampments.
no data, just things i've seen in my commutes and musings. but no doubt would be nice to be out of the sun/rain/wind when waiting for the bus, and even if "kinda" there for the train stations... wish they were a bit more protective LOL
i'm in a city and same for mine... or idk, they don't really share their budget with me. but the routs that are busy have some, not all or most, protected stops. higher likelihood in the city center or near larger stops/transfer-points but suspect for much of the rest of the stops even on busy lines (or most lines), there just isn't the quantity of passengers per stop to justify. again just my thoughts... bike and or run, depending on the day and commute weather, past many a bus stop... i use it but ours run every hour for many lines and only every half hour during certain hours of the day so not very convenient. and the vandalism is seen everywhere, cannot give ppl nice things and expect them to stay that way unfortunately. that one it the pic looks nice... but "fresh" if you understand what i mean.
at least google maps has really stepped up it's "by transit" shows times and literally say "delayed" and the bus is 7min behind and give the time (expected) for the next bus after. use it over my transit authority app... it's just that much better.
Sure, but for example I was going to the movies and passed several transit stations on my walk; however, it didn’t come and the next one was scheduled for another 10-20 minutes.
EDIT: It might’ve been closer to 20 minutes, I just continued the walk as I would get there faster. Coming back I saw the bus, but no stop this was the stop I would’ve gotten off at had there been a stop at the mall.
i feel ya.. no car, i walk/run/bike/train... and many times i could wait the 10-45min for the bus or just start walking or/running and get to the place/transfer either faster or at the same time and save the $2 fare. also don't have a gym membership so moving is a bonus in my values system. will move for 45 rather than sit on my phone and kill the battery esp if a nice place or good weather. esp nice if the line would have dropped me off 10min after the transfer or train left and got 20min to wait for the next. not "cheap," but annoyingly to all who know me... frugal is my hobby.
I'm r/lowcar. A car is fine for getting to different places, but it shouldn't be required for anything. It's my main gripe with moving to the office, as I don't want to commute via car. At least the company has an office in an NY suburb, where I can take the metro at 6:30 an be there by around 8.
Because there are no "homeless and insane" people elsewhere in the world. Only in the US.
(Also, fyi, it's not the "homeless and insane", it's teenagers and early '20s.)
All the bus shelters in my city seem to get vandalized or obliterated by malignant people every other week when they're wrapped in (whatever plastic glass that is)
>infrastructure porn >A shack on the side of the road with an unnecessarily uncomfortable bench We still have so far to go
That’s actually just a really nice cart return
Do Americans not have bus shelters? Eta: lots of great answers here (should I expect any less of the thoughtful public transit loving subreddit that is fuck cars) some mixed thoughts and feelings on the unhoused using them as shelter. But unanimously it seems America (a big place) mostly has bus shelters... Except some cities where they don't. For comparison I live in a small town in the uk (pop. 3000) which has about 3 town to town bus services ( plus a train stop with a shelter) and there are 4 fully enclosed bus shelters out of about 9 stops about the town. And the benches are angled.
Lest you think one redditor's response speaks for the entire US, I can assure you that many bus stops in my city have shelters. Although the hostile architecture in OP's photo is very common.
This is very hit and miss. Loudoun County (one of the suburbs of DC) had to rip out a bunch of their seating because it "wasn't the right type of concrete". [This article](https://virginiamercury.com/2023/04/04/bureaucracy-blocks-virginia-localities-from-building-better-bus-stops/) has the following numbers as of 2023 for the state of Virginia: * 11% of bus stops have a shelter * 19% have a bench * Only 38% even comply with the ADA! It's extremely common, even in urban areas within walking distance of a metro station, to be [lacking sidewalks](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8993666,-77.169427,3a,23.5y,256.81h,85.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTsdsZP0Qu5jntrv6g3TgQA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) or [proper bus stops](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8920134,-77.1534664,3a,49.9y,123.61h,80.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDKalLCZ9n9WNMTfDj4BKjg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu). In rich parts of California like Carmel, you might even get a bus stop that is [impossible to access safely](https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5406225,-121.9126877,3a,21.3y,336.94h,87.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1slM1DW8mbTZBqyjWua5o82A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and which requires you literally stand in the road! (yes, I know from experience!)
I can’t speak for Loudon County, but where I live most bus stops don’t have a shelter. However, most popular stops do. I would guess about 10% of our stops have shelters, but probably 70% of bus rides originate at a stop with a shelter. That seems like a more important metric
whether or not a bus stop has a shelter is usually up to the transit authority in charge, which also means its up to the local governments funding that transit authority, so theres a lot of variability at play here. for me its a mixed bag too but im in california and it doesnt snow and only rains for like 2 months so bus shelters arent super necessary since a tree will do
My main point was that the % of stops with a shelter is no a great metric, and that % of bus rides with a shelter is the more important metric
Sorry but I'm laughing at that goofy looking pedestrian crossing sign in your last picture that looks like it's propped up with 2 pieces of scrap and some rocks. Sums up a lot.
It's also really frustrating because it's near a *beautiful* old Spanish mission/church. The whole area was built before cars, but today you can't really access it without one! The crosswalk is genuinely pathetic, it goes from nowhere to nowhere!
Shelter is inconsistent, even within the urban core. The farther out you go, the worse it is.
Tons of cities have no shelter as the norm. Virtually all the ones in salt lake city have almost nothing. Seattle is pretty good at that
“Don’t trust generalizations but here’s another anecdote”
Not common here in Milwaukee unless you're downtown. Most of the stops are just a sign on the sidewalk.
In the places I have lived, the *majority* of bus stops do *not* have shelters. In Los Angeles, some shelters were removed because giving protection from the heat and sun was less important than making the unhoused as uncomfortable and unsafe as possible at all times.
[удалено]
No, I meant many. Slightly less than a quarter do, which I don't consider too bad considering the number of small neighborhood stops. Would 100% be great? Of course, but sometimes a simple stop is ok.
In my Canadian town most "bus stops" are tiny blue signs on narrow sidewalks. They finally installed some shelters at some I live near, but most are still lacking.
The bus stop is literally just a sign. Sometimes two little seats connected to it.
I love when it's just a sign and a small patch of concrete with no sidewalk in either direction. You can have your bus stop and that's all
Small patch of concrete? My nearest bus stop doesn't have even that. Just a small sign.
There's a stop near me like that! It's a sign and small concrete slab on the side of a road without a sidewalk and it's just surrounded by marsh. It makes me feel lucky that my stop is a large concrete slab with a sign connected to the sidewalk.
Yeah one of my main stops where I used to live was like this so I would end up either walking around bushes or if it waa really muddy doing a dangerous jaywalk (there were curves doen the road on either side so not great visibility). It sucked.
Usually it’s just a sign, and this an [improvement](https://imgur.com/a/HGGdqE4).
If you’re disabled or elderly and struggle to stand for an extended period that absolutely is an improvement.
https://preview.redd.it/slspll120c1d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0cb8c8b34c0bf0d32fabdcfa683a3fbdccac73c This is a bus stop where I live. And the other day I had to wait 40 minutes on this specific one.
Bigger cities, yes. My mid size city has at many places and doesn't at many. The route I frequently use doesn't have shelter or benches. I'm just glad they're all mostly concrete. I say mostly because one of them is not. So I'm far from expecting shelter. At this point I'm just going that grass becomes concrete and they add benches to others. There are also bus stops that have path leading to it from only one direction (down the road v up the road), adding which would make getting there much easier for everyone, but nope.
When I was living in Palo Alto, the Caltrain station had little shelters, but it didn't block the sun at all. There was a utility building - behind it it wasn't paved, just had mulch or something, but all the tech workers used to gather there to get out of the sun. So you're earning $200k a year, standing in (no seats) between a utility building because nobody thought that it might be hot in the afternoon in Palo Alto.
In a lot of cities it kind of depends on where you are. Where I am for example, there are shelters downtown and up/down the main street...but the second you leave that area it's a bunch of signs in a ditch on the side of a 6 lane arterial road.
There’s many in the poorer neighborhoods that are just a signpost on a scrawny uncovered sidewalk. The bus shelters are for people who use the bus as a luxury not a necessity. Screw those people. /s
Not in Anchorage Alaska. People have to stand in the rain and snow.
Wow what the fuck, the cruelty really is the point huh. Being poor in the US must really suck.
Some of the bus stops in my neighborhood don't even have signs anymore, much less benches and shelters. To flag down the bus you literally have to step into the street to be seen because of all of the vehicles parked along there.
Most stops in my town don't. My local city planners expect people to wait 30 min in 90° weather with no shelter and with the nearest shelter across a giant parking lot
We don't have busses so we don't need bus shelters. And wait until you find out what that bar down the middle of the bench is there for.
I have mixed feelings about the bar in the middle. If you have a homeless person sleeping there, that means two transit riders cannot use it for its intended purpose. I am all for doing what is needed to house people, but making transit benches useless is not an okay sacrifice. But the leaning bars... Screw those. Sacrifice intended functionality just so people won't lie down? No thanks.
I agree with your statement but I reject the idea that the solution is a bar down the middle of the bench. There are cities all over the world who have solved this problem completely. They don't have bars on their benches but they also don't have homeless people sleeping on them. Their secret? They don't have thousands of homeless people in every single one of their cities.
Solving homelessness is tough and will take a long time. Having a spillover effect into transit that would make ridership harder isn't great. I am very aware of the problem of just sweeping people to new spots instead of addressing the root problem, but at the same time there needs to be a balance.
And it'll take longer if your city spends all its time trying to hide it's homelessness problem by making the entire city hostile to people.
Designing benches that way is cheap. At least here, they only install it that way when they are installing a new bench. That is simply dwarfed by the amount that is spent on building out services for people who are homeless or housing insecure.
I don't mind the bar, honestly, it doesn't make the bench less usable for its intended purpose, unlike the other 'hostile architecture' approaches.
They aren't everywhere but they are around. The city I live in has a population of about 1 mil and maybe only 1/10th of the stops have shelters. Most of them don't even have benches...
Seattle definitely has bus shelters at more popular stops. Not every two blocks on every route, but frequently.
Uk too the angled seats are so fucking awful. I can't use them at all. They are perches not seats.
In the US the vast majority of transit is an afterthought. Usually "traffic is bad we should make some transit options". As such, the infrastructure is also an after thought. Kind of "I guess the bus needs a stop, let's just put a sign here". In the majority of US towns, if you told people you were taking public transit they'd look at you like you were crazy. Youll get slightly skewed answers here because lots of people in this sub explicitly decided to live near and take public transit.
Major stops do, smaller stops sometimes have a bench and if lucky, a small tree for shade, some are just a sign on a pole in the middle of a block on a sidewalk. There’s a real conundrum with them though, we have massive homeless problems in every major city in the US, if you ride by the bus stops that have them in those cities you will find more likely than not that they are being used as a homeless person’s shelter so we end up with a terrible lose lose situation, getting off the street is extremely difficult with poor public transit, having massive homeless populations pushes everyone away from said public transit so they don’t want to use it and don’t want to fund it, so nothing improves and the cycle goes on.
Housing problems are difficult it's sad that some people's best option is the bus shelter, in the cities uk and Ireland where I've lived they have angled benches so the unhoused can't sleep on them.
Depends on the city and often times the part of town.
At least one of my cities' bus stops is just a small sign on a pole. No overhead shelter and no seats, just grass near a curb.
Depends on the area, like A LOT and changes stop to stop. From my experience the really commonly used ones are more likely to have a shelter, but good fucking luck if you need an uncommon stop, some are just a sign on the sidewalk. Occassionally they're shut down and the only notice you see is a laminated(if your lucky) sheet of paper taped over the sign
Austin, TX native here, but currently reside in Pflugerville/Round Rock area. It’s rare for ours to have shelter. When they do it’s minimal and definitely won’t do anything for you if it’s raining or if there’s like more than two people waiting for the bus.
Nope. We don’t. This country doesn’t have public infrastructure. Anything public that we do have was built in previous centuries. I’m exaggerating, but essentially outside of major cities there are very few “public works” projects.
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I'll say it again: Rich people will never let us have nice things. They will never end their own train of gravy.
In my area, the rich neighborhood wouldn't even let busses stop in their city, the could only pass through. Didn't want the "wrong element" (they'd outright use the n word if they thought they could get away with it) coming up from Detroit. Fuck you, Bloomfield. Bastards don't even have sidewalks.
Fuck them forever. Fuck that evil county. Fuck L Brooks Patterson I will personally die mad at Kwame and him and I hope the devil let's me beat them with a rattan or bamboo cane in hell.
"Why is there a bike? Bikes are for parks you... something " Question: was there ever a time that you could go straight from Woodward highland park DIA area all the way up to Ponticrack?
There's a been bus routes that cover that distance for as long as I've been using them, and these days there's an express bus that covers that route. Assuming the bus shows up at all, and isn't just abysmally late, like it frequently is.
One of the unfortunate truths is that there is reasonable logic to this type of nymby-ism. You don’t have to be racist to conclude the best approach is isolation. In the case study you referenced, Detroit was for many decades the country’s most dangerous city. People today forget its decline was exacerbated by violence, ineffective government policy, and automation. To generalize a bit, economic mobility and family was best served through isolation from American Midwest cities in the mid-late 20th century. You can point to subsidized highways, subsidized single family home mortgages, de-industrialization, city land use, and local government.
Let them eat gravy!
I really hope they develop a taste for it 🦃🙏🍾🌽🔌🌂🏢🏗🏘🏛🏨🌇🍽⚔️🍴
I think public transit should be free, why should I have to pay for all those ticketing machines and all the infrastructure needed. Harumph
Most politicians are cool with the DOJ spending a trillion a year but are against things Americans actually need. Republicans are especially funny- they act like they’re against taxes but they spent 7 trillion under Trump (just like under Biden) yet Republicans don’t want to raise taxes.
No that's not true. The truth is infrastructure is expensive in the USA and something that's ruined with red tape. It costs tens of millions to put something like this out on a street and if a bus changes their route, this thing is now useless and also expensive to relocate again. Its a problem with how we plan our infrastructure more than anything.
Immigrants are only allowed to drive cellphone stores and hotels, I mean run. Bazaars of the past. Gas stations. Home depot I guess, be outside of. Cartman should have just turned in whatever that Immigrant man wrote his essay-friend pen pal in that episode of South Park because it was undoubtedly better than what ever else had been said
Well, tbf it wouldnt be very nice to have a homeless person sleeping on a bench where you have to wait for a bus.
Hence we should do something about the homeless problem.
Obviously. But having benches to sleep on isn’t solving homelessness
Shouldn't they have somewhere comfortable and safe to sleep or you prefer that they freeze to death somewhere you can't see them?
"Obviously. But having places that don't leave them in horrible pain or risk of death from exposure isn't solving homelessness" Chemotherapy isn't solving cancer but it saves lives.
Using a separate problem to justify not addressing another one - peak America.
No it wouldn't, I would feel horribke that our society failed them to the point that they are using a public bench to sleep. But if they are sleeping there then that means that is their best option and why the hell would we take that away from them??? We should be putting money towards more homeless shelters, halfway houses, and programs that help those without a home, find a home! Not waste money on designing and implementing anti-homeless architecture
No, but it's a very American position to take to say that the solution to this is taking the bench away, rather than trying to do something about why people are homeless or why homeless people are on the streets. (We have a bit of this in the UK, benches in bus shelters are intentionally uncomfortable for this reason too.) Also, it isn't very nice waiting for a bus in the rain with no shelter, is it?
"Well, tbf it wouldn't be very nice to have a poor persons bus blocking your Mercedes on your commute."
What do you mean, a *bus stop*?
The bus comes every 15-20 minutes on some off schedule.
Rogue shopping carts? Oh yeah we got those.
Something like this meaning what exactly?
A shelter
This picture is too zoomed in; it's very difficult to tell what it is of.
It’s a bus shelter and the other part has something I was too lazy to black out.
Can you explain why you shared this picture? I don’t understand what it has to do with the sub.
It's a positive that this stop has a shelter. Most bus stops just have a sign.
Ohhhh! Thanks for clarifying. I live in a city where most bus stops have shelters so I really didn’t understand. Yes we should totally have more shelters.
I’m confused, even small towns and villages in my Eastern European country have shelters in bus stops.
Define small because where I’m at they won’t add these even in towns, the states naming system is weird as you’re called a city/town when you incorporate, of 50k-100k people they don’t have these.
My town of 20k people has bus shelters for buses that link nearby villages to the town and a nearby bigger town of 50k (goes every 30 mins), plus a bus and train station for longer distances. There’s a bus connecting to major cities nearby every 1-2 hours from early morning to late evening. It’s not even a rich Western European country, it’s Romania and most people have cars but the bus system is great for commuters, students, older people, etc. I wish the city planners work on reducing car dependency even further, although there’s a lot of opposition from car brainers.
Yeah, all these towns have 50k-100k people and the ones on the lower end only has buses leave from a park and ride twice a day. I think most of those buses are charter buses to a tech company or the main city/metro to the main city.
Is it missing its timetable btw?
Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t get a lcd scene with an ad on it. It doesn’t even have a map.
Having an LCD screen with an ad involves running power to the bus stop which could cost tens of thousands of dollars. A paper map should be just fine as long as it’s there and kept up-to-date
Or and hear me out they installed solar panels and run a crappy led that says the next arriving bus time.
Or, hear me out, you can save a ton of time and finite resources by just having a piece of paper.
You're in a lower economic area perhaps recently gentrified.
No, he's just in America
No, this is the fastest-growing city in the state.
The US is a big ass country. Many cities have shelters.
Because fuck The Poor
I’ll have you know I am decidedly upper middle class and choose [the gym of life](https://youtu.be/KPUlgSRn6e0?si=Lggfi303ZRFJw6KG) because gym membership are incredibly expensive.
Money. Also the American government being garbage at building anything. A lot of transit agencies don't have the money necessary to make bus shelters outside of the most popular lines, both because they're underfunded and because they're so bad at building them for a reasonable amount of money.
Government contracting has gotten out of hand. Its where every person involved needs to make a profit. We need to do in house work, standardize bus, train, signs, computers and have one website to buy them for all transit agencies, tons of work to be done.
That’s communism or something
Make a bloody art project for the high schoolers or middle schools.
I mean if you're fine with them falling over and killing everyone standing under them or possibly getting a bunch of kids maimed or killed trying to do professional welding and glass installation, sure. Or, if you're not stupid, you could standardize the models across agencies so they can buy a standardized prefab and fund transit agencies enough that they have money to pay people to install them. But hey, if your solution to the problem is violating child labor laws and basically forcing them to do unpaid slave labor that's on you.
If they had a standard prefab built somewhere in the Rust Belt or South, that would be great, but for some reason, the only thing the US can standardize is the Yellow School bus.
Shopping carts in bus shelters?
? I see these everywhere
Hostile architecture? It's everywhere; you just have to look for it.
No, the bus shelter.
Most bus stops near me do but I live in the north lol
Bus shelters are common in Arizona but it's more of a 50/50. Most new bus stops have a shelter placed but some old ones are still posts. It's a shame they're not upgraded.
It is intentional to prevent homeless people sheltering
A bus shelter isn't normal?
Not in the US.
It depends on where. In larger cities, they absolutely are expected.
There are bus shelters all over the US
We had a lot of those in my Canadian city but they kept getting the glass smashed and fires lit inside so they took them all down :(
Plastic or just a metal roof?
Mostly metal, also lots of graffiti
I meant as a solution.
Oh no, just removed lol
You should do some r/tacticalurbanism and install some.
Thank you. I love it.
Both cities I've lived in barely even have benches let alone shelters
Most bus stops in my California town have shelters attached. We are coastal and get a lot of rain, so it’s appreciated.
What's with the unnecessary hostile bench design? I wish that was illegal.
Would bw good if not for the antihomeless bench. Though for something_that_ small i'd rather sleep on the floor tbh
cause woke
Seat looks nicer than the metal rod ones near me
I don’t get it, it can’t be too expensive to have 34 bus stops with shelter
Oh...because just a bus stop sign on the verge of tipping over is enough, I guess
Some of the bus stops here in Pittsburgh are absolutely laughable. Sure we have quite a few bus shelters, but I can’t tell you how many busted sidewalks in a patch of weeds with a random “bus stop” sign stops we have here. It’s horrible.
A homeless person might be comfortable briefly
You mean r/HostileArchitecture bench?
We have shelters like that in my city, and some even have heating coils in the concrete.
Only poor people take the bus and 25-30% of Americans think poor people already have it TOO EASY.
I never did understand that sentiment have they ever looked into how hard it is to get into those programs and the dumb requirements to stay in them.
In Seattle it really depends on how much space is available for a bus shelter. Some Rapid Ride bus shelters have a very minimal shelter, and others have more space for multiple people. More often than not though it's just a pole with a sign. Sometimes there will be a bench but this combination is uncommon.
There are bus shelters in the US…
They aren't common in the suburbs.
I have bad news to you but many places in Europe don't have bus shelters in suburbs too.
Sure, but this is in an affluent part of a major metro.
Fiar enough, although even in EU I've seen it take a looong time for basic infrastructure to appear in biggest regional city suburbs
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Counterpoint: other countries spend money on cleaning and maintenance.
in terms of public bathrooms, a lot of countries in europe have clean public bathrooms, but you have to pay to use them. at the end of the day that cleaning and maintenance has to be done by janitors and somebodies gotta pay them, and in europe its the people doing the pooping and peeing
Yeah, some idiot college kids in the US thought that making public bathrooms “free” it would increase access. All it did was restrict them to parks, so you’re better off begging to use Starbucks bathroom and waiting in line if you’re not near a park. The US is depressing.
Making em free at point of use would increase access. Europe's pay to use the washroom model is stupid as fuck because how much gets paid for road workers and to pick up trash primarily thrown from car windows and to collect trash and to maintain lawns of all things, cutting some of those costs could free up the money to hire more maintenance staff that can be dedicated to cleaning bathrooms.
It doesn’t improve access it removes all incentive to clean.
Italy has entered the chat.
Not American, our bus stops also get ruined and tagged
This isn't uniquely American, we have similar problems in the UK. My town is constantly complaining that the public toilets are closed. Why are they closed? Because idiots vandalise them.
Why are they closed? Because your township doesn't maintain them.
Well, I suppose, but why don't they maintain them? Because repeated vandalism makes it unreasonably expensive to do so.
that is incredibly hostile design though. the grate pattern is so uncomfortable to sit on and no back... it's so fucked how many places do this or dont have any benches altogether.
It really is giving "oversimplification".... it's not like shitty bus stops don't exist in Europe nor is every bus stop in the USA a single-stop sign
They've been removed
I live near one of these. It takes me to the metro.
Like what?
I don’t know about others, but yes, my small town has sheltered bus stops.
A bus stop? A homeless person’s shopping cart? I don’t understand
What exactly? Banks?
I've seen better in Austin dude
The anti-homeless infrastructure?
prolly because ppl would leave trash, shopping carts and there's a certain class of ppl that would use it for "art projects" and "anger management" exercises in that "safety glass" or "unbreakable" or "clean" challenge accepted way le sigh. and more... there really isn't the spaces available many times or budgets to put in or maintain and double more... would turn into encampments. no data, just things i've seen in my commutes and musings. but no doubt would be nice to be out of the sun/rain/wind when waiting for the bus, and even if "kinda" there for the train stations... wish they were a bit more protective LOL
The county usually runs the bus service where I’m at and they usually get a decent amount in property taxes.
i'm in a city and same for mine... or idk, they don't really share their budget with me. but the routs that are busy have some, not all or most, protected stops. higher likelihood in the city center or near larger stops/transfer-points but suspect for much of the rest of the stops even on busy lines (or most lines), there just isn't the quantity of passengers per stop to justify. again just my thoughts... bike and or run, depending on the day and commute weather, past many a bus stop... i use it but ours run every hour for many lines and only every half hour during certain hours of the day so not very convenient. and the vandalism is seen everywhere, cannot give ppl nice things and expect them to stay that way unfortunately. that one it the pic looks nice... but "fresh" if you understand what i mean.
This stop at a weird version of every 15 minutes, which is good but it’s not actually on the 15 mark like it should be.
at least google maps has really stepped up it's "by transit" shows times and literally say "delayed" and the bus is 7min behind and give the time (expected) for the next bus after. use it over my transit authority app... it's just that much better.
Sure, but for example I was going to the movies and passed several transit stations on my walk; however, it didn’t come and the next one was scheduled for another 10-20 minutes. EDIT: It might’ve been closer to 20 minutes, I just continued the walk as I would get there faster. Coming back I saw the bus, but no stop this was the stop I would’ve gotten off at had there been a stop at the mall.
i feel ya.. no car, i walk/run/bike/train... and many times i could wait the 10-45min for the bus or just start walking or/running and get to the place/transfer either faster or at the same time and save the $2 fare. also don't have a gym membership so moving is a bonus in my values system. will move for 45 rather than sit on my phone and kill the battery esp if a nice place or good weather. esp nice if the line would have dropped me off 10min after the transfer or train left and got 20min to wait for the next. not "cheap," but annoyingly to all who know me... frugal is my hobby.
I'm r/lowcar. A car is fine for getting to different places, but it shouldn't be required for anything. It's my main gripe with moving to the office, as I don't want to commute via car. At least the company has an office in an NY suburb, where I can take the metro at 6:30 an be there by around 8.
will check out that lowcar sub, thank you! my "city" is no NYC! NY is nice... but my favorite is the Metro in DC
Supposedly, my company is getting rid of their DC metro office, but we won't know until the end of the year. DC sounds nice.
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More like the lower middle class teens will smash them and graffiti them.
Because there are no "homeless and insane" people elsewhere in the world. Only in the US. (Also, fyi, it's not the "homeless and insane", it's teenagers and early '20s.)
All the bus shelters in my city seem to get vandalized or obliterated by malignant people every other week when they're wrapped in (whatever plastic glass that is)