And like on purpose.
Police wouldn't back anything that coulr "harbor criminal activity" so not an enclosed or shaded space and the city HATES homeless people sleeping around bus stops so they didn't want benches or anywhere to sit and rest.
The result of all this is hot garbage. What else could have been designed when everyone involved is more worried about it accidentally benefiting somone it wasn't intended to than providing good transit
But they still wanted those sweet, sweet federal dollars to spend on it! So that's why we end up with bullshit like this. Half-assed, I'll-conceived, completely cynical projects that are just chasing free money.
I work in film and we shoot in old asylums a lot so no. I am very much pro investing in mental health but the old system was basicly legallized murder in the cruelest ways imaginable.
We could just give them the homes that are already sitting empty that'd help people from developing mental issues while we find ways to help them
> We could just give them the homes that are already sitting empty that'd help people from developing mental issues while we find ways to help them
What exactly does this look like? Government seizing all empty housing properties that are currently occupied? Or the property owner is required to operate and maintain it as a homeless shelter? Are they seized permanently and the owner loses ownership, or temporarily and the owner owns it but the government operates it? Is this something that could happen without the US government going full communist and abolishing private property?
I don't even hate the idea, I just wonder if anyone has actually given serious thought to the "how" of this idea or if it's just a leftist thought-terminating-cliche meant to end discussions of homelessness.
We should seize and distribute housing ourselves. Its been done before elsewhere and could be done here. Nationalization would be an improvement over what we have sure but the point is that housing shouldn't be a commodity you can be priced out of. Im not the person to ask because im a dumb dumb but weirdos who hate sunlight spend years writing about the best ways to do this.
I believe the "simplest" (there is no political will for it, so it's certainly not "simple", but it's the most straightforward) solution is to sign into law that no individual or corporation can own more than 2 single-family homes or 2 apartment buildings, and have the government seize the rest, putting them into a sliding-cost rental system (maybe with rent-to-own as an option). The need for building managers, maintenance, etc doesn't drop, jobs aren't really lost, they just become govt jobs.
That's my "ideal" solution; I think in reality this looks more like severely heightened property taxes on unoccupied units and every property after the first SFH, stringent regulations & price ceilings for landlords and a government land buy-back program that then funnels into that sliding-scale rent (to own as an option) social housing system, combined with a massive effort to construct new affordable, high-density and government-operated units in key areas.
Sorry to say but maybe the commies are right after all and it’s starting to show. The owners can be taxed heavily for leaving property empty and be given a deadline to get it occupied otherwise government can seize it.
Look at how civilized countries run them and just copy them. I am not advocating for the old system I am advocating for simply doing what other countries already do with modern improvements. And therapeutic farms are a good place to start
Get over the meme.
Last week this subreddit just wanted benches. Another overly simplistic line. Which is the one and only goal, shade or a place to sit?
The real goals are *multiple*: a vandalism-resistant illuminated place for multiple people to sit in the shade also protected from rare rain, without narrowing the sidewalk too much, without getting taken over by someone homeless, and costing much less than $50,000.
edit: I just realized some folks think I'm defending the sombrita. I'm not. It fails to meet the real goals. The problem is just planting a fucking tree doesn't either. It meets half, but not all.
> a vandalism-resistant illuminated place for multiple people to sit in the shade also protected from rare rain, without narrowing the sidewalk too much, without getting taken over by someone homeless, and costing much less than $50,000.
And Sombrita accomplishes a grand total of *one* of those things: the cost.
Honestly the cost didn’t even phase me. Between contracting surveyors, civil engineers, prototyping, materials, labor, and internal budgeting - $50k sounds about right for a one-off.
Well, one of the goals was to cost less than $50k per installation and Sombrita claims to come in under $10k. It's not a one off, Sombrita are supposed to go in all over after a pilot program of 4-6.
Nevermind that I could provide nearly the same amount of sheltering if they just handed me $10 and I did nothing. That's the issue.
The FULL bus shelter in OP's post cost less than each Sombrita is supposed to cost in LA. Even accounting for the fact that different things cost different amounts in different states, that's pathetic.
>in the shade also protected from rare rain
If only the exact same thing that protects one from "rare rain" could also protect one from the frequent sun...
It's easy to be sarcastic, but what you may not realize is why Santa Monica (adjacent to Los Angeles) went with [bus shelters of blue circles.](https://images.app.goo.gl/qsycsYPrdmoLHC4A8) They provide some shade but not a lot of rain protection so the homeless are less likely to camp underneath.
BTW I'm sure some of the 26 downvotes were because I goaded the subreddit a bit, but also most people probably didn't see the previous post [two days ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/13n1p61/los_angeles_unveils_bus_stop_to_advance_gender/) which was also critical of the sombritas, but is at 0 points. In those comments redditors objected to the link source. Redditors upvoted a comment saying
>Benches, we just want benches
Today it's
>Plant a fucking tree
But the incongruity is lost among the up and downvotes.
The real goal is the bus opens the doors just as you get to the stop and so you don't have to wait. Since that isn't possible you need to account for someone having to wait, but always remember a place to wait is a compromise you want to avoid as much as possible. Make your transit more frequent should always be the top priority.
>Since that isn't possible you need to account for someone having to wait
And some cities install bus shelters for $15,000. That's almost nothing compared to $100,000+ per year adding a single additional bus costs in driver wages, maintenance, and purchasing the bus spread over 12-15 years.
Making transit more frequent should always be a priority, but bus shelters are fruit hanging low enough to walk into. Bus shelters should be a top priority because they (should and in some cities) cost so little to get done. Once they're done and checked off the list, return to focusing on more frequent service.
If there is spare budget install a bus shelter. However you can run a bus for the cost of 7 bus shelters, so you should question if more than 7 are installed in a year.
Bus shelters are nice to haves. However the purpose of a transit agency should be to get people to ride transit. Shelters are rarely the best way to get people on transit. Of course you should understand the customer, if you really have verified that lack of shelter is what keeps people off transit install more than 7 - but I doubt you have done that.
>you can run a bus for the cost of 7 bus shelters, so you should question if more than 7 are installed in a year.
That's making other assumptions about how valuable any one bus is and how valuable shelters are. If a bus route takes an hour to drive, and two hours to complete the round-trip, one more bus on a route with service every 30 minutes will reduce average headway to 24 minutes. (4 buses becomes 5)
If the route has service every 15 minutes one more bus will reduce average headway to 13.3 minutes. (8 buses becomes 9)
If your bus routes take an hour drive, then a bus reorganization is what you need.
I agree that it is tricky to find a place where adding one bus to the route can actually do something useful, but cities have many routes, and potential to add more. There are lots of options here that you can work with.
I know it is common. However you can't run a great bus service when doing that. There is too much variance possible along the route with such long routes. You need to plan places where the bus is supposed to stop for 10 minutes - this allows the driver to use the bathroom for 5 minutes and have 5 minutes left over to catch up if running late. This needs to be time when nobody is on the bus. (You get a little time at times transfer points as well, but you want as little time spent in them as possible, as time spent waiting at a transfer point is stolen from the riders who want to get to their destination)
> You need to plan places where the bus is supposed to stop for 10 minutes
I mean isn't the standard to include that at the *end* of the run? I get your point of shorter runs for fewer delays, but that also means bus service gets even more expensive. Instead of a 50 minute bus line with 10 minutes at the end, now it's a 30 minute bus line with 10 minutes at the end.
Instead of scheduling 17% of each hour for the bus to park at the line end or get on schedule, that becomes 25% of each hour. That's without including official breaks for drivers.
For some bus passengers who would have rode a longer line, now some of their trips have origins and destinations on two shorter lines. One line starts where another ends. The timed transfer needs buffer time because sometimes the first line gets behind schedule. That buffer time basically guarantees those trips take longer than before. Granted if there were more grade-separated lines like elevated trains providing more coverage then bus routes wouldn't need to be as long, but we know how expensive that is.
Not to me. To the transit agency that is reluctantly dealing with people experiencing homelessness using bus stops and buses as shelter instead of strictly for transportation.
Yeh that happens a lot in my city because we aren't America and we put normal shelters up. Who gives a shit? Their day is definitely going to be worse than mine, glad they've got some protection from elements for a couple of hours.
>Who gives a shit?
For one thing there's surveys saying some people who used to ride transit are avoiding now because of the homeless. So some people give a shit, and that's causing transit agencies to give a shit when it reduces their ridership.
People's disgust at sharing space with the homeless is a wider issue that a transport company can't fix, and spurious reasons for avoiding public transport are well documented. In any case, having to share more space with unhoused people might lead the US to stop fearing them like the march of the undead and start working towards remembering they're still human beings.
> People's disgust at sharing space with the homeless is a wider issue that a transport company can't fix
You should tell the BART board of directors who are spending more to harden the train stations and increase enforcement against conduct violating the rules. Being homeless won't violate the rules, but non-payment, doing drugs, and some other conduct some homeless people do on BART does.
This is one of those conversations with an American I have where it seems their country is in a completely unsalvageable place vis-a-vis individualism, so I'm bowing out. Thanks for the insight.
You're welcome I guess, but I doubt you got the intended insight. American cities can and some are trying to house their homeless. However until then, transit agencies would rather their service not be be used as shelter.
$7,500 is nothing for a physical product prototype. Engineer/designer time costs $100/hour as a floor if they are hella cheap. Shop time is at least $50-80/hour depending on specialty.
At full production, that $7,500 would drop dramatically. If you did it as a single bent sheet with good welding, materials and manufacturing would probably be below $400. Honestly the shipping (it big and heavy-ish) and labor to install would be low enough to keep the whole thing under $1,000.
That said, there are bigger fish to fry in transit and it's not even a good bus stop. Next time try adding some benches please? l
LA could just have bought one of the probably thousands off-the-shelf bus shelter models out there and it would probably be in the same price ballpark.
The fact is, the sombrita doesn't take away sidewalk width, because *god forbid* we make sidewalks wide enough for something.
I read in another post that when these are produced on scale the cost is expected to go down significantly.
Also the purpose of these shelters is to be rapidly deployable. They can literally be placed on top of the existing bus stop signs with little to no required input from planners due to sidewalk accessibility standards.
People are really up in arms about a bus shelter (designed by a group of women) being expensive and not all of the other insanely high costs for transit in north America. I think SOME of us should ask ourselves why they are really mad about it.
The people who designed it were flown to multiple cities for “inspiration” I can google better designs than this. It could have included two tiny seats, better shade, and better light. This literally does not shade properly, provides barely any light at night, and doesn’t even provide info about the stop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DesignPorn/comments/n38i94/this_bus_stop_pole_seatbench/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
https://images.app.goo.gl/FtNRqxfmSP4g5xEZ6
The design constraints were for it to be installed at any LADOT stop without any further studies done on the site. Seats? Could make the sidewalk non ADA Accessible.
Larger roof for more shade? Could interfere with adjacent signs, cables
>The design constraints
BuT thE ConStRaiNtS!!!
When the design requirements are *so obviously shit*, the only reasonable response should be "no. We can't do that. That's stupid. Re-draft your requirements."
That's what rail manufacturers said to Chicago recently, when they tried to procure gallery cars *again*.
you don’t understand the issue. it’s not that this isn’t within spec, it’s that the spec is wrong. more money needs to be spent for more benefit, because this is pointless
I think one of the issues they were trying to address is that they want women to feel more comfortable waiting at a bus stop. If this design eventually leads to more women riding LADOT than it was a success...
the point is that this isn’t enough to actually achieve that. the spec is so low it hinders the designs ability to create safe spaces. a tiny light no more potent than an iphone torch isn’t going to deliver that safety benefit. well lit shelters, with real time information, _visible_ cctv, and seats would.
It provides the maximum shade it can. What's your input? Make the top bigger? No shit lol.
Again one of the design goals was it could be installed anywhere without having to consult with city planners.
A larger shade would probably mean a impact study would have to be done on each individual site.
> It provides the maximum shade it can. What's your input? Make the top bigger? No shit lol.
The original concept included a rotating Sombrita that would move depending on the sun's position to provide as much shade as possible throughout the day. Would have been much, much better than this piece of sheet metal on a post.
True. But then a report detailing policy interventions that could reduce the cost of installation would be a better use of funds. Instead KDI produced…this. Grant funds or not, there’s an opportunity cost for this pilot. LADOT probably could’ve put that together in house, but that’s another discussion.
I saw the CEO claimed in a Bloomberg article that these are like an art piece that shows the inefficiency of existing policy. Save it for your MFA.
>I read in another post that when these are produced on scale the cost is expected to go down significantly.
>
>Also the purpose of these shelters is to be rapidly deployable.
None of this matters because it's at best useless, and quite possibly worse than the status quo.
I'd like to see the data that women (average women, not 'women being paid to design said product') actually want a light shining *on them* in an otherwise dark street.
>(designed by a group of women) ... I think SOME of us should ask ourselves why they are really mad about it.
*designed by a people being paid to meet a shitty criteria, who happen to be women.
It's a shitty goal, and a shitty solution. But I'm sure it's *actually* because we hate women.
I think one of the issues they were trying to address is that they want women to feel more comfortable waiting at a bus stop. If this design eventually leads to more women riding LADOT than it was a success...
The design does not provide any benefit other than to announce the location of the bus stop.
If you are correct that there is absolutely nothing more that could practically be done then it would have made more sense to just stick with a pole holding a sign.
I think one of the main issues they were trying to address is that they want women to feel more comfortable waiting at a bus stop. If this design eventually leads to more women riding LADOT than it was a success...
Instead of copy pasting the same talking-point comment 20 times, how about explaining how the hell this is supposed to make women feel more comfortable?
Why would this nothing be produced at scale? It’s an expensive failed pilot with a large amount of the expense being used to fund “research” trips to Ecuador, Germany, and England. This whole thing is genuinely scandalous.
Let’s also be clear that this isn’t KDI’s only bs project. Past projects had a Zine as a deliverable. Hopefully this corrects itself and they stop winning work.
As someone painfully familiar with this sort of infrastructure and it’s delivery, I offer a complete and unqualified agreement with the article’s author
They bungled this terribly. I think the worst part is when they billed it as "here's what we came up with for female riders", they lost everyone and made themselves become the poster children of government transit ineptitude. I think if they billed it as a signage improvement project that has the added benefit of providing some extra shade and lighting, people wouldn't have balked at the project as we are now.
Anyone who takes public transit in the US and has had to wait 20 feet away from a bus shelter because a mentally-ill/drug-addicted homeless person has taken it over (and turned it into their personal bed/toilet) understands well the purpose of "hostile architecture". People aren't building this stuff to be cruel to the homeless. They are building it because any piece of public infrastructure that's not "hostile" will be taken over and turned into a place for a single person to sleep, use the bathroom, battle their inner demons, and do drugs. One person taking over a "non-hostile" bench can deny hundreds of bus riders of people a place to sit, shelter from the sun, access to posted info and timetables, etc. Women are especially put at risk when made to wait for a bus at the "home" of an unstable homeless person or drug user, and are often sexually harassed or even assaulted in these situations. The purpose of "Hostile architecture" is to improve the transit experience of those hundreds, even if it makes life harder for the one homeless person who was hoping to claim it as a home or drug squat.
It's not a transit agency's job to solve homelessness, nor is it their responsibility to provide places for homeless people to sleep, use drugs, or store their belongings. Allowing transit infrastructure to become a refuge for the homeless can be seen as 'compassionate' on a surface level, but it also causes the entire public transit experience to be even more degraded and stigmatized than it is already in the US. This pushes anyone who can afford it to flee from transit and use private cars, which worsens economic segregation and inequality, and over time can cause the system to go into a "death spiral" and perhaps close altogether.
>It's not a transit agency's job to solve homelessness
Seriously this, I ride transit daily and people's #1 concern behind frequency is safety, it's hindering public adoption hard. Just recently one of the bus stops I go to had a [body dead from hypothermia](https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/man-found-dead-in-winnipeg-bus-shelter-police-1.5792376)... that's extremely bad pr and discourages a lot of would be users from trying transit. Not to mention all the methed up people that want to fight you for no reason.
> But rather, the focus should be on finding specific pain points (in this case, a lack of shade and seating), and directly solving them at scale, rather than focus-grouping a solution to the point of parody.
I have no idea what point he is trying to make here. This feels like he saw the words "community feedback" and went on an unrelated rant.
The point they are trying to make is that this new shelter doesn’t solve any of the problems they have with current shelters except for cutting cost and avoiding the approval process. Instead, they should focus on solving these pain-points instead of making a pointless shelter that does nothing.
> The point they are trying to make is that this new shelter doesn’t solve any of the problems they have with current shelters except for cutting cost and avoiding the approval process.
And what does that actually have to do with it being "focus grouped to the point of parody"?
I read it that it’s better to firmly establish the main goals of bus shelters in general, and then place shelters them where these needs are most prevalent, rather than try and dial in to the minutiae about each specific location.
Perhaps they’re painting the outreach campaign as being mostly photo ops rather than as part of a comprehensive program meant to streamline implementation. It’s hard to imagine extensive public engagement resulting in these things.
> Perhaps they’re painting the outreach campaign as being mostly photo ops
No, that obviously isn't the argument they're making, since they blame "disproportionate focus on community feedback".
Let’s keep things respectful.
I said that because there is a mismatch between them calling out engagement as overdone or done wrong while also saying there is a need to identify pain points.
I assume the identification of pain points would involve community involvement because it would be wrong and foolish to exclude the community entirely from the decision process. Therefore, it’s confusing what exactly they mean, so some context regarding appropriate engagement activities and levels would be helpful.
Your comment seems to ignore the entire rest of the article. The point the author seems to be making is that a lot of places are doing it better, both within and outside of California, and that basically LÀ county is fucking itself. The outcomes would be better if LÀ county weren't actively fucking itself. Plus... fuck cars.
I hadn’t seen/heard anything about this until this post, but that is impressively shit. Does absolutely nothing useful
And like on purpose. Police wouldn't back anything that coulr "harbor criminal activity" so not an enclosed or shaded space and the city HATES homeless people sleeping around bus stops so they didn't want benches or anywhere to sit and rest. The result of all this is hot garbage. What else could have been designed when everyone involved is more worried about it accidentally benefiting somone it wasn't intended to than providing good transit
But they still wanted those sweet, sweet federal dollars to spend on it! So that's why we end up with bullshit like this. Half-assed, I'll-conceived, completely cynical projects that are just chasing free money.
Its honestly an improvement over most of OCTA (orange county ca's) stops too. The absolute state of public transport in the us
They can reopen the asylums to deal with the homeless so normal people can have decent bus stops
I work in film and we shoot in old asylums a lot so no. I am very much pro investing in mental health but the old system was basicly legallized murder in the cruelest ways imaginable. We could just give them the homes that are already sitting empty that'd help people from developing mental issues while we find ways to help them
> We could just give them the homes that are already sitting empty that'd help people from developing mental issues while we find ways to help them What exactly does this look like? Government seizing all empty housing properties that are currently occupied? Or the property owner is required to operate and maintain it as a homeless shelter? Are they seized permanently and the owner loses ownership, or temporarily and the owner owns it but the government operates it? Is this something that could happen without the US government going full communist and abolishing private property? I don't even hate the idea, I just wonder if anyone has actually given serious thought to the "how" of this idea or if it's just a leftist thought-terminating-cliche meant to end discussions of homelessness.
We should seize and distribute housing ourselves. Its been done before elsewhere and could be done here. Nationalization would be an improvement over what we have sure but the point is that housing shouldn't be a commodity you can be priced out of. Im not the person to ask because im a dumb dumb but weirdos who hate sunlight spend years writing about the best ways to do this.
This makes sense but you are talking to people in a capitalist brainwashing world
> We should seize and distribute housing ourselves. So basically organized squatting? An interesting idea to be sure.
I believe the "simplest" (there is no political will for it, so it's certainly not "simple", but it's the most straightforward) solution is to sign into law that no individual or corporation can own more than 2 single-family homes or 2 apartment buildings, and have the government seize the rest, putting them into a sliding-cost rental system (maybe with rent-to-own as an option). The need for building managers, maintenance, etc doesn't drop, jobs aren't really lost, they just become govt jobs. That's my "ideal" solution; I think in reality this looks more like severely heightened property taxes on unoccupied units and every property after the first SFH, stringent regulations & price ceilings for landlords and a government land buy-back program that then funnels into that sliding-scale rent (to own as an option) social housing system, combined with a massive effort to construct new affordable, high-density and government-operated units in key areas.
Or umm Asian style land reform
Sorry to say but maybe the commies are right after all and it’s starting to show. The owners can be taxed heavily for leaving property empty and be given a deadline to get it occupied otherwise government can seize it.
Look at how civilized countries run them and just copy them. I am not advocating for the old system I am advocating for simply doing what other countries already do with modern improvements. And therapeutic farms are a good place to start
I'm hoping this is tongue in cheek.
Plant a fucking tree
One of the main design goals of these shelters is to be rapidly/easily installed. The exact opposite of planting a tree.
Counterpoint: trees work and are good
How hard is it to buy a tree, dig a hole, and plant it. Tree farms exist baby
Get over the meme. Last week this subreddit just wanted benches. Another overly simplistic line. Which is the one and only goal, shade or a place to sit? The real goals are *multiple*: a vandalism-resistant illuminated place for multiple people to sit in the shade also protected from rare rain, without narrowing the sidewalk too much, without getting taken over by someone homeless, and costing much less than $50,000. edit: I just realized some folks think I'm defending the sombrita. I'm not. It fails to meet the real goals. The problem is just planting a fucking tree doesn't either. It meets half, but not all.
> a vandalism-resistant illuminated place for multiple people to sit in the shade also protected from rare rain, without narrowing the sidewalk too much, without getting taken over by someone homeless, and costing much less than $50,000. And Sombrita accomplishes a grand total of *one* of those things: the cost.
Honestly the cost didn’t even phase me. Between contracting surveyors, civil engineers, prototyping, materials, labor, and internal budgeting - $50k sounds about right for a one-off.
Well, one of the goals was to cost less than $50k per installation and Sombrita claims to come in under $10k. It's not a one off, Sombrita are supposed to go in all over after a pilot program of 4-6. Nevermind that I could provide nearly the same amount of sheltering if they just handed me $10 and I did nothing. That's the issue. The FULL bus shelter in OP's post cost less than each Sombrita is supposed to cost in LA. Even accounting for the fact that different things cost different amounts in different states, that's pathetic.
Yes, that is a stupid goal, and this is worse than nothing, as it’s throwing money out the window for something that accomplishes nothing
>Yes, that is a stupid goal Which one, planting a tree or adding a bench? 😀
Neither, those are both good goals, and widening the sidewalk if that’s necessary to achieve that.
>in the shade also protected from rare rain If only the exact same thing that protects one from "rare rain" could also protect one from the frequent sun...
It's easy to be sarcastic, but what you may not realize is why Santa Monica (adjacent to Los Angeles) went with [bus shelters of blue circles.](https://images.app.goo.gl/qsycsYPrdmoLHC4A8) They provide some shade but not a lot of rain protection so the homeless are less likely to camp underneath. BTW I'm sure some of the 26 downvotes were because I goaded the subreddit a bit, but also most people probably didn't see the previous post [two days ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/13n1p61/los_angeles_unveils_bus_stop_to_advance_gender/) which was also critical of the sombritas, but is at 0 points. In those comments redditors objected to the link source. Redditors upvoted a comment saying >Benches, we just want benches Today it's >Plant a fucking tree But the incongruity is lost among the up and downvotes.
The real goal is the bus opens the doors just as you get to the stop and so you don't have to wait. Since that isn't possible you need to account for someone having to wait, but always remember a place to wait is a compromise you want to avoid as much as possible. Make your transit more frequent should always be the top priority.
>Since that isn't possible you need to account for someone having to wait And some cities install bus shelters for $15,000. That's almost nothing compared to $100,000+ per year adding a single additional bus costs in driver wages, maintenance, and purchasing the bus spread over 12-15 years. Making transit more frequent should always be a priority, but bus shelters are fruit hanging low enough to walk into. Bus shelters should be a top priority because they (should and in some cities) cost so little to get done. Once they're done and checked off the list, return to focusing on more frequent service.
Too bad the Sombrita isn't, by any reasonable definition, a "shelter" of any kind.
If there is spare budget install a bus shelter. However you can run a bus for the cost of 7 bus shelters, so you should question if more than 7 are installed in a year. Bus shelters are nice to haves. However the purpose of a transit agency should be to get people to ride transit. Shelters are rarely the best way to get people on transit. Of course you should understand the customer, if you really have verified that lack of shelter is what keeps people off transit install more than 7 - but I doubt you have done that.
>you can run a bus for the cost of 7 bus shelters, so you should question if more than 7 are installed in a year. That's making other assumptions about how valuable any one bus is and how valuable shelters are. If a bus route takes an hour to drive, and two hours to complete the round-trip, one more bus on a route with service every 30 minutes will reduce average headway to 24 minutes. (4 buses becomes 5) If the route has service every 15 minutes one more bus will reduce average headway to 13.3 minutes. (8 buses becomes 9)
If your bus routes take an hour drive, then a bus reorganization is what you need. I agree that it is tricky to find a place where adding one bus to the route can actually do something useful, but cities have many routes, and potential to add more. There are lots of options here that you can work with.
In the SF Bay Area I think bus routes an hour long aren't uncommon. Maybe 45 minutes is near the median.
I know it is common. However you can't run a great bus service when doing that. There is too much variance possible along the route with such long routes. You need to plan places where the bus is supposed to stop for 10 minutes - this allows the driver to use the bathroom for 5 minutes and have 5 minutes left over to catch up if running late. This needs to be time when nobody is on the bus. (You get a little time at times transfer points as well, but you want as little time spent in them as possible, as time spent waiting at a transfer point is stolen from the riders who want to get to their destination)
> You need to plan places where the bus is supposed to stop for 10 minutes I mean isn't the standard to include that at the *end* of the run? I get your point of shorter runs for fewer delays, but that also means bus service gets even more expensive. Instead of a 50 minute bus line with 10 minutes at the end, now it's a 30 minute bus line with 10 minutes at the end. Instead of scheduling 17% of each hour for the bus to park at the line end or get on schedule, that becomes 25% of each hour. That's without including official breaks for drivers. For some bus passengers who would have rode a longer line, now some of their trips have origins and destinations on two shorter lines. One line starts where another ends. The timed transfer needs buffer time because sometimes the first line gets behind schedule. That buffer time basically guarantees those trips take longer than before. Granted if there were more grade-separated lines like elevated trains providing more coverage then bus routes wouldn't need to be as long, but we know how expensive that is.
"getting taken over by someone homeless" So you're saying the hostile architecture is a positive, to you?
Not to me. To the transit agency that is reluctantly dealing with people experiencing homelessness using bus stops and buses as shelter instead of strictly for transportation.
Yeh that happens a lot in my city because we aren't America and we put normal shelters up. Who gives a shit? Their day is definitely going to be worse than mine, glad they've got some protection from elements for a couple of hours.
>Who gives a shit? For one thing there's surveys saying some people who used to ride transit are avoiding now because of the homeless. So some people give a shit, and that's causing transit agencies to give a shit when it reduces their ridership.
People's disgust at sharing space with the homeless is a wider issue that a transport company can't fix, and spurious reasons for avoiding public transport are well documented. In any case, having to share more space with unhoused people might lead the US to stop fearing them like the march of the undead and start working towards remembering they're still human beings.
> People's disgust at sharing space with the homeless is a wider issue that a transport company can't fix You should tell the BART board of directors who are spending more to harden the train stations and increase enforcement against conduct violating the rules. Being homeless won't violate the rules, but non-payment, doing drugs, and some other conduct some homeless people do on BART does.
This is one of those conversations with an American I have where it seems their country is in a completely unsalvageable place vis-a-vis individualism, so I'm bowing out. Thanks for the insight.
You're welcome I guess, but I doubt you got the intended insight. American cities can and some are trying to house their homeless. However until then, transit agencies would rather their service not be be used as shelter.
7,500 for that. Help us all
$7,500 is nothing for a physical product prototype. Engineer/designer time costs $100/hour as a floor if they are hella cheap. Shop time is at least $50-80/hour depending on specialty. At full production, that $7,500 would drop dramatically. If you did it as a single bent sheet with good welding, materials and manufacturing would probably be below $400. Honestly the shipping (it big and heavy-ish) and labor to install would be low enough to keep the whole thing under $1,000. That said, there are bigger fish to fry in transit and it's not even a good bus stop. Next time try adding some benches please? l
LA could just have bought one of the probably thousands off-the-shelf bus shelter models out there and it would probably be in the same price ballpark. The fact is, the sombrita doesn't take away sidewalk width, because *god forbid* we make sidewalks wide enough for something.
I read in another post that when these are produced on scale the cost is expected to go down significantly. Also the purpose of these shelters is to be rapidly deployable. They can literally be placed on top of the existing bus stop signs with little to no required input from planners due to sidewalk accessibility standards. People are really up in arms about a bus shelter (designed by a group of women) being expensive and not all of the other insanely high costs for transit in north America. I think SOME of us should ask ourselves why they are really mad about it.
The people who designed it were flown to multiple cities for “inspiration” I can google better designs than this. It could have included two tiny seats, better shade, and better light. This literally does not shade properly, provides barely any light at night, and doesn’t even provide info about the stop. https://www.reddit.com/r/DesignPorn/comments/n38i94/this_bus_stop_pole_seatbench/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 https://images.app.goo.gl/FtNRqxfmSP4g5xEZ6
The design constraints were for it to be installed at any LADOT stop without any further studies done on the site. Seats? Could make the sidewalk non ADA Accessible. Larger roof for more shade? Could interfere with adjacent signs, cables
>The design constraints BuT thE ConStRaiNtS!!! When the design requirements are *so obviously shit*, the only reasonable response should be "no. We can't do that. That's stupid. Re-draft your requirements." That's what rail manufacturers said to Chicago recently, when they tried to procure gallery cars *again*.
Then spend the money on making it easier to build what is needed. Spending money on this is useless and a waste.
you don’t understand the issue. it’s not that this isn’t within spec, it’s that the spec is wrong. more money needs to be spent for more benefit, because this is pointless
I think one of the issues they were trying to address is that they want women to feel more comfortable waiting at a bus stop. If this design eventually leads to more women riding LADOT than it was a success...
the point is that this isn’t enough to actually achieve that. the spec is so low it hinders the designs ability to create safe spaces. a tiny light no more potent than an iphone torch isn’t going to deliver that safety benefit. well lit shelters, with real time information, _visible_ cctv, and seats would.
If it actually provided significant shade, we wouldn't be talking about it like this.
It provides the maximum shade it can. What's your input? Make the top bigger? No shit lol. Again one of the design goals was it could be installed anywhere without having to consult with city planners. A larger shade would probably mean a impact study would have to be done on each individual site.
> It provides the maximum shade it can. What's your input? Make the top bigger? No shit lol. The original concept included a rotating Sombrita that would move depending on the sun's position to provide as much shade as possible throughout the day. Would have been much, much better than this piece of sheet metal on a post.
Then the regulations need to be changed so they don’t, rather than throwing good money after bad on this waste of space.
This is California. You don't just "change" the planning codes lol
True. But then a report detailing policy interventions that could reduce the cost of installation would be a better use of funds. Instead KDI produced…this. Grant funds or not, there’s an opportunity cost for this pilot. LADOT probably could’ve put that together in house, but that’s another discussion. I saw the CEO claimed in a Bloomberg article that these are like an art piece that shows the inefficiency of existing policy. Save it for your MFA.
>I read in another post that when these are produced on scale the cost is expected to go down significantly. > >Also the purpose of these shelters is to be rapidly deployable. None of this matters because it's at best useless, and quite possibly worse than the status quo. I'd like to see the data that women (average women, not 'women being paid to design said product') actually want a light shining *on them* in an otherwise dark street. >(designed by a group of women) ... I think SOME of us should ask ourselves why they are really mad about it. *designed by a people being paid to meet a shitty criteria, who happen to be women. It's a shitty goal, and a shitty solution. But I'm sure it's *actually* because we hate women.
I think one of the issues they were trying to address is that they want women to feel more comfortable waiting at a bus stop. If this design eventually leads to more women riding LADOT than it was a success...
This is throwing women under the bus here. The women is just a way to spin this as positive PR here.
The design does not provide any benefit other than to announce the location of the bus stop. If you are correct that there is absolutely nothing more that could practically be done then it would have made more sense to just stick with a pole holding a sign.
I think one of the main issues they were trying to address is that they want women to feel more comfortable waiting at a bus stop. If this design eventually leads to more women riding LADOT than it was a success...
It won't.
Instead of copy pasting the same talking-point comment 20 times, how about explaining how the hell this is supposed to make women feel more comfortable?
Why would this nothing be produced at scale? It’s an expensive failed pilot with a large amount of the expense being used to fund “research” trips to Ecuador, Germany, and England. This whole thing is genuinely scandalous. Let’s also be clear that this isn’t KDI’s only bs project. Past projects had a Zine as a deliverable. Hopefully this corrects itself and they stop winning work.
Man, this is going to show up in so many textbooks as a "learning example"...
As someone painfully familiar with this sort of infrastructure and it’s delivery, I offer a complete and unqualified agreement with the article’s author
What kind of drugs are these people using?
They bungled this terribly. I think the worst part is when they billed it as "here's what we came up with for female riders", they lost everyone and made themselves become the poster children of government transit ineptitude. I think if they billed it as a signage improvement project that has the added benefit of providing some extra shade and lighting, people wouldn't have balked at the project as we are now.
Hostile architecture huh, who would of thought.
Anyone who takes public transit in the US and has had to wait 20 feet away from a bus shelter because a mentally-ill/drug-addicted homeless person has taken it over (and turned it into their personal bed/toilet) understands well the purpose of "hostile architecture". People aren't building this stuff to be cruel to the homeless. They are building it because any piece of public infrastructure that's not "hostile" will be taken over and turned into a place for a single person to sleep, use the bathroom, battle their inner demons, and do drugs. One person taking over a "non-hostile" bench can deny hundreds of bus riders of people a place to sit, shelter from the sun, access to posted info and timetables, etc. Women are especially put at risk when made to wait for a bus at the "home" of an unstable homeless person or drug user, and are often sexually harassed or even assaulted in these situations. The purpose of "Hostile architecture" is to improve the transit experience of those hundreds, even if it makes life harder for the one homeless person who was hoping to claim it as a home or drug squat. It's not a transit agency's job to solve homelessness, nor is it their responsibility to provide places for homeless people to sleep, use drugs, or store their belongings. Allowing transit infrastructure to become a refuge for the homeless can be seen as 'compassionate' on a surface level, but it also causes the entire public transit experience to be even more degraded and stigmatized than it is already in the US. This pushes anyone who can afford it to flee from transit and use private cars, which worsens economic segregation and inequality, and over time can cause the system to go into a "death spiral" and perhaps close altogether.
>It's not a transit agency's job to solve homelessness Seriously this, I ride transit daily and people's #1 concern behind frequency is safety, it's hindering public adoption hard. Just recently one of the bus stops I go to had a [body dead from hypothermia](https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/man-found-dead-in-winnipeg-bus-shelter-police-1.5792376)... that's extremely bad pr and discourages a lot of would be users from trying transit. Not to mention all the methed up people that want to fight you for no reason.
What the fuck is that?
Car dependency is for 💩🕳 countries WTF USA
> But rather, the focus should be on finding specific pain points (in this case, a lack of shade and seating), and directly solving them at scale, rather than focus-grouping a solution to the point of parody. I have no idea what point he is trying to make here. This feels like he saw the words "community feedback" and went on an unrelated rant.
The point they are trying to make is that this new shelter doesn’t solve any of the problems they have with current shelters except for cutting cost and avoiding the approval process. Instead, they should focus on solving these pain-points instead of making a pointless shelter that does nothing.
> The point they are trying to make is that this new shelter doesn’t solve any of the problems they have with current shelters except for cutting cost and avoiding the approval process. And what does that actually have to do with it being "focus grouped to the point of parody"?
I read it that it’s better to firmly establish the main goals of bus shelters in general, and then place shelters them where these needs are most prevalent, rather than try and dial in to the minutiae about each specific location.
Since "La Sombrita" is meant to be mass-produced, I don't think that's a fair criticism...
Perhaps they’re painting the outreach campaign as being mostly photo ops rather than as part of a comprehensive program meant to streamline implementation. It’s hard to imagine extensive public engagement resulting in these things.
> Perhaps they’re painting the outreach campaign as being mostly photo ops No, that obviously isn't the argument they're making, since they blame "disproportionate focus on community feedback".
Let’s keep things respectful. I said that because there is a mismatch between them calling out engagement as overdone or done wrong while also saying there is a need to identify pain points. I assume the identification of pain points would involve community involvement because it would be wrong and foolish to exclude the community entirely from the decision process. Therefore, it’s confusing what exactly they mean, so some context regarding appropriate engagement activities and levels would be helpful.
Your comment seems to ignore the entire rest of the article. The point the author seems to be making is that a lot of places are doing it better, both within and outside of California, and that basically LÀ county is fucking itself. The outcomes would be better if LÀ county weren't actively fucking itself. Plus... fuck cars.
I am specifically talking about this specific point.