Did you know it’s theoretically possible that someday all our city buses will be flying buses? That’s true. But what about the drab, unremarkable bus shelters that line our local streets, you ask — will we still have to use those boring things? Maybe not! We looked into cool, cutting edge concepts in bus stops to see what lies ahead. If our research proves accurate, the future looks very exciting. Some bus shelters will have vegetative roofs. Others will be beautiful and expensive to build yet cost cities $0 each. Still others will look like something you might see after your second ayahuasca cocktail. And all this creativity stands in service of the laudable goal of making public transportation more appealing. The future is now, amigos. Get on board.
Florence’s “iPhone of Bus Stops”
The punsters at the SENSEable City design lab up in Cambridge have named their smarter-than-you’ll-ever be interactive bus shelter the “EyeStop” (nudge, nudge).
The sleek structure allows you to do the sort of exciting and useful things you might do on an iPhone, but without an iPhone and while you’re waiting for the bus. So, for instance, you might browse the web (keep it clean, kids!) or plot your journey. But the EyeStop also allows you to monitor your exposure to airborne pollutants, watch in real time as the 73 Express sits motionless in a traffic jam, and post an electronic notice about your beloved tabby that just ran away.
Mind you, this is not a science fiction bus stop — a prototype has already been installed in Florence, Italy. (More here.)
Chicago Standard Bus Stop
In 2001, America’s second city made a deal with French ad firm JCDecaux: the company would provide Chicago 2,000 new bus shelters for free in exchange for an exclusive contract to sell all the ads on the structures. JCDecaux has a long history of such contracts, having made its start in 1964 on Paris’ bus stops.
Chicago got the good side of the deal: bright, good-looking glass and metal edifices that dignify every corner of the city. Their classically styled columns and arched rooflines are hard to miss.
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Cemusa Niemeyer and Giugiaro Shelters
Spanish company Cemusa has similarly found a way to make a profit by building free bus stops for cities and then placing ads on them. The company offers a complete line of options, but two that stand out are the Niemeyer and Giugiaro shelters, both by world-famous industrial designers.
Oscar Niemeyer is a Brazilian architect known for his work on Brazilia, the country’s new capital. His bus stop echos that city’s design themes, with its curvaceous white awning.
This avant-garde bus shelter by Giorgetto Giugiaro, with its suspended glass roof, strikes a markedly more audacious stance–not surprisingly for a designer best-known for his sports cars.
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Dubai Air Conditioned Stop
In this desert emirate famous for its profligate energy consumption–we’re thinking here of indoor ski slopes and plans for a refrigerated beach, among hundreds of other examples–air conditioned bus stops are a relative sober idea. The mercury does regularly touch 120 degrees, after all. That’s why Dubai’s planning to roll out 800 of them in the coming years to help the local riders manage the heat. The energy spent keeping riders comfortable is probably well worth the trade off in cars taken the road.
San Francisco’s Green-Roofed Bus Stops
Always interested in burnishing its environmental credentials, San Fran will be replacing some older black-rooved stops with wifi-outfitted, solar-paneled creations. With their energy generating wavy red roofs, they’ll be putting electricity back into the grid.
Rather than solar panels, some of the city’s citizens want plants on bus stop roofs. Initially used to advertise for the opening of the new green-roofed California Academy of Sciences, the stops could spread like kudzu if people get the initiative.
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Ventura Bus Transfer Station
Artist Dennis Oppenheim has created what he calls his “Bus Home.” He claims that his indoor-outdoor pavillon shows “the metamorphosis of a bus becoming a house.” That’s one way of putting it…
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Detroit’s Rosa Parks Transit Center
Just a few weeks ago, Detroit opened its new downtown bus center, which at $22.5 million is the most expensive of the facilities mentioned here. With its soaring white canopies and expansive interior, however, it certainly offers more. Whether it will help the permanently-suffering city escape its economic doldrums is a different matter.
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[Flying Bus: image via]
September 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
They all appeal on the level of aesthetics, but an important criteria of a bus stop should be durability. Here in an Unspecified Suffering New England City the metal and plexiglass stops are vandalized as often as they are repaired. Glass and brushed steel is great, but unless it repels spray paint and aimless drunken violence the street life of one of these babies is remarkably short.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I’ve always liked the bus station in Stratford, east London - aesthetically pleasing and has stood the test of time (well, since 1994). You’ll see more of it if you’re in the UK for the 2012 Olympics.
Here’s a pic (not one of mine): http://www.flickr.com/photos/barryslemmings/1455327362/
September 15th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I became an instant fan of you blog because there was some very informed and smart discussion about infrastructure. But then you started doing these silly listicles. If I want to subject myself to these fluff pieces, I’d go to Weburbanist or Webecoists or any one of those shiticle-ridden blogs that cater to the shortest of attention spans. How am I going to take you seriously now when you’re going to discuss the latest congressional bill affecting infrastructure in the country? Or maybe you will never have such a post, realizing that to keep your ad revenues up, you have to keep doing these traffic-mongering stunts again and again until you’ve become a caricature. (Are you next going to break up your listicles into separate posts and make us click and click and click and click and click to increase your visitor count?) This post isn’t even original and don’t have the Infrastructuralist VOICE. Perhaps the worst thing about all this is that you’re probably very cognizant that what you’re doing is a gimmick but you’re doing it anyway. You’re now reveling in irony.
September 15th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I’m trying really hard not to imagine what that fully enclosed air-conditioned bus stop would smell like in about a month. It would probably make a nice home for 2+ homeless people, but wouldn’t make for much of a bus stop.
I’d have to agree with Alger that durability should be a focus, and as admirable as the San Francisco effort to put solar panels on bus stops is, I don’t foresee those lasting long in the wild.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Deriuger,
I can promise you that the site will be a mix of the two kinds of content going forward. That is, some serious stuff and some not very serious stuff. There will sometimes even be bad stuff. Because that happens sometimes.
But, speaking seriously, I can promise you that the balance you speak of is one we’re well aware of. That said, I don’t like excessive purism among internet readers. We’re trying to build a viable web presence here. If sometimes that means dangling a little linkbait, then we ask readerly forbearance on those occasions in service of the broader project.
JR
September 15th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Ignore Deriuger. If you want an entirely policy focused website, turn to one that is specifically that. And if there isn’t one, start one. The mix on Infrastructurist is great - it attracts those just starting out in planning-related fields, while still providing quality content to those more seasoned in the field.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:37 am
This is a great site, a great resource and I love the variety. Perfectly pitched.
September 16th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Firstly, flying busses are ‘theoretically possible’ but highly unprobable, certainly for the next 100 or so years. So it looks like were going have to upgrade our bus stops instead, and the proposed designs are great, although some of them also highly unprobable.
It would seem then that the future of bus stops is in advertising, and it has been proven to work, however i’m not too sure it will catch on globally. Unfortunately bus stops often fall victim to vandalism, and I’m doubtful that companies will be keen to pay for constant repairs on their precious ad campaigns. As for the ‘EyeStop’, I love the idea and would like to think that it could happen, however I am again very skeptical.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Some good entries, but I’ve got to say that the CTA design is extremely weak. It is a play-it-safe, conservative, retro-nostalgia look consistent with most of Chicago’s modern day public space (excluding Millennium Park).
I’ve got to confess I specifically dogged it here:
http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/2009/08/chicago-transit-from-good-to-great-part_30.html
That also compares CTA rail stations to many very cool designs from around the world, btw. A nice photo collection if I must say so myself.
Again, great collection here too mostly - I had not seen most of these. Thanks for compiling.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Sadly, while interesting and innovative design in things like this isn’t necessarily a gimmick, it’s not what is needed most. What’s needed most is advances towards making public transit more appealing to a broad population - this would be improved safety (visibility), public information (schedules and maps for routes that serve the stop), and so on. Most of these bus stops, while they may have the capability for providing better information (the EyeStop, for example), are recognized for advanced appearance and don’t have a map or schedule display. In most cases, the advertising, which isn’t even aimed at the transit customer (rather, at the passing car traffic), gets more face time in the renderings and photos.
I also should point out that transfer centers (such as the fantastic Rosa Parks Transit Center and the Ventura Bus Transfer Station) are a totally different animal, with different infrastructure needs and purposes to serve than your average streetside bus stop.
I should also point out that, when looking at bus stops, facilities such as the type highlighted in this post - shelters and transfer centers - are the exception to the rule. Most bus stops are a simple sign attached to a metal post or utility pole; in some places (San Francisco, Savannah GA, etc) they may only be spray-painted to a phone pole or in the street. Of of the most fascinating and futuristic bus stops around is the Chicago Transit Authority’s simple bus stop sign, not the shelter - in Chicago, almost every bus stop has a map and basic schedule information printed on the sign. That they can upkeep and manage such a system in such a large city and network is fascinating and far ahead of the transit curve.
I’m not trying to be a crank - I sincerely enjoyed this article, and hope to see more like it - but I do feel as though the average bus stop is an under-developed piece of signage and infrastructure. I’m also not trying to be one of those people who says that transit agencies have to provide all the answers all the time before they’ll become usable (people really should adjust to the idea that they might have to look at a bus schedule now and then) - I’ve lived in a city with a bad transit rap (Atlanta) for over 7 years with no car and have had very few problems - but there’s room for improvement without jumping to space-age stuff, and that improvement really needs to start with the basics. Improved signage design and affordable, site-based infrastructure are the place to start, and because this type of improvement isn’t glamorous, it gets little attention.
Regardless of my criticism, nice job, and I look forward to more!
September 17th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Also, sorry for the poor grammar and proofreading. I get a bit worked up on things like this.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
ixmsuov- Thank you,fweqtug.Great site.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:53 am
[...] Infrastructurist put up a collection of super-cool bus stops. My only quibble is with their CTA bus stop, which is actually boring not cool, as I documented [...]