Bus Interchanges / Better Bus Stops

The Central West End bus interchange is a concrete gas chamber that many people like me find themselves waiting in for unacceptable periods of time.  It's filled with smoke from cigarettes that Metro seems unconcerned about, and gas from tailpipes that Metro can't afford to separate with glass doors like those in the Ang Mo Kio Hub in Singapore.

I don't blame Metro for their lack of money, but I do question whether they need the expensive inter-modal facilities they've invested in.  Last year there was one bus between Dogtown and the Botanical Gardens, and now it has been broken into two that terminate at the same interchange.  Now people like me going in one direction or the other must wait (forever!) at the Central West End bus terminal.

We have these interchanges because Metro is trying to plan around their existing MetroLink stations and build little transit towns.  Making the buses go to them contributes to a "destination" feel.  That's the Singapore model.

This is a picture of the Ang Mo Kio Hub mentioned above.  It's the center of one of the many transit towns in Singapore.  All attention focuses on the train station, and one would never know that they could walk to other areas if they tried.  Each town is an island completely disconnected from the others by all but train and bus.  One would never walk from Ang Mo Kio to Bishan because the two towns do not properly blend into each other.  They're bisected by large roads and a sizable park.   

Delmar, Forest Park, and the Central West End are all great places with lots of buses, but again they are islands to each other.  A half-mile walking radius around them is not going to help Porter Park much or Delmar and Euclid for that matter.

Transit villages make sense in disconnected suburbs or commuter towns with historic mainstreets.  In an established city mostly full of connected urban neighborhoods, it seems a shame to spend so much money making the best spaces for TOD into vast parking lots of idling buses and smoking drivers.  It's a shame to do so when elsewhere in the city we're left with scenes like this,


0.2 miles from Delmar Station

 Money spent on bus interchanges don't do much for the quality of a neighborhood unless they're integrated into something actively used.  In the case of the AMK Hub above, the bus interchange is part of an indoor mall complete with a full-service grocery store and a movie theater.  In the case of most MetroLink stations, they're part of a parking facility of some sort.  Here's North Hanley,


click to enlarge


Here's the Central West End,

This is a problem.  Metro spends a lot of money on parking structures that contribute very little to TOD or any kind development for that matter.  Metro spends very little on bus stops, and those bus stops therefore contribute very little to the streets they're on.

Atlernatives?   Nicer bus stops.  Bus stops as transfer stations.  Transfers on streets all around train stations, not bunched in hidden facilities.  They might look like this,

That's Oxford Circus.  You may remember it from a post on this blog about the potential of Washington and Memorial as a bus transfer intersection for the landing.

Or maybe they'd look like this,

This bus stop in the middle of the road is next to my old train station in Seoul, which was covered here in relation to Memorial Drive downtown.  By having a bus stop in the middle of the road, crosswalks become shorter and easier to cross, and crowds use them instead of blocking the sidewalks.

 
The shared bus lanes are used by many different buses.

One bus stop may serve many bus routes, and studying them while you wait can help you plan future trips.  The longer you wait at a bus stop in Seoul, the more useful you find it to be.  Buses come every five minutes though, so it's impossible to read every route.


Seoul and London are megacities with neighborhoods that blend into each other, and real estate by train stations is expensive.  Claiming the medians for buses decongests the sidewalks while still maintaining eyes and feet on the street.  It calms traffic and activates crosswalks.  It takes buses away from parked cars, and on well established corridors creates places for transfers.  

Why does the Kingshighway bus travel like this?

At the part of Kingshighway where the crosswalks need the most help, we have taken the bus away.  We've also added twenty minutes or more to the north-south commute time.

Again, we could have this,

or this,

Which costs more?  Which is better for the city?