The hidden language of bus stops
The BusPlus station (with bump-out) at 4th & Congress, Troy, NY
(Troy, NY) How we designate a small patch of urban landscape can have profound implications for what we value in our communities as well as the potential future of our planet. Take the simple bus station bump-out—it is relatively cheap to install; it can be completed in a day; and yet its creation is an act of equity, resilience, and community-making.
But perhaps we should back up for a little context. The Capital District Transit Authority (CDTA) just opened their second Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line, the “Blue Line,” which runs along the Hudson River Corridor and connects the cities of Troy and Albany in under twenty minutes. The Blue Line is the second of three BRT “BusPlus” lines in the region, joining the already opened Red Line (Schenectady-Albany) and the forthcoming Purple Line (Albany-UAlbany-Crossgates).
The BusPlus map, reminiscent of Vignelli’s 1970s NYC subway map
Bus Rapid Transit is a public transit solution which has been widely implemented in an array of cities across the globe, including, perhaps most famously, the massive TransMilieno system in Bogotá, Colombia. BRT is a cost-effective, flexible, equitable solution, and can grow and shift as the footprint of a city develops. It has been slower to catch on in the US, where much of the dialogue continues to center around more expensive, sexier light rail solutions, but for regional transit networks with changing density levels that connect constellations of small cities, BRT is an ideal tool in a transit authority’s toolbox.
Priority signals: a bus jumps the queue. (Transit Street Design Guide, NACTO)
CDTA’s BRT lines utilize a number of features to speed up and improve ride time, including limited stops, traffic signal priority, WiFi, realtime schedule info, and larger bus shelters. According to certain metrics, including the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy’s (ITDP) Bus Rapid Transit Standard, CDTA’s BusPlus lines may not technically qualify as BRT, given that they do not have dedicated travel lanes or off-board fair collections. Such distinctions are important, but in a region of small cities like the Capital Region, dedicated travel lanes may be prohibitively expensive or not cost-efficient. One BRT model does not fit all municipalities.
Indeed, the whole BusPlus system has been constructed incrementally, over time, with a wide array of funding sources. Such an approach is a common feature of many public works projects in small and midsize cities, which often have to get creative navigating the sea of available Federal, State, and local funding sources. A small city, by necessity, is a constant work in progress.
Regardless of whether it is a “true” BRT line, the BusPlus system represents a significant regional investment in public transportation against a landscape still dominated by the private vehicle. It is an investment in low-income communities, where citizens may not be able to afford a car, and it is an investment in the density of the region’s small cities, where people may choose not to own a car but still want to be able to get around the region quickly and effectively. As a transit model, BusPlus can be a major economic driver while also significantly reducing the Greenhouse Gas profile of the transportation sector, especially as CDTA increasingly employs electric buses, which they have already begun to purchase.
CDTA’s first electric bus.
Diagram of 4th & Congress bus station (Creighton Manning)
The new BRT bus stations in particular are a highly designed bit of urban infrastructure that have an array of subtle effects on vehicles, riders, and the landscape of the city. Even just the nomenclature is important: calling these places “stations” as opposed to “stops” conveys a sense of essentiality and of place. The new BRT Blue Line stations are marked by a distinctive vertical language that includes a large blue and silver pylon and expanded solar-powered shelters, which both serve as placemaking markers that convey a powerful message to a neighborhood and its citizens: this place matters, this corner matters, you matter. The bus stop is an investment in people, space, and time.
Perhaps the real messaging, however, is in the subtler horizontal language of the stations. In some cases the CDTA—recognizing that transit responsibility does not just end when a rider disembarks from a bus—paved the sidewalks for 3 or 4 blocks in either direction from the stop. Some of the new stations even feature heated sidewalks. This is a massive investment in a community, even for those who are not riding the bus. Regional transit authorities like CDTA are constantly bumping up against that gray area of jurisdiction—how far should they engage in the civic lives of their ridership? Transportation touches on every bit of life. Should they build transit-friendly housing? Should they encourage smart growth and dense forms of land use?
In some ways a regional transit authority, which must inherently bridge the gap between state and federal funding and the reality of the street corner, is the most successful example of a regional entity, simply because, out of necessity, they must have boots on the ground; they must know the places they work in. Regional authorities in concept only often struggle to gain the kind of traction and footholds that CDTA maintains across their communities as they move people from here to there, 365 days a year.
And those people must walk and wait at the bus station, an intersecting arena of community and transit, vehicle and rider, stillness and motion. It has also become the domain of the bump-out.
Reclaimed territory: a bus station bump-out. (Urban Street Design Guide, NACTO)
“I’m a big believer in bump-outs,” said Ross Ferrell, Director of Planning at CDTA. “I could talk to you about bump outs for days.” Bumps-out improve visibility both for the rider as well as the driver. But they can also have profound effects on the safety of an intersection. “By narrowing the street, you minimize the amount of time a pedestrian is exposed to traffic when they are crossing the street,” said Farrell. But the narrowing of a street also causes drivers to slow down. As Farrell notes, “Even more so than speed limit signs, the width of a street will dictate how fast a vehicle is driven.”
Drivers may grumble about how these bus stations slow traffic or take up valuable parking spots, but then this is precisely the point. As is the case with dedicated bike lanes, there is often an initial period of resistance as citizens and travelers get used to the new infrastructure. Yet these interventions represent very clear choices that a city and a region are making about how to dedicate their urban space to certain forms of transit. These choices matter.
And they matter to a whole host of stakeholders, including developers. When Jeff Mirel of Rosenblum Companies heard there would be BRT station directly outside Rosenblum’s new Vicina residential development at the corner of 4th & Congress in downtown Troy, he was thrilled.
BusPlus station at 4th & Congress, Troy, NY
“Environmental stewardship is central to our entire real estate practice, encompassing not only building design and systems, but also where we develop, and ways of empowering our tenants to be more sustainable,” said Mirel . “The new BRT service and integrated micro mobility options like bike-share provide a compelling, convenient and carbon-friendly way for our tenants to connect everywhere they need to go.”
Rosenblum has gone a step further by participating in the CDTA’s Universal Access Program, which allows its tenants free access to all CDTA routes, including BusPlus. Diverse mobility options that don’t include private car ownership are increasingly becoming a crucial part of the downtown lifestyle and developers like Rosenblum are tapping into this pivot. This kind of synergy between regional transportation authority, city planning, developers, non profits, and small businesses is also typical of the collaborative and interdependent landscape of small cities, where each sector relies on the strengths and innovations of one another.
Repurposing a private vehicle parking spot for bus station bump-out may seem like a subtle intervention, so modest you may walk by without noticing anything has changed, but make no mistake: it is a part of a spatial revolution occurring in small and midsize cities across the country.