Bus Shelters

After a makeover, the bus loop that serves as a terminal for Muni's 8X and 49 lines at Phelan and Ocean Avenues, the site of City College's Ocean Campus, became operational yesterday. It's part of a larger city project, in the works for ten years, to create a more efficient and attractive transit hub while opening up the adjacent land for a mixed-use, affordable housing development with shops on the ground floor, complemented by a new plaza that will welcome students stepping off or waiting for the bus.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced today that it has installed the 100th new transit shelter, representing a new aesthetic for one of the more iconic pieces of street furniture in the city.

One of the central criticisms of Muni's objective to consolidate bus stops is that it hasn't conducted thorough demographic analysis of the people who use each stop, particularly seniors and the disabled. Rather than rely solely on the distance between stops and the incline of the streets, say critics, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) should make nuanced decisions about each stop based on the amenities near the stops and the people who use them.

Although they aren't quite as innovative as the solar bus shelter at Geary and Arguello boulevards that we profiled in May 2009, the newly designed MTA bus shelters are appearing around the city, including these two on Market Street near the Ferry Building.

Our latest call for photos was inspired by the picture at right, taking by Streetsblog New York's own Ben Fried. It's an all too familiar scene -- transit riders crammed together, waiting for a bus (or train) that doesn't come when it's supposed to (if you missed the story that went with the picture, it's here).

At a ribbon cutting ceremony on Geary and Arguello Boulevards in the Richmond District yesterday, Mayor Gavin Newsom, MTA Chief Nat Ford and representatives from Clear Channel presented the next iteration of the city's bus shelters, the first of 1100 new shelters that will be installed between now and 2013. The shelters combine innovative solar technology with a design that is meant to evoke both a seismic wave and the hills of San Francisco.