In 2003 the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority received a grant from the United States Department of Transportation to sponsor a competition for the design of a dozen or more bus stop benches. From the bits and pieces I’ve been able to find on the Internet it appears that Springfield’s downtown “Business Improvement District” played a role in administering the grant. The program was called “Butt Stop Art”; not the worst cutesy name ever created.
I went to the unveiling of the new benches at the Springfield Museums. While it was understood that these “Butt Stops” were to grace “bus stops”, as their whole raison d’être was “Transit Enhancement”, it was thought that presenting them all in a space like the Quadrangle would make it easier for the public to see all of them. At least in retrospect, I disagree. To me it seems as though displaying each piece only at its selected destination would encourage people to venture out…perhaps even ON A BUS…to see them all.
It turns out that many of those “Butt Stop” bus stop benches…maybe half or more ARE STILL AT THE QUADRANGLE. They’ve been moved around and re-situated within the “museum’s property” (more on that soon!), but over a decade later, here they remain, nary a bus in sight:
I think we have the classic “don’t let the kids play on the play set, they’ll break it” mentality. I once had a department chair at school who discouraged use of the language lab; too much use might damage the equipment! Yes, these benches might be somewhat worse for wear by now, exposed to behaviors of a non-museum going public, but the entire point of the exercise…what with the D.O.T. funding and all for BUS STOPS… was to enhance the transit experience and show bus riders a little TLC for their tushes. As I recall there were only two, maybe three templates which artists could choose from specifically because it was thought those designs could hold up to the difficulties of being out among the general public.
It’s time for these benches to do what they were created to do: give tired PVTA riders a place to sit while waiting for the bus.
When I was living in Worcester, the free weekly ran a story about why more people didn’t take the bus. When asked, I shared my theory that people can’t look at a bus and know for sure where it’s going — except maybe it’s final destination. They also don’t know by looking at it or anywhere at the stop, how often it comes. In contrast, street cars run on rails that everyone sees. Trolleys can’t detour or make surprise route variations.
The other reasons, of course, have to do with just the whole experience. Bus stops are mostly exposed to the elements, and many don’t even have benches much less enclosures. And is there anywhere in the country where such enclosures are actually climate controlled? Providing anything close to this would require a serious public investment, but we already know the likelihood of that.
So what we have left are bench design competitions, and now we can’t put those into good use because they’re TOO nice. The solution to that is very long term. Small cities like Springfield have to take a good hard look at themselves and decide which of their dwindling public assets are the most worth saving, and for them, it’s their urban cores and their locations. They have to do follow the example set by former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist and develop policies that favor density and walkability. My favorite was a change to the building code that stated you can build sprawl if you want, but if you build to our new design guidelines, you can shortcut the process.
I’m not sure how much lower Springfield needs to sink (at least perceptually) before the reckoning comes, but by that time, too few good people will remain to pick up the pieces and start over in a more enlightened, non-car-centric fashion.
Fix the schools. Secure the streets. Clean the parks.