Waiting for a bus can bring any number of difficulties: inadequate shelter, unreliable transit schedules, not to mention other transit users.
But the everyday frustrations of waiting for a bus in most areas pale in comparison to the obstacles presented by the bus stops on one U.S. blog’s “Sorry Bus Stops” list -- including one on a Vancouver freeway.
Nestled along the side of the busy Lougheed Highway at Old Dewdney Trunk Road in Pitt Meadows, B.C., TransLink’s bus stop #61452 makes anyone waiting for a bus look like a hitchhiker. It’s technically on a bus-only lane, but as CTV Vancouver discovered, that’s a rule disobeyed enough by drivers to present a seeming hazard for transit users. In a Google Street View image taken in August 2017, a man is seen standing along the guardrail at the bus stop as traffic speeds by.
The stop has made the final four of “America’s Sorriest Bus Stop,” the third annual contest on the transit blog StreetsBlog USA, a list originally meant just for U.S. bus stops. This Canadian one was bad enough to be an exception to the rule.
“Vancouver probably isn’t the first place that springs to mind when you think about sorry bus stops,” a Friday blog post by writer Angie Schmitt reads. “But this stop… is a doozy.”
The stop was submitted by a reader named Jason Lee, who called the stop “a major safety hazard” and cited a news story calling the highway one of the province’s deadliest.
“This bus stop is a disaster waiting to happen,” Lee wrote in a submission to the blog. “The bus stop pole is located atop a jersey barrier, which serves as a buffer between speeding cars and the edge of the roadway. Transit riders are forced to either a) wait on the other side of the jersey barrier, and then climb over it when the bus arrives, or b) wait on the highway side of barrier, directly exposed to traffic. Riders in wheelchairs must wait on the highway side of the barrier.”
The land is owned by the B.C. government, not TransLink. In a statement to CTV Vancouver, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure said that “Ministry staff are discussing possible options to improve safety with TransLink. Enjoy the long weekend.”
Cincinnati, New Orleans, Vancouver and Pittsburgh are our Final Four sorry bus stops. https://t.co/S76qh6Rgyw
— Streetsblog USA (@StreetsblogUSA) August 31, 2018
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s St. John Alexander