Twin Cities: Building a better bus stop

[marmar]

(Star-Tribune) City leaders want more people to use transit as they seek to grow Minneapolis' population, but some local urbanists feel some relatively simple improvements are being overlooked.

Case in point: Bus stops. For many people unfamiliar with local transit, the bus system at a glance can be quite intimidating.

University of Minnesota professor David Levinson has written extensively and recently at Streets.MN about what he has dubbed the "sorry state of bus stop signs" in the Twin Cities. Levinson argues that bus signs in the region provide too little information, particularly compared to other transit-friendly cities.

“If you go to most bus stops in the city of Minneapolis, the bus stop sign says 'bus stop,'" Levinson said in an interview this fall. "Which is I guess better than not having a sign at all. But if you go to another city where they care about transit, the bus stop signs provide a lot of information about where the buses are going, when they run, what the schedule is." ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/234102111.html

[nxylas]

1. They should look at London

As a Bristolian, it pains me to say anything nice about the Great Wen. But their bus stops are excellent. They show both a mini-network map of the routes serving the stop, where they go and how they relate to each other; and a street map of the local area. A non-Londoner can get a pretty good feel of the city's geography just by looking at the bus stops - important in a city that attracts visitors from around the world.