What’s wrong with Surrey’s bus stops? [pics]

As I’m sure you’ve seen at some time or another, Surrey’s bus stops are among the ugliest and “ghetto-iest” stops in the region. Ranging from nothing more than a pole in the ground to old 80′s designed shelter covered in graffiti and missing plastic panels, I think it’s safe to say we need an overhaul.

Our current bus stops seemingly lack any overall plan or guidelines. Unfortunately, it seems as though council has accepted the lowest common denominator and recently signed a contract with a company to provide new street furniture – they are the ones putting in all those green metal bus seats everywhere.

If you haven’t noticed, they aren’t much of an upgrade from the old bus seats in terms of design. Frankly, I don’t understand how Delta and Langley can score such wonderfully designed new bus seats and shelters, while Surrey gets skimmed with butt plain ugly in entering our new ad contract.

And so, I will renew my call for the Surrey Bus Shelter Initiative: create a long term vision, plan, and detailed design for street furniture at bus stops in the city. The designs should be evoke a feeling of pride for transit riders and citizens alike. They should represent the best of what we want Surrey to be; to achieve. They should be standardized across the city to represent one unified image of Surrey, while still be flexible in terms of colour and small design cues to fit each of the six town centres uniquely. The street furniture at bus stops should be a beacon of safety in the community, and so attractive that they entice residents to take transit.

There’s not a whole heck of a lot Surrey can do to encourage transit – that’s in the hands of TransLink, the guys with all the funding. However, the one thing the city controls is the bus stops and we could certainly make a way better effort to improve them. Doing so will improve our image, transit’s image, and our own civic pride in what we can achieve.

Check out the slideshow below of the many stops I’ve taken pictures of. You can also view them on a map!
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.