Move the Buses
Move where the buses stop. That’s what various Bay District storekeepers are suggesting.
Not the bus-stops, but where the bus stops at the stop.
Case in point: St. Mary’s Square. Put the bus stop in the middle of the parking lot.
Consider a few cement benches in the middle and some matching planters with trees. Certainly would improve the look of the vast sea of asphalt behind the new McDonalds on Great Mills Road. The benches are around $1,000 in a quick on-line search and planters about half that.
Right now bus stops at various shopping centers, including St. Mary’s Square, are in front of a store. Shoppers, it seems, are uncomfortable walking through congregations of loiterers to get to their store. Loiterers are all about the bus stops. It’s pretty much all there is to do at a bus stop.
It’s a bad business when public transportation chases customers away instead of delivering them. It’s a complicated business to deal with disabled riders in the midst of a parking lot, but that seems not insurmountable. Accommodations could be made.
Meanwhile a small oasis midst asphalt seems a surmountable attempt to deal with this reversal of bus fortunes for the centers. And who couldn’t use a couple of small oases?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNYbJVTnXNo]
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