Is Pitt Meadows home to the worst bus stop in North America?
According to a U.S. contest, the stop along Highway 7 that sees transit riders leap a barrier to board the bus is in the running.
Streetsblog USA has the Pitt stop in the final four of its Sorry Bus Stop contest. In the quarter-finals, readers could vote for either a Beverly Hills stop on Sunset Boulevard, or what was billed as “a scary situation on the outskirts of Vancouver.” The Pitt Meadows stop got 77 per cent of the 416 votes cast.
The stop, number 61452, is located beside the westbound lanes of the Lougheed Highway. It serves Translink’s 701 and 791 westbound buses.
Jason Lee, who nominated the bus stop for the contest, noted the Lougheed Highway consists of four lanes in each direction there, one of which is a bus lane, and the speed limit is 80 km/h. 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,” he wrote.
“Riders in wheelchairs must wait on the highway side of the barrier. The roadway can also be slick; that part of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland receives nearly 58 inches of precipitation per year, most of it concentrated during the dark winter months. This bus stop is a disaster waiting to happen. In my three decades of riding transit, I have never seen a bus stop designed like this.”
Voters described the stop as “unusually awful”, “criminally negligent,” and one picked it as the favourite to win the entire Sorry Bus Stop contest.
Streetsblog author Angie Schmitt commented: “You can see in the picture the outside lane is reserved for buses. But yikes, you have to be brave to wait there.
“A spokesperson for the transit agency, Translink, told us that usually bus stop amenities, like shelters, are the responsibly of the local municipality. But that this stop has been flagged internally by Translink as a safety issue.”
The highway right of way is owned by the provincial government.
The other three entries still in the running for Sorry Bus Stop are in Cincinnati, New Orleans and Pittsburgh.