From Landon Hoyt:
I told you all about the derelict bus shelter that myself and some friends took into our hands Sunday to try to garner some community input into how the shelter could be better used.
Here’s a write up on it that Open City posted yesterday with photos by your’s truly. Well, this morning, Coast Mountain Bus Company, part of Translink, took everything down, and left a pretty disheartening note. (Click to enlarge.)
You can see more at my friend Brandon’s blog.
This is all still unfolding, but it is a current trending topic on Twitter! It’s got the attention of the South Granville BIA (@SouthGranville), and now the director of communications with Translink (@KenHardie)! You can follow along with the tweets coming in realtime with the hashtag #space98. Check it out here!
Those lamps are made of paper. All it takes is a match or a lighter. Sorry, kids, but thems the realities.
I did not use the link, but how is thar bus stop derilict?
Turning a bus shelter into a “place” is an interesting idea, but one must recognize the fact many of these spaces are regularly vandalized with graffiti and etching. The shelter I gather is on South Granville, a highly used transit area and commercial district. Is it no longer being used on that bus route?
Based upon my own experiences in placemaking, I think two things might have made things go more smoothly here. 1) occupying the space temporarily such as with Park-ing Day, and 2) ask permission of Coast Mountain Bus Co. Translink reps are easily accessible via Twitter. Give them a heads up, tell them what your plans are and when you plan to clean it up. The civil servant who cleaned up this shelter probably didn’t appreciate the surprise.
One of the real problems facing Vancouver streets is graffiti and litter around bus stops. Neither the bus company nor city workers seem to have any interest in maintaining a clean appearance at the stops. Cigarette butts, litter and tagging is everywhere and the clean up is only rarely dealt with by neighbourhood volunteers sick of looking at it. It’s also pretty depressing and disrespectful for transit riders. Maybe this guerrilla act might lead to a discussion about how we make bus shelters more artful and attractive parts of our street. Right now, most of them are a joke.
Good to have you engaged, Mike. I like your #1 point, and I think that’s the plan for the future. We just wanted to canvas locals for ideas for that temporary occupation. Regarding #2 this was a conscious decision to try and shake things up a bit: ask for forgiveness, not permission.
The shelter is some five meters from the bus stop, and after the stop, so no one uses it. Even in the rain people line up north, back towards where the bus is coming from. (Interestingly, this shelter/stop misplacement is a problem all over the city, not sure who’s in charge of that.) It’s also heavily branded as the b-line, so obviously a remnant not in active service.