So Michael Alexander asks. And this is what he’s referring to:
The downtown San Jose BRT station.
Have you seen a bus shelter anywhere in the world where the seats didn’t face the street, so that the view is of traffic? You turn 90 degrees to see if your bus is coming, your back is to the shops and human activity on the sidewalk, and your face is invisible to people passing by.
Design brainstorm! Turn the seats to face where the bus will come from, and integrate waiting passengers into the life of the street. And think of other possibilities: how about seats that swivel 270 degrees, so people can easily converse while one keeps an eye out for the bus?One challenge will be to make better designs cost-effective with the usual benches. Perhaps local merchants would have an incentive to chip in.
Probably the same issues regarding space planning as inside a subway train.
Bench seats squeeze more people in than seats facing each other – and a bench allows a mom or dad to have a child sit next to them.
It’s unlikely that an LRT platform would be wide enough to have 2 seats abreast if oriented looking down the street.