Lousy Bus Stop Designs

Our authorities have a weird way of telling people that they know best what is good for the people. They usually implement something and believe that what they do is correct. And they usually do it first or had already decided to go ahead, without the feedback of the people. Such democratic ruling… aren’t we blessed?

These days, I take a bus from my block to Compass Point, where the Seng Kang MRT station is. There is an LRT station right near my block, but because it’s the last station before reaching Seng Kang, the LRT is usually crowded at peak hours. And Singaporeans have a wonderful habit of sticking their fat, snobbish and rude asses in the path of the entrances or exits, so that if an emergency happens, they can be the first to run. So I hate taking the LRT. It may be faster (especially when the damn bus service is not on time), it is air-conditioned, I do not have to walk as far, but it is more expensive (by 10 cents per trip I think, assuming the transitlink machine is deducting properly) and the West line is not even operating two-way (currently to save costs, the damn thing is running in a one-directional circuit).

And due to the fact that I take the bus, I see this new bus stop erected a couple of months ago. The contruction took quite a while to complete this snazzy new bus stop with those funny benches. It has 3 low benches with normal seats, where the seat is parallel to the ground. Some of the new bus stops have this other type of bench, slightly taller, with a slanting seat. I can only guess that the normal seats are for old people with normal butts that do not defy gravity, and the slanting seat is for the new generation of youngsters, who prefer to lean against something and shake their legs (you know who you are, hippie!).

In addition to the normal functions of a bus stop, in order to earn some additional money for the government, they also function as advertising space. Every damn bus stop around this island state has advertisement space, sometimes at the expense of blocking the view of commuters waiting for buses. Some advertisements are placed at that back of the bus stops, in order not to block the view of commuters, but that is not enough, so there must be some additional advertising spaces that are more eye catching. Bus stops mostly do not have useful information about the destinations of each bus service, or the estimated arrival time of the buses, but talk about adertisements and they will be splattered all over. After more than 20 years of taking public transport, I still have no accurate means of telling if a bus I want is five minutes or an hour from arriving. It’s really wonderful to know that all that money we pay in taxes are really not doing much good for us normal people.

But the real gripe I have, is when bus stops are built without the safety of the people in mind. The new bus stops around my place has these glass panels for advertising space. I suppose they look modern and all, but imagine the first time I saw those monstrosities was during the night time. I alighted from the bus and was about to walk straight, when I detected something amiss in front of me. Upon closer inspection, I realised there were new glass panels set up on the frames of the bus stop. Someone may accidentally walk right into them without realising they were walking into a wall of glass. The glass panels were put up a couple of months ago, and a few days later, somebody pasted sticky tapes in the center in the form of “X”. But some weeks later, the tapes were removed, but no advertisements were put up. Months later, I am still waiting for someone to complain, or to walk into those glass panels and break them, hopefully never to be replaced.

[Edit]: I have checked out other bus stops around Seng Kang, and found that the other bus stops use the glass panels to put up information on the buses. They somehow managed to screw in some kind of additional display panel on the glass. However, other bus stops are not as exposed, and not as prone to accidents, because most of them have something to block access to the back of the glass, e.g. plants.