Floating bus stops cause a lot of argument. They are a design where the bike lane along a main arterial road swerves behind a bus stop so bicyclists do not get stopped or wedged in by a bus stopping to pick up passengers. The bus stop ‘floats’ between two streams of traffic. Pedestrians need to step across the bike stream to get to the island where they wait for their bus.
As a way of managing and maintaining traffic flows, floating bus stops make sense. As with all design, they are a compromise. They balance different constraints of physical space, traffic flows and personal requirements.
They are a cause of friction though. Particularly in terms of accessibility and equity. There are strong views that the design form is disabling because it places a fast traffic stream in front of pedestrians, specifically people with visual impairments and wheelchair users, who are simply trying to get to their bus stop on the pavement.
Manchester
I was in Manchester for CampDigital on Thursday and walking back along the Oxford Road I noticed this floating bus stop.
The evening before I had been with my mother trying out a mobility scooter and going to the shops near her home. That experience had heightened my awareness of the proper embedding of dropped curbs and tactile pavement. The ones near her home created a very unnerving experience for her first trip.
Thus I was more looking at the crossing points from main pavement to floating bus stop.
The first crossing point did not have the bumpy curb stone problem my mum encountered.
However, there is something odd about it. There is tactile paving. That marks, for both visually impaired people and guide dogs, where a crossing point is.
This crossing is directly in the path of cyclists who are coming in at speed. There are no signs or cues to cyclists before the stop.
Further along the length of the stop, there is a painted SLOW sign
This is followed by a more formal crossing point. Tactile paving plus black and white lines, a Give Way physical sign and orange beacon lights.
This is where people should cross over. It is where the full system of traffic management systems has been applied.
The first crossing places people at risk, the second crossing tries to balance that out.
Why are the cues and signs to bicyclists to pay attention to pedestrians and crossings offered only halfway through the bus stop lane?
How are pedestrians (including guide dogs) supposed to know that one crossing is safer than the other?
Shared Spaces and Equitable Spaces
There are several problems with all this design and they remind me of previous work on Shared Space schemes. In particular, Exhibition Road (the road between the Science Museum, Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum). That space also fails the equity test: how do you balance the privileges and needs of motor vehicle users, cyclists and pedestrians?
In general, when the flows of these three types of public space use cross over there is a tension about privilege and equity.
Do drivers have the right to just keep driving and only stop when formally requested by signs or lights?
Do cyclists and pedestrians have to be shoved together to maintain that motor vehicle privilege?
In avoiding one argument about equitable public space usage (between drivers and cyclists) you transfer the tension to another group (cyclists and pedestrians).
As I said at the start, there is no way of avoiding tension. The constraints are there. However, there are ways of making the tensions explicit so people can have conversations and make informed choices from their perspective of their capacities and agency.
The Manchester stop (like the Shared Spaces) does not support that human agency.
There are no cues or warnings prior to the floating bus stop for cyclists to shift their perception and assessment of appropriate speed or behaviour for pedestrians (especially those people who do not have the capacities to see bicycles approaching).
There are no cues or warnings to pedestrians that one crossing point is safer than the other. Actually that is not entirely true: there is a physical sign on the opposite side of the second crossing point warning pedestrians to look out for cycles but there is a problem there too.
Maintenance of public realm affects usability
Skipping past the issue of visual signage for visually impaired people, there is also the issue of maintaining public space signage so that it is perceivable and usable. The Look out… sign is covered by a sticker. The Give Way sign is in even worse condition.
Meanwhile the black and white crossing is very degraded.
The difficulty of maintaining public infrastructure is well known. Many projects are “one and done” in capital expenditure terms. Maintenance is hard: especially in British cities after years of local government funding cuts.
However, this raises another accessible design issue: designing for failure. Being aware that people might not notice or understand the design as agreed and being aware of what happens to the design when elements fail technically.
This is foreseeable and should be considered in the design process. How is systemic resilience built into the artefacts?
Arguments are to be expected, bad design less so
Floating bus stops will always cause arguments because they make privilege and equity between different user groups in public spaces explicit. I know people who argue passionately and professionally for and against them. I am more likely to argue positively for them, given the constraints of physical space.
The Manchester example does raise too many bad design issues though. The two issues I have written about here are simply the ones that I noticed most.
The information design around the crossing points.
The maintenance of the signage.