Transportation
Don't Fret, Russia—America Has Some Pretty Sad Bus Stops, Too
There’s a lesson in this misery: transit agencies and cities forget about rider comfort at their own peril.
Russia was once capable of designing some seriously excellent transit shelters, as Christopher Herwig shows in his new book, Soviet Bus Stops. But you wouldn’t know it to look at what officials just built in the village of Kortkeros.
The Russian news site Meduza points us (in cheeky English) to a “sparkling new bus stop” across from the village’s main library. The stop’s “no-frills design” seems to be little more than two slabs of concrete, which made the ribbon-cutting ceremony “rather awkward, as there was no place to tie the ribbon.” Behold, the happiest opening of the saddest bus stop: