Reimagining the bus stop is a civic design project that transforms the traditional bus stops into new nexuses of neighborhoods and core gathering places for communities.
Brief
Objective
Address the impacts of COVID-19 on public transit ridership by helping people discover or rediscover the bus as a preferred mode of transit by focusing on tailored bus stops across Chicago that improve safety, both real and perceived, and lead to more riders on the system.
Adapt design principles and methods to the Chicago Transit Agency's 'Meeting the Moment' Action Plan to critically analyze the unique contextual challenge of safety and security for transit riders, codify new guidelines for bus stop design, and identify further practice development opportunities.
Reframing the Problem
In the city of Chicago, 1,864 buses serve 10,789 stops across 129 routes and 1,536 route miles. However, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the Chicago Transit Agency's (CTA) ability to serve Chicago residents. Although working tirelessly to adapt to the culture of the 'new normal,' with the worst of the pandemic behind us in the US but the threat of the virus infecting, hospitalizing, and even killing people still remains real and present, the CTA still faces ridership, reliability, and safety issues. The pandemic has induced significant transit ridership losses in the city, which continues to decline, and CTA can't bounce back.
Bus ridership has fallen by 50.54% in two years, from 237,276,400 rides in 2019 to 117,357,515 rides in 2021. Declining ridership in a city has serve implications for other critical systems, structures, and services, creating new issues in different places. Examples of how bus ridership connects to other issues, just to name a few, are as follows:
- Declining ridership threatens the environment as personal/passenger travel already makes up 80% of the 5,106,406 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted through on-road transportation, and the more ridership falls, the higher the risk of increasing the percent that personal/passenger makes up of the total carbon emissions from on-road transportation.
- A fall in bus ridership can have significant economic implications. In marginalized parts of the city, where public transportation is often relied upon, decreased ridership can result in lower employment opportunities and decreased business activity, driving racial disparity.
- The decline in bus ridership can be a public health issue as it can increase loneliness by limiting social connections, especially for those who rely on public transit as their primary mode of transportation. This can result in increased social isolation, which has been linked to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and heart disease, as well as increased healthcare costs.
Our team acknowledges that the root cause of the transit ridership issue faced by the CTA is multifaceted and includes staffing shortages, remote and hybrid work trends, cross-elasticities in bus frequencies and ridership, and other complex factors. While these are significant issues that require attention and funding, we have reframed the problem to focus on the bus stop experience. By designing for the needs of riders and their cities, we aim to increase transit ridership and encourage people to rediscover the bus as a preferred mode of transportation.
Creating Connections
Applying different principles, practices, theories, and frameworks that underpin the "Vertical" of Civic Design, we gained an understanding of the current ecosystem to critically analyze, audit, and evaluate the contextual challenge of buses in Chicago, framing and identifying the right problem.
Theory of Change
The Theory of Change is a comprehensive visual methodology for planning, participation, adaptive management, and evaluation that involves envisioning a desired change, mapping out a given or set of interventions, and explaining how and why they are expected to lead to specific developments. We located and analyzed case studies regarding our topic area for our project through the Theory of Change criterion to develop hypotheses and logical and conceptual frameworks around the civic-oriented challenge.
Nesta's Competency Framework
Nesta's Competency Framework is a tool for experimental problem-solving that explores important values and skills. It consists of three main parts: the core aim, key attitudes, and core skill categories, which involve distinct skills for engaging citizens and stakeholders to create shared ownership of new solutions, exploring and developing new ideas, and driving change processes. The framework is designed to inform and validate solutions that address clients' and audiences' attitudes towards certain subjects, and ensure strategic outcomes.
Fueling Public + Social Innovation
Centering the voices and experiences of those who use the bus daily, we developed a detailed resident engagement plan to collaboratively generate ideas for tackling the issues with the most impacted residents. Meeting our critical stakeholders at the moment, where they are and where they go, we planned to recruit small participatory research teams representing our key stakeholders to co-create while at the bus stop and along the actual routes of everyday riders. By conducting the sessions in situ, we planned a co-design session-- embodying dialogic public and participatory processes, embracing collectively, and valuing all voices, various viewpoints, and community knowledge- - allowing our riders to be more connected to their lived experience during the co-creation.
Mediating + Mounting
Further exploring community-driven strategies, we developed prototypes based on our research and assumptions as a tool to engage and deeply learn and understand from residents' needs on this issue, ensuring that their feedback is incorporated into the final product. In order to lower barriers to large-scale participation, we envisioned the prototype as a temporary month-long installation in four key regions of the City of Chicago - Southside, Central, West, and North; an iterative process with each subsequent installation incorporating resident feedback from the one previous.
Portable bins for bus stops
Trash can be a strong deterrent to using the bus, and the problem is oftentimes the lack of resources. We prototyped a public trash bin made from repurposed low-fi materials to collapse and expand for portability and beautification of different communities.
Public lighting for the perception of safety
Street lighting doesn't necessarily reduce crime, but it can make people feel safer at night. We balanced the need for outdoor lighting and experimented with different light distributions to create a sense of safety, ensuring illuminance and uniformity.
Nonviolent bus stop response team
Our bus stop rethinks public safety. Recognizing that we want our bus stops to feel safe while acknowledging that "safe" can mean many different things to many people, we would recruit volunteers to assist riders, handle conflict, and de-escalate stressful situations.
Introducing mode choices for last-mile connectivity
Last Mile Connectivity is crucial for accessible public transportation. Through in-app integration with navigation services, we introduce riders to micro-mobility options (e.g., bike and ride-sharing services) during their commute to make the bus the practical choice.
Fostering community and connection
We would partner with the Chicago Public Library to activate bus stops, organizing experiences and events in collaboration with local communities, enabling them to gather, connect and engage with each other and nearby organizations in a welcoming and inclusive environment.
Reimagining the bus stop
Increasing riders' perceptions of safety through a welcoming community landscape
The first recommendation focuses on creating a safe, welcoming space at bus stops with accessible furniture, community-based alternatives to police, better lighting, and improved hygiene. This will provide a more pleasant experience for riders, potentially increasing public transportation use and contributing to a more sustainable community. Transforming bus stops with these changes would create a safer, more pleasant experience for riders, encouraging bus use and supporting a sustainable, livable community.
Experiences that reflect and engage Chicago's diverse neighborhoods and people equitably and inclusively
The second recommendation focuses on reimagining the bus stop as a community space, showcasing local artists and music, organizing library-sponsored storytimes for children, and holding community group meetings and educational events that reflect and engage Chicago's diverse neighborhoods and people equitably and inclusively. The aim is to transform the bus stop into a vibrant, inclusive space fostering community engagement and connection, promoting the use of buses as a preferred mode of transit in Chicago.
Facilitating and improving better connections to shared and last-mile transit.
The last recommendation involves improving first and last-mile connections between bus stops and riders' homes by integrating various technologies that connect riders to different modes of micro-mobility, car and bike sharing, and other transportation options. The proposed technologies include digital and physical wayfinding to guide riders between different modes of transportation, as well as prompts for local businesses to offer discounts or promotions to bus riders. By providing convenient and accessible options for riders to get to and from the bus stop, the project seeks to make public transportation more efficient and appealing.
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