GIMME SHELTER: MTS NOW MAPPING PLANS FOR SHELTERED BUS STOPS IN EAST COUNTY

February 2, 2023 (San Diego’s East County) -- Whether it's a downpour or the burning sun, covered bus benches are a respite for bus riders -- and hopefully the impetus to get more people to use public transit.

That's the thinking of the Metropolitan Transit System with its 4,300 bus stops.

It is currently creating a GIS (Geographic Information System) map to pinpoint priority locations to add a shelter,a covered stop.   Last September Los Angeles granted a 10-year contract to a private firm to advertise on hundreds of bus shelters in exchange for installing and maintaining 3,000 of them. MTS has a different approach but with the same goals.

Lemon Grove, Santee, Lakeside, Alpine, Spring Valley, Rancho San Diego, Jacumba, Campo, Borrego Springs,Tecate have existing contracts with MTS.  These locales are part of the expansion plans of the transit agency shelter program which is  considering "new locations above and beyond what's in place," says Marketing Director Mark Olson.

Some of these routes are just a couple days a week for lifeline-type services. Other routes are in consideration for shelters and or benches.

El Cajon and La Mesa are in discussions to have MTS service their bus customers.  El Cajon is telling MTS they need 74 shelters and 221 benches, while La Mesa says they need 50 benches. 

The push for people to use transit as an alternative to building freeways and to allay their concerns over exposure to weather extremes  are a strong motivation for the MTS says Olson.

“Shelters and benches play a role by improving the experience for riding transit,” he said. “This, in turn, can motivate people to choose transit more often. The more times people choose transit the more it helps reduce our collective carbon footprint and achieve climate action goals.”



Photo, right:  architectural renderings

MTS says it will start the bidding process for more shelters within a year and is currently building out a GIS map to pinpoint priority locations, where the new shelters will be placed.

There are currently 500 plus shelters that have a roof and use solar and digital at the stop to provide lighting and information for riders. They have a bench inside and a trash can, and some have advertising panels but not all. 

Only a couple locations where  improvements are hard-wired, like Old Town Transit Center, but for the most part they are all solar-powered. The advertising is what pays for the maintenance and upkeep of those shelters.

But unlike Los Angeles’ recent move, the MTS believes if it handles the purchasing and hires a contractor for maintenance and upkeep, it gets to retain a larger percentage of the advertising revenue from Clear Channel Outdoor.  

So what does the future hold for people using the other 3,800 old school bus stops of which 1500 now have benches?

MTS is reviewing current and future shelter locations with plans to expand. Denis Desmond , Director of Planning, says the primary deciding factor includes ridership, specifically how many people are boarding at a particular stop.

“However  in the last year we actually added a new criteria,” he said,  “to see if the community is historically disadvantaged or not.”

Deciding factors for locations getting upgraded transit stops is a multi-layered process using data from California, the federal government and from the city itself.  

This includes looking at areas of persistent poverty and historically disadvantaged communities as well as using San Diego's Climate Equity Index (CEI) https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/prbr210715a-item201b.pdf, which considers the effects of climate change and includes, for example, how many trees are in the area, how much heat is coming off of paved roads, traffic and the pollution.

As an example, Desmond said, if one stop “has 75 boarding a day in a non-disadvantaged community and another stop has 60 boardings a day and in a disadvantaged community and all else is equal, then we could consider the site, you know, that has lower boardings.”

What also factors in is if somebody requests a shelter, “we'll always go out and look at it” to see if it’s appropriate for a shelter.

If there are only two or three people a day board a bus in that location, Desmond says “it's probably not worth the investment, versus another location that may have 40 or 50.” 

He says in the past the baseline was 100 boardings a day but MTS is at the point now that most locations that have 100 boardings a day or more “already have a shelter, or for some infrastructure reason can’t accept a shelter, either the area isn't wide enough, or the there's no sidewalk or whatever it is.”

Desmond says the agency has installed all the shelters it had in its inventory. Now it is looking at doing a new procurement for additional shelters, he said.

They won’t, however, look like those along Broadway in downtown San Diego, which were installed by the San Diego Association of Governments for its rapid bus project.  They are far more expensive, requiring a foundation, costing up to $250,000 a stop.  MTS says it is looking for benches and shelters that will cost from $15,000 to $20,000 a stop.

J.W. August is an award-winning journalist and freelance producer who has served as investigative producer for NBC 7 San Diego and as managing editor and senior investigative producer at ABC 10 San Diego. His in-depth investigations have included a wide range of topics such as  rising seas, hate groups, nuclear fuel storage, stem cell clinic claims, dolphin deaths, and massage parlors as fronts for organized crime.