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A year after Oakland declared that the sorry condition of its bus shelters posed a danger to transit users, a plan is finally in place to remove half of them and better maintain the rest.
Sean Maher, the city’s public information officer, said in an email to The Oaklandside that the city is in the final stages of reviewing and executing a contract with a new vendor, District Works, to take over maintenance from the city’s previous contractor, Clear Channel Outdoor. District Works is an Oakland-based company led by Oakland native Andrew Jones, and Clear Channel Outdoor, known primarily as a billboard company, is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.
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At an interagency meeting of Oakland and AC Transit last year, Oakland’s transportation director, Josh Rowan, and parking director, Michael Ford, said they were considering removing the shelters in the worst condition and replacing them with benches. However, local transit advocates pushed back, arguing that it was wrong to remove shelters ahead of the rainy season, and that decision was postponed.
The new contract with District Works will allow the city to properly maintain half of the shelters starting “in the next month.” The Oaklandside has asked to review the agreement between the city and the vendor; we will update this story if we obtain it.
The city has not specified which shelters will be removed. Maher noted that no formal analysis has been conducted about how many urgently need repair — or are beyond repair. The bus shelters that District Works maintains will stay in place “so long as they do not become a hazard.“
One of the main reasons the old shelters could not be easily repaired, OakDOT noted last year, was that the large glass panels used for advertisements were an integral part of their physical structure; when the panels are broken, the shelters themselves can begin to collapse. The agency also said the shelters were not generating enough revenue to cover their expenses due to a decline in advertising.
Over the past few years, Oakland residents have repeatedly requested that the city improve conditions at the bus shelters, particularly in busy service areas such as Lake Merritt.
One city resident, Tobias Barton, told The Oaklandside that he reached out to Ford two months ago, imploring the Oakland Department of Transportation to expedite its repair work. He told Ford that everywhere he went in Oakland, he saw graffiti-covered shelters with missing glass panels, some of which looked to him like sets from an apocalyptic Hollywood movie.
“It’s been clear that there has been absolutely no maintenance going on at all,” he said. “Our transit riders deserve better.”
Based on early reports from other residents, OakDOT has already begun removing some of the worst bus shelters.
Allison Marten reached out to The Oaklandside to alert us that the shelter at the bus stop on Broadway and 9th Street was removed last week, leaving only a city bench there. It’s not clear whether the city will add benches in the locations where the shelters, which include seating as part of their structures, are slated to be removed.
Marten, who said she takes the bus every day to and from work, told us she was “frustrated” given the expected heavy rains on the way.
Robert Prinz, Bike East Bay’s advocacy director, told The Oaklandside he was also not pleased that bus shelters would be removed “with the atmospheric river about to hit us” and with no public communication from the city about it.
Prinz recommended the city publicly release a map of all shelters being removed, the removal dates, “and any estimates about when and where replacement shelters will be installed.”
“Notices at all the shelters that are being removed should also be posted at those locations in advance, just as AC Transit already does for any stop closures or relocations,” Prinz said.
Abibat Rahman-Davies, a transportation advocate with the nonprofit group Transform, also told us that removing any shelters without having a replacement ready is “inequitable.”
OakDOT noted last year that the agency was working on a pilot program for new canopy designs for bus shelters. Maher said last week the city is still working with AC Transit on the latest transit canopy designs for major streetscape projects that are underway, such as ones on Upper Telegraph Avenue and Grand Avenue.
“We are actively investigating our options to procure the best shelter structures for Oakland streets,” Maher said. “We don’t have a formal report, but we are reviewing different shelter designs and looking closely at the costs, maintenance needs, and accessibility features of each.”
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