LANTA introduces bus bench innovation
When people think of innovation, public busing probably isn’t the first thing to rush their minds, but LANTAis hoping the bus bench it unveiled Tuesday may soon become a widespread success.
During a brief ceremony at Broadway and Fiot Street in south Bethlehem, officials unveiled a SolStop Bus Bench. The two-seat bench is built around a light pole that riders can activate without having to push a button. The street furniture is the first of its kind in the United States, LANTA Executive Director Owen O’Neill said, but the public transit organization could install more throughout the region if it’s well received.
Advocates of public transit encourage communities to build bus shelters to make riding the bus more enticing — no one wants to be out on a cold, rainy evening waiting for a ride. But O’Neill said the shelters often don’t fit on the narrow sidewalks in inner cities, where bus routes tend to be most popular. Even regular benches may be too bulky.
The bus bench LANTA installed over the weekend should avoid those problems. while also improving lighting, he said. Most street lights are designed to illuminate the road, not the sidewalk or curbs where pedestrians wait for the bus.
“It’s small enough to fit into a lot of those places. It will at least provide something so that there’s a little more safety and security,” O’Neill said.
The benches also save LANTA a lot of money compared with a normal shelter, O’Neill said. About $1,500 a pop, the benches cost a quarter of a typical shelter, and are less expensive to install. LANTAhas to pay a few thousand dollars in engineering if it wants to install a bus shelter: Host communities need to know the shelter won’t interfere with neighboring properties or pose a public risk. Installing the benches, by comparison, costs a few hundred dollars, O’Neill said.
The first bench will serve routes connecting St. Luke’s University Hospital in Fountain Hill to the Walmart on Route 512, and Allentown to Northampton, but O’Neill said the transportation authority could add more benches if they prove popular with riders and host communities.
“There are a lot of bus stops out there where we have a good amount of riders with nowhere to sit. Those are places where we’d like to put an amenity,” he said.
“This really kind of helps address that.”