Posts about Street Furniture

Public Spaces

Weekend video: Coffee table at the bus, slide at the train

by David Alpert   •   July 24, 2011 10:01 am

People generally keep to themselves at bus stops and don't find train stations the most fun places. But when designer Julie Kim added a coffee table with some flowers, it transformed the space into a focal point for conversation. And a Utrecht train station now has a slide for passengers looking for a little more fun.

Public Spaces

Have a seat: DC needs more benches

by Eric Fidler   •   September 14, 2010 11:42 am

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) held it's annual conference in Washington this weekend. ASLA invited GGW to attend.

At a panel on site furnishings (park benches, tables, etc.) one of the presenters described walking in Washington as "exhausting" due to the long distances and, more importantly, the lack of benches.

Indeed the city was designed to incorporate grand, lengthy vistas. The most famous vista is the Mall, which is dotted with benches. The rest of downtown, however, is another story. Some buildings have installed benches as part of their overall public space requirements, but that's hardly a rational way to provide public seating downtown.

Though some people will inevitably monopolize benches and camp out on them, it's important to recognize the benefits of benches. As pedestrian as benches can seem, they support positive lingering and contribute to street life. Tourists have places to sit and read maps. Office workers have places to eat lunch. Bus riders have places to wait. Everyone else has a comfortable point for relaxation or a rendezvous.

Transit

Bus stops: Guess the location

by David Alpert   •   May 12, 2009 12:44 pm

Several of you sent in a great post on Toxel showing "unusual and creative bus stops" from around the world. Each of them seems to reflect some element of its environment, from the design sensibility of the area to the weather to the cutural quirks. Can you guess the country or city where each of these is located?

Post your guesses in the comments. I'll update with the answers later. If you already saw this, please don't give the answers away to everyone else.

Public Spaces

Great barricades

by David Alpert   •   March 17, 2009 4:49 pm

An Antwerp designer created this portable barricade. Functionally, it's just like the standard metal barricade with vertical slats that police use to corral crowds. But aesthetically, it gives off a whole different ambiance. "Instead of pushing away the people (and making them angry because they can't pass), we make them feel welcome, or at least curious about what is happening on the other side."

Via How We Drive.

Pedestrians

Missed opportunities on 17th Street

by David Alpert   •   October 2, 2008 11:31 am

Last week, DDOT presented mostly-final plans for the 17th Street streetscape redesign in Dupont Circle, from Massachusetts to New Hampshire Avenues. This busy commercial street could use a facelift. And the project will make some valuable improvements and repair run-down elements to make a positive difference for the street. Unfortunately, though, the plan is more notable for the potential improvements it doesn't contain than those it does.

Much of the discussion at the ANC focused around brick versus concrete, which I don't feel strongly about; ANC members pointed out that brick costs a lot to maintain, can be slippery in winter, and individual bricks tend to pop up and create hazards. While brick is pretty, my street has concrete sidewalks, and looks very inviting because of two things: attractive buildings and trees. 17th's buildings are more mediocre, but with a better tree canopy and well-maintained sidewalks, it can be a more pleasant place to shop.

Unfortunately, some proposed improvements (like artistic sidewalk designs) were cut in the face of resident opposition. Meanwhile, the project's scope started modestly from the beginning, excluding some more meaningful improvements like two-way operation or narrower crossings at R Street.

What the plan does:

• Fixes the sidewalks. 17th Street's sidewalks are a motley patchwork of brick and concrete, some in bad shape. Everything will be redone, primarily as scored concrete. The commercial core, from P to R, will have more intensive scoring to distinguish it from the residential ends.

  A brick stripe will separate the outdoor seating parts of the sidewalk from the walking parts, and brick will also fill the space between the tree boxes. Essentially, that will create a visual walking "lane".

• Adds a bike lane. 17th will now have a bike lane along the west side.

• Replaces light fixtures. The intersections will get new teardrop light fixtures, with upright "Washington globes" along the rest of the blocks.

• Rebuilds tree boxes. All tree boxes will have a consistent appearance, and contain cobble paving atop sand. Water will seep through the cobbles and then into the sand where the tree can soak it up.

• Squares up the Q Street intersection (maybe?) Q Street widens slightly as it approaches 17th. This gives cars more space to turn, meaning cars turn at higher speeds and make pedestrians cross a wider space. From the diagram, it appears that Q will get normal square corners. However, once source tells me that the project is only doing the sidewalks, not the curbs, so it might be an error.

What the plan doesn't do:

• Square up R Street. If Q is a little pedestrian-unfriendly, R is much worse. The intersection was rebuilt fairly recently to create very wide turning radii and push the sidewalks way back at the corners. We should undo that mistake asap, but officials said they couldn't fix that intersection since it was redone too recently.

• Add bulb-outs. Why stop at just squaring up the intersections so the intersection is no wider than the street... we should make them narrower, with bulb-outs at all intersections along such a pedestrian-rich street. The 14th Street plan has many bulb-outs, but this plan has none.

  If DDOT only had the money to repair the sidewalks, won't touch any curbs and won't even fix Q, that makes sense, but is disappointing. But will we be unable to improve the curbs in the relatively near future, once we've spent a lot of money on the sidewalks?

• Restore two-way operation on 17th. 17th was originally two-way, as was 15th, but both were converted to one-way during the move-as-many-cars-as-possible era. One way streets are worse for business, since people can only drive past the stores in one direction. But restoring two-way was never presented as an option, despite my hearing some participants suggest it way back at the first meeting about a year ago.

  Making it two-way would require finding space for loading, since right now many trucks load for the surrounding stores by double parking in one of the two travel lanes. We could accomplish that by replacing some parking with loading zones, though some people always object to losing any parking spaces.

• Add street furniture in the huge voids. 17th between Corcoran and R is perhaps the street's hub, with Safeway on one side and the hardware store (and McDonald's) on the other. But it's one of the street's least engaging sections, with huge empty expanses of brick and pavement on both sides. The consultants suggested benches and planters, but at last week's community meeting, most of the 40 people frowned on the idea, saying that homeless people already hang out around the McDonald's, and benches will just create a place for them to put their belongings and sleep.

  There are ways to build benches that don't cater to sleepers, such as armrests dividing the bench into individual seats and downward-curving surfaces which are a little less comfortable but difficult to lie on. Even if benches aren't the answer, we should put something in this space to break up the visual void and engage people in a greater sense of place at this corner.

• Do anything more attractive. The consultants initially suggested a variety of design elements such as decorative seasonal banners or swirly sidewalk markings. As far as I know, all of these ideas disappeared in the face of criticism from some group of residents or another.

• Employ modern stormwater technology. At last night's Capitol Hill Town Square meeting, landscape architects presented an impressive array of more environmentally friendly tree systems which also help the trees grow better, from permeable pavers which let the rainwater soak into the tree roots, to systems that direct stormwater from the roadbed into the tree boxes. (I'll post more about that as soon as I get the presentation.) This design has nothing like that.

We'll get another crack at this street in maybe 10-20 years. Maybe then we can fix R, get bulb-outs and even two-way operation, and cover the sidewalks with something just a little more artistic than pure unadorned concrete squares.

In the meantime, the issue of street furniture in the voids isn't closed. Perhaps there is a bench design that won't create the problems residents worry about. Or perhaps we can fill the space with something else, like public art.

The project started out with great potential to beautify the street, even if its scope didn't include more significant fixes. Unfortunately, it's morphed into basically a repair project. That's important. Still, it could have been so much more, and once we spend a lot of money on 17th, it'll be a while before we can again.

Transit

Are bus shelters too "urban" for Chevy Chase?

by David Alpert   •   September 15, 2008 9:50 am

Chevy Chase, DC not only sits at the edge of DC, it straddles the psychological line between feeling like part of the city and feeling like a suburb. Its name even matches the bordering suburban town, but its older, urban street grid and decent walkability relate more closely to the surrounding DC neighborhoods.

The latest debate: bus shelters. One resident wrote this on the Chevy Chase list:

I just discovered that someone (don't know who) put in a request to have a bus shelter installed in FRONT of my house [on Nebraska Ave]. There is no way I am going to allow this to happen!

Please do NOT make any requests for bus shelters om residential streets in Chevy Chase. It makes the neigborhood feel urban and it's not pretty at all.

How "urban" is Chevy Chase? One resident pointed out that Nebraska really isn't just a little residential street, and as another said, "like it or not, we do live in an urban environment." One homeowner who lives near a bus stop explained how installing more soundproof windows had eliminated most bus noise.

To list participants, bus shelters are either an ugly intrusion of an unwelcome urban atmosphere on the leafy community, or a valuable courtesy and convenience. As one wrote, "How would anyone feel with a large unattractive metal bus stand in front of their home? Much drier than I feel waiting for a bus unsheltered in the rain." But another neighbor argued that being sheltered from the elements isn't that important; after all, just to get to the bus stop, a rider ought to be dressed appropriately for the weather.

Clearly, the way people perceive bus shelters has a lot to do with whether they ride the bus. How about a compromise?

The problem could stem from a "one size fits all" attitude toward the design of bus shelters. Maybe side streets in neighborhoods like ours don't need shelters as large or visually disruptive as more dense urban neighborhoods or busier main streets like Connecticut Avenue. Why not a bus stop sign with some sort of built-in modest overhead protection sufficient to cover a couple people? A design that reflects the more suburban character of neighborhoods like Chevy Chase.

What do you think? The list owner gave permission for me to quote anonymously, but also asked me to report suggestions back to the community. I'll forward along any comments posted here that would contribute positively to their discussion.

Meanwhile, speaking of Nebraska Avenue, residents' requests to reduce vehicle speeds have borne some fruit. According to the Current (start, continuation), DDOT will add a few median islands and some bulb-outs (but weren't they already planning bulb-outs?), and a wider painted median. At the ANC meeting, some residents disputed the effectiveness of bulb-outs, but engineer Mohammed Khalid held firm in his knowledge that bulb-outs do slow traffic.

How about a bike lane? Residents didn't seem opposed, even when DDOT's Kathleen Penney pointed out that a bike lane would necessitate removing parking from one side of Nebraska. According to former Commissioner Frank Buchholz, that's fine, because "nobody parks there."

Public Spaces

Swinging bus stops

by David Alpert   •   August 20, 2008 1:58 pm

Why can't bus stops be fun as well as functional? (Treehugger; tip: Neha)

Public Spaces

Median proposed for Conn. Ave. streetscape

by David Alpert   •   July 3, 2008 12:12 pm

The Golden Triangle BID hired the consultants HNTB to conduct a streetscape study for Connecticut Avenue between Farragut and Dupont. That stretch has some of DC's fanciest stores and extremely heavy foot traffic, and should therefore be a prime shopping and restaurant district. But the street itself leaves much to be desired, with relatively few trees and some very wide, not so pedestrian-friendly spaces.

The most noticeable change recommended is to install a tree-lined median in the center. The avenue currently has three lanes in each direction and a center lane; it would be better both aesthetically and for pedestrian safety to use that center lane for landscaping, trees, and a pedestrian refuge to stop while crossing. The median could also feature some artwork (as in the below picture, but the art would not necessarily involve multicolored cubes).

There is already a median just north of N Street, but as the HNTB report points out, that median is raised above eye level, creating more of a visual wall than a friendly green space, and inducing cars to drive faster rather than watching out for pedestrians. If possible, the report suggests lowering that median at some point in the future.

The study also gives examples of street furniture that could unify the avenue and make it more visually appealing. These include nicer vending carts, "newspaper corrals" to combine the free and pay newspapers that currently occupy clashing and often low-quality boxes on the street, bike racks, benches, grates and manhole covers, and more.

The biggest question of the night: where will the money come from? This plan isn't going to spring into being overnight. Golden Triangle BID is applying for some grants to build the median, which would be a noticeable first step. Other components, such as more trees, better sidewalk pavers, or the street furniture will come over time, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, perhaps never. But the median alone would be a great improvement.