Op-ed: Shelters needed at all bus stops

By Kathleen Stocking

Op-ed contributor

The Bay Area Transportation Authority (BATA) is a public service. It is funded by our tax dollars. It is an essential service, and recognized as such, and that is the reason we have it.

It provides transportation to those of us who otherwise would not have it. It allows us to survive. It gets us to the grocery store, the library, and the doctor’s office.

My youngest daughter, now 43 and working as an end-of-life care nurse out in Connecticut, took the bus to Northwestern Michigan College for special classes in grade school and junior high.  Those classes got her a four-year scholarship to Interlochen Arts Academy, with the help of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, and then another four-year scholarship to Yale.

Her college application essay was about riding the bus and the people on the bus. The kindness of the drivers toward all passengers and the reality that there were people in this world who did not have it easy—far from it—were part of her education.

In 2020, Labor Day Weekend, I was hit by a reckless driver on I-80, back east. The car crash was not my fault. But my concussion and PTSD kept me so incapacitated that all I could do was try to survive and I was not able, physically or mentally, to summon the strength or devote the time to sue the other driver. The judge back east called, but I was unable to take the call. I lost my car, my health; everything else. But I got better.

And thank goodness for BATA.

The buses have changed but the drivers are the same: good-hearted, hard-working, salt of the earth, and excellent drivers.

What has changed about BATA is that now everything is computerized. The problem with this is that mobile devices don’t always work. And not all of us have mobile devices. It is possible, and very dangerous, to end up at a bus stop in bad weather where there is no place to shelter from the storm.

During the months when I first began taking the bus, I would often end up at a stop where there was no shelter.  My pleas to BATA to install bus shelters seemed to fall on deaf ears. When the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) called this past summer to do a survey, the young woman calling from Lansing heartily agreed that shelters were an absolute necessity. Someone elderly, like myself, who was frail, would have a hard time in a snowstorm, for example, if she ended up at a stop with no shelter and a long wait for a bus.

Not all disabilities are visible.  Someone on blood thinners, for instance, is at risk of freezing at a bus stop. Someone with recent surgery, or special medications, or any number of things, will be at risk without a shelter.

Last summer I went to a lecture in Barnes Park, planning to get on the Bayline afterwards. However, out along the busy road, there was no shelter. I could not stand for more than a few minutes because of metal body parts. Eventually I had to sit on the sidewalk.

It’s hard sometimes for young and healthy people to understand old age or disability. I know I would have had a hard time doing so. I rode horseback. I stacked wood. I served in the Peace Corps. I had strength and stamina to spare.

But let’s take a minute, stop and think, and ask ourselves this question: would we want our elderly mother, our pregnant friend, our frail and possibly demented grandfather, or our twelve-year-old child, waiting at a bus stop in a storm, and with no shelter?

Shelters are basic, like seatbelts.

Shelters are a necessity for health and safety. Our tax dollars are what fund the public bus service. BATA is essential for life.

I have voted for every BATA millage. And I encourage my fellow citizens to do the same.

BATA is and always will be an essential service. It is not perfect, but at the level of the ordinary people who ride the bus and the incredibly skilled and compassionate drivers, BATA is something for which I am grateful to have in this community.  The people on the bus are wonderful. The drivers are wonderful.

Especially with winter coming on, my one request would be that bus shelters be recognized as a necessity for those of us who not only need the publicly-funded transportation but also need safe places in which to wait for the buses.