A transit stop inventory and improvement plan can stave off lawsuits and make transit’s most common asset a bit less common.

This stop, on a curb, at a curve, attached to a stop sign is not just unattractive; it could be dangerous. Courtesy Nelson Nygaard.

Shopkeepers who want to mind the store better mind the door.  That rhyme is inspired by a 2005 study by the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI), which found the primary cause of accidents to employees and customers at grocery stores was falls at the entrance.  Supermarkets pay out $450 million each year for legal expenses and claims for injuries—and a store will typically have only one or two doors at most.

If you think of bus stops as the “front door” to a transit property, even a medium-sized agency will have as many as a thousand or more of these access points and that represents a lot of legal exposure.  At least one court in recent years has found transit agencies are responsible for what happens at the door.

In April 2003, the California Supreme Court ruled that a transit agency could be held liable for placing a bus stop in a hazardous location.  In the case of Darlene Bonanno v. Central Contra Costa Transit Authority (30 C4 139), the Court agreed with the plaintiff’s argument that her injuries were partially the result of the Central Contra Costa Transit Authority (CCCTA) having placed a bus stop in a hazardous location on Pacheco Boulevard near its intersection with DeNormandie Way.  At the time of the accident the plaintiff had been trying to cross the street in the crosswalk to reach the bus stop on the opposite side.

This intersection did not have any traffic control devices.  A vehicle that had stopped to wait for the plaintiff to cross the street was rear-ended by another vehicle and subsequently pushed into the plaintiff, causing massive injuries. The Court ruled that given the peak period traffic volumes on Pacheco Boulevard and the condition of the roadway shoulder (no sidewalk, which limited access to the stop), CCCTA should have recognized a dangerous condition and moved the bus stop closer to a traffic signal located about a block away. The Court found CCCTA to be liable for only 1% of the damages. In this case however, 1% equals $1.6 million!

It’s hard to predict how this ruling might impact long-term issues related to bus stop liability. In the short-term it’s certainly possible some transit agencies might revisit their policy about where they place their bus stops.  More specifically, they’ll be asking themselves whether they should remove any stops placed on arterial roadways in locations not immediately adjacent to traffic control devices.

This stop belongs. Even the pavement announces this as a transit space. Courtesy Nelson Nygaard.

Is there a silver lining to this ruling? The answer is quite possibly yes! The concern about bus liability should be encouraging many transit systems to take a fresh look at everything in and around their bus stops including amenities, access, information displays, etc.  Improvements in one or more of these categories will make the stops more customer friendly, which in turn will have a positive impact on ridership.  After all, if the stop is your front door then you should maximize the curb appeal of your property, as real estate agents have advised their clients for decades.

The question is how to get started. A typical medium-sized transit system has between 500 and 2000 stops. Many of these systems simply do not have the staff to tackle this issue all at once, and so they often default to a position of improving individual stops one at a time in response to complaints or requests from customers.
There’s one way your agency can get out in front of the bus stop improvement issue – create a Bus Stop Database/Inventory and Improvement Plan.  Take a moment to consider how you, or someone else at your agency, might answer the following questions:

• Do you know the location, condition, and level of amenities at each of your bus stops?
• Do you have this information available in a format that is user-friendly, easily accessible, and easily shared with other municipal agencies (DPW, Police, Fire, etc)?
• Do you have a plan in place that helps you implement customer-oriented improvements in a logical, system-wide manner?

For most small- and medium-sized transit agencies the answers to these three questions are probably:

• Not really
• No
• No – We make improvements on a stop-by-stop, or complaint-by-complaint basis

By way of example, the Norwalk Transit System (NTS) in Los Angeles County had a Bus Stop Inventory/Database developed using GIS and Microsoft Access.  With the help of a consultant, NTS then used the database to create a “tiered” bus stop improvement plan that prioritized access, safety and amenities improvements throughout the system using a customer-oriented approach. The tiers are listed here in priority order:

1. Passenger Information, Accessibility and Operational Feasibility
2. Lighting and Security
3. Shelters and Benches
4. Advanced Passenger Systems
5. “Gateway” or Thematic

This tiered approach has helped NTS and other agencies avoid the inefficient, and often frustrating, process of dealing with improvement issues “one stop at a time.” It provides a plan for making system-wide changes in a rational manner, beginning with policies regarding the physical condition and location of bus stops. NTS has already used the database and tiered-approach to identify several hazardous conditions and is now in the process of developing a plan for improvements.

To make the database GIS compatible, NTS recorded the geographic coordinates of each bus stop using a Geographic Positioning System (GPS) and geocoded each coordinate to its corresponding bus stop.  Incorporating this GIS component into the database makes it possible for transit staff to visually explore the relationship between routes, boarding activity and bus stop conditions.  For example, staff could sort the database to find stops that have flat land with ADA-compliant sidewalks, at least 40 boardings per day, and are served by at least two routes for placing a new shipment of shelters.

Having a Bus Stop Inventory and Improvement Plan won’t completely protect your agency from liability, but it will certainly put you in a better position of understanding your strengths and weaknesses both at the individual stop and system level. More importantly though, an Inventory and Improvement Plan provides an excellent tool for identifying those critical capital improvements at bus stops which can help you capture new riders and retain existing ones.

Paul Jewel, Principal and Chief Operating Officer, has been with Nelson/Nygaard seventeen years, and is one of the leaders of the firm’s public transit practice.  His Primary areas of expertise include planning and operational needs assessments for fixed-route systems, Bus Rapid Transit studies, and the evaluation of Transit Centers.  Paul also focuses on assessing the need for improved passenger amenities both “on-street” and within facilities.   He has done work across the United States (large and small systems) and in the United Arab Emirates.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2010 Amenities Issue of Trip Planner Magazine.