Bus stops are part of everyday life in many places, including public transport, airports, schools, parks, sports facilities and event venues. When you think of a bus stop, you might picture a person standing under a bus shelter with tired, vacant eyes, tediously waiting for the next bus to arrive.
What if we rethink the way bus stops are designed? Go back to your school days, standing in line, enjoying yourself and talking to your friends. This could be your business coworkers talking to each other, exchanging ideas, or just people sharing a post-concert experience.
Rethinking how essential aspects of bus stops are designed, including lighting, shade structure, seating and signage, while keeping the riders’ experience in mind, can bring life to a forgotten place in any city, company, school, park, sports field or venue.
Bus shelters can be designed to become part of the local community, an experience in itself, creating a sense of ownership while riders wait for the bus to arrive.
Principles of Bus Stop Design
A good bus stop design meets your business project’s goals and rider needs. From your business perspective, it’s a cost-effective design approach that helps achieve your project goals and allows easy management and maintenance. From the riders’ perspective, an effective bus stop shelter design will be easy to access, provide safety and allow them to rest while waiting for the bus.
Bus stop design starts with understanding the rider’s activity and the ride they’re about to take, from beginning to end. The second step is understanding how your business goal aligns with setting a bus shelter in a specific location. These questions will help your business make the most of the bus stop design:
- What is the need for a bus stop in this location? Think about the time it takes people to complete the ride, from beginning to end.
- Where is the bus shelter located? Consider the surroundings. Evaluate whether the bus shelter will be placed in a public or private space, in an isolated area or a space with large congregations.
- What are the existing amenities? The types of businesses in the nearby area can help your business achieve your project goals.
- How much time will riders spend at the bus stop? Consider how riders can use this time for connection and engagement.
Answering these questions will help your business consider how the shade structure, seating, lighting, accessibility and signage will actively participate in your project’s design.
Design Considerations for Bus Stops
A few considerations are essential when designing a bus stop shelter to provide riders with safety and comfort. These include the shade shelter, lighting, seating arrangements and signage.
User-Centric Approach
People love great experiences. They talk about them, share them and want to repeat them. If your business can turn a simple bus ride into a memorable experience, people will look forward to getting to the bus shelter.
When designing a bus stop, consider the riders’ experience. Listen to how they describe it and how your project matches and exceeds expectations.
Some characteristics of a user-centric bus stop shelter design are:
- It is inclusive, considering the needs of older people, people with disabilities and less empowered communities.
- It listens to the community, empowering minorities by giving them the space to discuss how a bus stop can better serve them.
- It brings value to the riders and the surroundings of the bus stop through design, amenities and the potential for new activities.
- It creates a sense of pride by involving local culture, artists and surroundings.
- It brings the community together through collaboration and the inclusion of their ideas and needs.
Amenities can bring life to a space where there wasn’t life before. A user-centric bus stop shelter design considers the community it serves and creates a sense of ownership and belonging.
By creating a sense of ownership, the community will be eager to take care of the bus stop as their own place, reducing the risk of vandalism and keeping it in the best possible condition.
Creating Safe and Secure Shelters
One purpose of a bus stop is to provide shelter from the weather and keep passengers safe at night while they wait for the bus to arrive. To create a sense of safety and comfort, here are some considerations:
- The riders’ daily activities: These will continue despite the weather, so riders will value a shelter design that protects them from the outdoor elements.
- The bus shelter location: Consider how safe the surroundings are and how this will affect the overall design.
- The operation time frame: Is there a time frame when rider safety should be increased, such as at night?
Shade Structure Considerations
The design of your project — and rider comfort and safety — will depend highly on the shade structure. Think about what is important for your business riders and how the following considerations will impact their experience:
- Suitable materials for your business stop shelter: Consider environmental elements, movable parts and maintenance costs.
- Accessibility features: This is one area where design and innovation can significantly impact the rider experience. It improves access and comfort for all riders, including people with disabilities and older individuals.
- Consistency in design: From materials to signage, a consistent design concept will help riders identify information easily and create a sense of unity.
- Bus stop shelter maintenance: This can be effortless when your business uses salt- and rust-resistant materials that are easy to clean, replace and repair.
- Upkeep in shelter design: This will benefit from a maintenance program to keep the stop shelter functional, clean, free of litter collection and aesthetically pleasing.
Use color, textures, light and technology to create a cozy bus stop shelter. Attention to detail and creativity are paramount. A well-maintained bus stop shelter will be respected by the community and keep litter and vandalism away.
Lighting Considerations
Lighting is essential in the design and rider experience at any bus stop. The lighting in your project will help create the desired ambience and a sense of comfort and belonging, all while improving different aspects of bus stop shelter design:
- Use lighting to create a sense of safety at a bus shelter. Lighting guides riders through pathways, helps them find proper seating or amenities within the bus stop, allows visibility from the inside out and lets passengers know when the bus is arriving.
- Incorporate different types of lighting solutions. Assess natural lighting and the lighting surrounding the bus shelter. Integrate convenient LED lights, sustainable and cost-effective solar-powered lights, or intelligent lighting systems.
- Create ambience and enhance esthetics. Combine surrounding and artificial lighting to create a welcoming ambience for the rider or an interactive bus stop shelter design.
Lights have the power to change the mood and evoke emotions. In Sweden, an architectural studio used lighting to help riders relax, turning a bus stop from a part of the daily hustle into a place where riders can rest. Think about how you would like the riders to feel while waiting at the bus stop.
Seating Considerations
Providing comfortable seating or leaning options is part of improving the rider’s experience at a bus shelter. Intuitive seating placement and mixing creativity with user-friendliness can help create better seating options.
There are many options when deciding which type of seating to include in a bus stop shelter design. Your business can incorporate benches, integrated seating and more innovative ideas, such as places to lean or swing. Look at these seating considerations when planning the bus stop design:
- The riders’ needs: Some communities will accommodate a larger number of older people, children or people with disabilities.
- The average number of riders: About how many people will be using the bus shelter at the same time?
- The average time spent: Consider how much time the riders will spend at the bus shelter on a typical day.
- The potential for social interaction: Creating effective seating arrangements can help riders interact with other riders or pedestrians.
Rethinking conventional seating arrangements — while considering riders’ daily activities, the types of bus riders and their needs — can open conversations about how your project’s approach to seating can help create community.
Information Displays and Signage
Use clear and accessible signage to display relevant information to riders. Tailor it to all types of groups, including older individuals, people with disabilities, and people with mobility or hearing aids. While designing displays and signs, note these important considerations:
- Use a font and font size that is easy to read close up and from afar.
- Place displays at a level where people with disabilities can easily access them.
- Place displays in a space that all riders can access.
- Include braille and audio options that provide different forms of communication.
Route maps, schedules and pathways are the most common information displays found at a bus stop. Consider the activities riders perform before and after using the bus stop, and provide relevant information. Information can be related to:
- Public health
- Safety measures and emergency exits
- Education
- Specific messages for students, faculty or staff members
- Event logistics
Additional Design Considerations
In the ever-changing world of architecture and design, keeping up with society’s latest needs can add value to your business projects. Landscaping and sustainability are now part of bus stop shelter designs.
Landscaping and Greenery
Bringing landscaping architecture and greenery trends into your bus stop shelter design is a great way to introduce new life to an existing space. Some of the benefits of including green spaces in your design are:
- Green roofs can create a more environmentally friendly space while adding an extra insulation layer.
- Green walls improve air quality and help reduce environmental noise.
- Planters and trees offer shelter from sun, heat and other weather conditions.
Another advantage of including landscaping and greenery is that natural beauty creates a peaceful, visually pleasing ambience at a low cost.
Sustainability Practices
Incorporating sustainability into your bus shelter design is an excellent way to give back to the community. Start by thinking locally and considering the resources within the location of your prospective bus shelter. Here are some ideas for designing a sustainable bus shelter:
- Incorporate local or recycled materials to build the bus stop.
- Take advantage of the local weather by using solar energy to power up a bus station in sunny areas.
- Include green roofs and landscaping that use local plants and help solve a local environmental problem.
- Involve the community with amenities such as using bikes to create energy.
Sustainability is becoming a more common practice in bus stop shelter design. Inspiration can be found in worldwide creations and different bus stop design ideas.
Bus Stop Canopy Design
An effective bus stop canopy design helps provide shelter to riders while enhancing the overall environment of the location, bringing versatility and unlimited possibilities to your project.
Benefits of Canopies
The advantages of using canopies for bus stop design go beyond aesthetics:
- They adapt to different types of weather while protecting the riders from rain and providing solar protection.
- They are versatile and can be adapted to different heights, shapes and colors.
- They are cost-effective and adapt to different types of budgets and needs.
- Their organic shape brings visibility to the bus top, creating a shelter for riders.
- They are durable, making maintenance effortless and low-cost.
With their minimalist style, canopy bus stops adapt to any project or space, enhancing the overall aesthetic of the bus stop area.
Design Options for Canopies
Canopies are versatile and flexible. They can easily be integrated with the surroundings and urban design to create a functional and beautiful stop shelter. Their innate characteristics help them adapt to different projects. Some of the canopies’ features that make them a great choice for your project design are:
- They provide wide and flexible coverage, accommodating small and bigger crowds and providing shade structures and shelter in different spaces.
- They come in different styles and colors, providing unique options for incorporating community and branding into your business design.
- The structure can be made of materials that adapt to different designs, shapes, locations and needs.
- Different lighting options can be integrated into the design to provide visibility and comfort to riders.
Canopies can be used for everything under the sun and offer endless design options. Their versatility allows your business to use creativity and innovation in your project design while offering uncompromising quality.
USA SHADE Brings Community and Design Together
Members of your community likely use bus stop shelters. At USA SHADE, we help you connect your business design and riders’ voices, creating a lasting partnership. We understand their needs, turning them into effective bus stops with essential features like shelter, shade structures and solar protection. Browse our selection of shade structures and project portfolio to learn more about our offerings.
Urban transportation planners, designers and landscape architects play a significant role in designing bus stops. If you are one of them, we encourage you to think about bus shelters as living spaces that bring communities together, providing a comfortable place to think, relax and engage.
The options for rethinking and redesigning bus stops are endless. We invite you to get involved and improve the quality of life in your community. We’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how bus shelters can meet riders’ needs and serve communities better. Share them in the comments for inspiration!
