The View From the Bus: The Lovely Bus Stop

This bus stop, listed on the CoMo Connect schedule as Conley Rd. B. Market Pl., is a connecting point for the #2 Gold, #5 Blue, and #6 Pink routes. I've become familiar with this particular bus stop because these are the three routes I take most often. Blue and Pink chauffeur me to and from my home neighborhood. Gold is the main east-west route extending from one end of my city to the other.

The first time I landed at this stop was on a warm Saturday afternoon in August. The temperatures hovered in the low 90s.

At first I sat in the bus stop shelter, mindlessly obeying the cues of the transit engineers who make their living designing bus stops.

The walls of the shelter are plexiglass, which provides visibility of oncoming traffic (including my oncoming bus). Visibility might be a strong term, since the see-through panels are becoming more translucent than transparent since they took up their posts here. Months, or perhaps even years, of assault from the weather, bus riders and insects have scratched and smudged the surface as thoroughly as if a Public Works employee had been given a work order to sandblast the entire structure.

Add to that the cloudiness and yellowing caused by the sun. Actually, one of the back panels is much more yellowed than the others. Perhaps it's the oldest panel. It apparently missed being replaced at some when the other newer panels were put up. Maybe the work crew showed up to replace all the panels and realized they were one short. They perhaps made a note to come back and finish the job at a later time, which has never arrived. Or perhaps the penny pinchers at city hall intentionally limited the upgrade to only a few panels per shelter. The rear panel was the obvious choice to leave untouched, since bus riders can be reasonably expected to not care if their view of the Walmart parking lot is murky.

Despite the light-filtering features of the panels, they do function quite well in the matter of heat amplification. On a warm day, only a couple of minutes are required for me to realize this cubicle would be better suited as a greenhouse for plants than as a comfortable haven for humans.

This particular hot day was made more comfortable by a pleasant breeze. The effect of the plexiglass enclosure, however, was to completely block out any breeze.

I suppose on a rainy day or in the dead of winter the greenhouse effect and the wind blocking walls would be welcome to cold travelers. On a sunny August day, not so much.

Ten feet from the the bus shelter, through, is a tree, offering shade and unobstructed breeze. The tree is obviously not what city planners call "old growth". It's the sort of tree contractors plant near a massive parking lot in an attempt to make it appear like they didn't totally destroy all the trees God had planted on the site.

Nevertheless, whether the tree grew there through the random fall of a seed or through the carefully plans of a landscaper, I thank God for inventing something as functional and beautiful as a tree.

The tree does not obstruct my view of the oncoming traffic, unless I were foolishly enough to sit on the backside, facing toward the parking lot. There will be no need to replace panels. the lack of a detailed bus schedule attached to the tree is not a problem, considering that the schedule hanging on one of the bus shelter's panels is out of date anyway.

The only greenhouse effect caused by this tree is the slightly green hued atmosphere surrounding me as I take a seat under the leaves, upon the grass. The breeze is unhindered while the sun is mostly shaded from above.

Then again, the tree is not going to function well as a bus stop in a rain storm, especially one that may include lightning. Perhaps the creators of both the tree and of the bus stop knew what they were doing. Both are well suited to their purpose.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

I'm certain I shall never see a bus shelter lovely as a tree. I'm also certain I'll never see a tree that can safely and comfortably shelter bus riders in all the types of weather the Creator can send our way.