By Staff Writer
Locals hoping to catch the 701 or 791 busses on the Lougheed Highway near Old Dewdney Trunk Road will have to either stand uncomfortably close to oncoming traffic or behind a concrete barrier blocking access to the bus. TransLink’s bus stop #61452 located around 40 kilometres outside of Vancouver has made it to the final four list of Streets Blog USA’s sorriest bus stops list.
“These bus stops aren’t just ugly. They’re hazards,” reads the Street Blog website. “They’re evidence that something has gone fundamentally wrong that people are being exposed daily to these conditions.”
The Sorry Bus Stops contest takes submissions from readers and selects a top 16. The top 16 are then pitted against each other in March Madness-style, with the Vancouver bus stop beating out a stop by an 8-lane freeway in San Rafael, Calif. Streets Blog continues on to call the stop a “doozy”.
The highway is always notoriously dangerous, with 33 fatal crashes between 2004 and 2013.
The stop was submitted by Jason Lee, a visitor from San Diego who was in B.C. for a public transit conference. “If people aren’t waiting at the stop, they might not have time to actually run and catch the bus and there’s a potential for the driver to not see the person waiting and just ride right through without stopping,” Lee told the CBC. Lee also said this stop was an exception to the rule and that he was quite impressed with transit in Vancouver overall.
Lee recommended improving the stop by building a bus shelter and opening the barrier. A Translink spokesperson has said that they are “aware of the access concerns with this stop and are working with the Ministry to address them.”
