America’s Sorriest Bus Stop: Silver Spring vs. Boston
The competition to be named America's Sorriest Bus Stop started out with 16 ghastly contenders, and your votes have whittled the field down to four disasters for transit riders.
Yesterday voting began in the first semi-final match -- Kansas City is currently ahead of Broomfield for a spot in the championship round, and with the polls open until midnight it could go either way.
The other bus stop that will vie for the title will be one of these two terrible entries from Boston and Silver Spring, Maryland.
Silver Spring
Dan Reed, a local planner, nominated this stop in Silver Spring, Maryland, which routed the competition from Asheville earlier in the week.
The Washington Post took an interest and tried to get to the bottom of who's responsible for this sorry bus stop on the side of a dangerous state highway. What they found was pretty telling.
When WaPo reporter Luz Lazo asked the three agencies with jurisdiction here -- the Maryland State Highway Administration, Montgomery County, and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority -- about the bus stop, they all said it was someone else's fault.
Hilariously, Montgomery County spokesperson Esther Bowring said the 13 people who board here on a typical day "probably appreciate" not having to stand in the actual travel lane. Where they would get killed in an instant.
Reed said the finger-pointing "really illustrates how often the people who plan our roads and the people who plan our transit don’t always communicate with each other."
Boston
What sets this Bean Town stop apart is its forbidding location on a traffic island, says our anonymous submitter:
This bus stop is next to one of Boston's largest hotels, the 300+ room DoubleTree and its award-winning jazz club. People who work, stay, or visit have to brave crossing several lanes of chaotic traffic to take the bus. The stop is on a median island surrounded by on- and off-ramps to the Mass Pike (I-90). and the 5-lane Cambridge Street which has no crosswalks and no curb cuts. There is no shelter from the elements and in the winter snow gets plowed onto the sidewalk which is never shoveled.
Here's an alternate view:
Agencies in charge: MassDOT, MBTA.
Here is a map of all our contestants.
And the bracket...
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