Oakland begins removing damaged bus shelters, just as rains arrive

"A year after Oakland declared that the sorry condition of its bus shelters posed a danger to transit users, a plan is finally in place to remove half of them and better maintain the rest. Sean Maher, the city's public information officer, said in an email to The Oaklandside that the city is in the final stages of reviewing and executing a contract with a new vendor, District Works, to take over maintenance from the city's previous contractor, Clear Channel Outdoor."

"At an interagency meeting of Oakland and AC Transit last year, Oakland's transportation director, Josh Rowan, and parking director, Michael Ford, said they were considering removing the shelters in the worst condition and replacing them with benches. However, local transit advocates pushed back, arguing that it was wrong to remove shelters ahead of the rainy season, and that decision was postponed."

"One of the main reasons the old shelters could not be easily repaired, OakDOT noted last year, was that the large glass panels used for advertisements were an integral part of their physical structure; when the panels are broken, the shelters themselves can begin to collapse. The agency also said the shelters were not generating enough revenue to cover their expenses."

Oakland finalized a plan to remove roughly half of its bus shelters and improve maintenance of the others by contracting District Works, an Oakland-based vendor, to replace Clear Channel Outdoor. The city is in final stages of reviewing and executing the contract and expects maintenance to begin in about a month. City officials have not identified which shelters will be removed and have not conducted a formal analysis of how many need urgent or irreparable repairs. Many shelters are structurally dependent on large advertising glass panels, so broken panels risk collapse. The shelters were also not generating enough revenue to cover expenses.

Read at The Oaklandside