Hoover starts adding bus stop shelters
Hoover officials say they are trying to be a more welcoming city by installing shelters at bus stops in the city.
Two shelters already have been installed at two of the six stops on Lorna Road, and more will be added in future years, said Councilman Curt Posey, the city council’s liaison to the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority.
There are a total of 11 bus stops on the bus route along U.S. 31 and Lorna Road in Hoover, and city officials want to help people who use buses have protection from the elements, particularly rain, Posey said.
Posey said that, about a year ago, he saw a picture of a woman sitting in the grass beside a transit sign at one of the bus stops on U.S. 31. That is not a good reflection on a city that wants to be a destination city, he said. “We want to be welcoming to all,” he said.
Martin Weinberg, Hoover’s official representative on the transit board, said the lack of bus stop shelters is a problem in numerous areas served by the transit authority. “It’s a big problem,” Weinberg said. “Everybody is wanting new shelters everywhere.”
Other metro areas with transit systems have shelters at every bus stop, Weinberg said. He’s glad to see Hoover officials take the initiative to add them, he said.
Wytangy Finney, the planning manager for the transit authority, said the agency is willing to add bus stop shelters if cities will pay the matching cost required by the federal government. The transit authority gets federal grant money for 80 percent of the cost of the shelters, and local governments have to provide 20 percent of the money, Finney said.
Hoover paid $4,715 in September to have the two shelters installed on Lorna Road, Weinberg said. One of them is at Aldridge Gardens, and the other is by the Jack’s restaurant near the Village on Lorna shopping center.
James Henderson of Fairfield was spotted recently sitting inside the shelter by the Jack’s. He said he has been taking the bus for about six months since his car broke down and frequently rides one to Hoover on his off day to catch a movie at the Carmike 10 movie theater on Lorna Road.
He thinks adding the bus stop shelters is a great idea, particularly to help people on rainy days, he said.
Posey said he expects the city will add two more shelters in fiscal 2018 and two more the year after that. “I think we’ll eventually get to all of them,” he said.
One exception is the Riverchase Galleria, where the mall management did not think a shelter was necessary because the pickup and dropoff point already is in a covered area, Finney said. However, a bench was installed at the Galleria stop, she said.
The Alabama Department of Transportation has to approve any bus stop shelters along U.S. 31 because it controls what can and can’t be installed on state and federal highway rights of way, Finney said.
Finney said Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato has been very friendly to the transit system, and Posey said he would like to see Hoover expand its transit offerings.
As the city seeks to draw more people to the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, Posey said it would be nice for people using that complex to be able to catch a bus to visit Aldridge Gardens or some of the restaurants and shopping centers in Hoover.
The latest ridership numbers available from the transit authority showed that nearly 1,500 people got off the buses on the U.S. 31 route in Hoover in a month, while more than 1,300 people boarded buses at Hoover stops on that route in a month. Those numbers were monthly averages based on ridership from July through September. That route goes back and forth between the Galleria and the central station in downtown Birmingham.
The transit authority also operates two bus routes from downtown Birmingham to the Walmart on U.S. 280 in Hoover. One is a more typical bus route with numerous stops and draws 6,000 to 8,000 riders a month, transit officials said. A second “commuter route” with fewer stops averages about 2,000 riders a month, they said.