Bus shelter designs ‘bloom’ with variety

King County Metro Transit bus shelters have always been colorful, thanks to a 20-year-old program that showcases murals painted by students and community members. But in recent years, the diversity in shelter design has been expanded by cities looking to upgrade their streetscapes and make their local streets more pedestrian friendly.

This new shelter at Northeast 70th Street and Ravenna Boulevard in Seattle was a collaboration. Metro supplied the basic shelter, a developer paid for the artwork by Jen Dixon on top, and a community group painted the inside mural.

Today, more than half of Metro’s 1,500 shelters feature unique art or structural designs provided by students, community groups, and professional artists.

"We work closely with the local cities, because in most cases Metro’s shelters are sitting on the cities’ right-of-way property," said Sharon Slebodnick, Metro’s supervisor of Transit Route Facilities. "We are grateful to the cities for allowing us to install bus stops and shelters, and we want them to fit in with the local street design as much as possible."

Metro’s basic shelter design features two sizes combining steel supports and etched-glass windows in either a 6x9-foot or 6x17-foot rectangle. The supports are usually painted brown, black, or in the Metro colors of blue, teal and green. The silk-screened designs on the glass windows have cut down on vandalism.

The shelter mural program was started in 1989 to involve youth and other members of the community in creating public art for the shelters. Metro contributes panels and paint, and community volunteers donate their artistic talent to create the murals. The murals usually fit into the interior lower side and back panels of the shelter, but some are more elaborate.

In the past two decades, more than 1,400 murals have been installed in Metro shelters. Most last for four to six years, before they are replaced with a new set. Murals have been created by volunteers of all ages: students, scout troops, senior citizens, community groups, and individual artists. Their paintings have become a source of community pride, all the while helping to deter graffiti and improving the appearance of the bus shelters. Today the Metro Bus Shelter Mural Program is one of the largest, ongoing community-based public art programs of its kind. Slebodnick says it is truly a unique folk-art collection with a wide variety of styles and themes (see gallery).

The city of Bellevue's street improvement project along 140th Avenue includes vividly colored benches with art by Karen Guzak, several of which are located at bus stops like this one near Sammamish High School.

The program is still going strong. In just the past three months, 15 new murals have been installed in locations across the county. Slebodnick said there are 50-60 applications every year from groups wanting to paint a mural.

During the past ten years, many cities have partnered with Metro to add some local flair to the basic shelters. Most of these projects were done as part of a larger street project. In 2002, Metro and Seattle teamed up on improvements along Northwest Market Street in Ballard, which included unique steel-cut designs on top of several new shelters. In 2005, Metro, Seattle and Shoreline partnered to improve an eight-mile stretch of Aurora Avenue North, and installed a low-tech, low-cost design on 17 shelters to give the bus stops an integrated look along the Aurora corridor.

The city of Bellevue also has a long history of incorporating visual designs into its streetscapes. Almost twenty years ago, it started a street-art project along Northeast 8th Street that features tiles made by local students into the noise walls and bus shelter supports along that roadway.

New this year in Bellevue is a series of public benches along 140th Avenue – many of them located at bus stops – that feature huge, vividly colored flower art. The public art was commissioned by the city to complement major improvements it made to the thoroughfare, including sidewalks and medians.

Also underway right now are 17 bus shelter upgrade projects on Martin Luther King Way being done in partnership with Sound Transit as part of its Link light rail project.

"I think it’s great that we have such a variety of looks and designs in our bus shelters," said Slebodnick. "People take pride in them, which really enhances local character and helps reduce the vandalism at these shelters. It’s been an effective, and relatively low-cost way to extend the life of our facilities and work with local communities to beautify their neighborhoods."