From buckets to benches: City delivers 83-year-old Raleigh bus rider shiny metal seat
Lenora Southerland won’t have to sit on buckets while waiting at her bus stop in Walnut Terrace anymore.
But she might want to bring an umbrella.
The city of Raleigh installed a two-person pedestal seat at the bus stop Thursday morning. It’s also changed its policies to add benches and shelters at bus stops in some affordable housing communities after The News & Observer featured Southerland in a recent story.
Southerland, now 83, was using two white buckets as a makeshift seat to wait for the bus near her home on Levister Court.
She even attached an index card asking that they not be taken away.
“An 82-year-old lady put them here so she could sit on them until the bus comes,” the note stated. “I got arthritis in my right knee. There is no seat to sit on out here till the bus comes.”
On Thursday the buckets were gone. They’d been missing for a while, she said.
A wooden bench that arrived thanks to a good samaritan after the April 14 newspaper story had also vanished.
To catch the bus Southerland started walking farther to another bus stop, where she could sit on a fire hydrant.
Now the city’s red two-seater is bolted into the sidewalk — the first of its kind in the city. It’s a literal prototype made by the same North Carolina company that builds the city’s new bus shelters. Raleigh has ordered more that should arrive within 60 days.
“I like the seat,” Southerland said Thursday. “I have no problem with it.
“But you’re still in the weather,” she continued. “If I walk down there and the sun is shining and it starts to rain, what am I going to do?”
Ridership determines seating
Of Raleigh’s 1,400 bus stops, more than 1,000 have no bench or shelter. If a bus stop has more than 10 riders per day, it’s supposed to get a shelter in the coming years, and most will have one by fiscal year 2023.
Raleigh Transportation Supervisor David Walker said there are about 25 stops within Raleigh Housing Authority and DHIC, Inc., complexes, and 11 already have shelters or benches. Six more were already in the planning stages for a shelter, and thanks to the policy change, the others will join the list, he said.
“We absolutely need more stop seating,” said Nathan Spencer, vice chair of the Raleigh Transit Authority.
“I’m appreciative that staff acted fast for a solution and that we’re putting shelters and benches at senior centers, affordable housing sites and supportive housing locations,” he said. “But our riders deserve seating at every stop.”
It can take over a year for a shelter to be installed depending on factors including if the stop is within the city right-of-way or an easement is required. The average cost of a bus shelter and bench is $30,900.
It costs less than $1,000 to install the two-seat benches like the one on Levister Court. And it takes considerably less time to get them in the ground. Regardless of what the city does, it’s going to take more money to bridge the transit gaps, Spencer said.
“Seating means continuous sidewalks, bright street lights and access in your front yard,” he said. “Our society’s lack of interest in this for the past 40 years is exactly why our grandmothers are standing in the mud waiting an hour for a bus.”
The Raleigh Transit Authority will also consider whether the small seats should be added to bus stops with fewer than 10 riders per day next month. The policy for shelters was changed from 25 riders per day to 10 per day in 2019.
Southerland wishes the bus stop was closer to her home but said she’s looking forward to when the new shelter arrives.
“I am happy they are doing it, but I don’t want it to take 100 years,” she said. “I might be dead then.”
