New Charlotte group adds its own benches to CATS bus stops. Yours might be next.

A new group in Charlotte is tired of standing for long bus waits. Formed last year, the Charlotte Urbanists organization is now taking matters into its own hands by installing benches at some Mecklenburg County bus stops.

Just 344 Mecklenburg County bus stops out of nearly 3,000 have a bench, according to an Observer analysis of county data. That’s just 11.5% of all stops. And only 277 stops have shelters, according to publicly available data from the city’s Charlotte Explorer database.

In total, 677 of CATS bus stops have some sort of amenities, including benches, shelters and smaller two-seater benches that can be mounted to the bus stop pole, CATS spokeswoman Natalie Bouchard told the Observer.

The group of urban planning enthusiasts, Charlotte Urbanists, installed their first bench this week at a Whitehall Commons bus stop near Ayrsley. The organization is taking donations for more benches and has already raised more than $1,800.

At roughly $80 per bench, that’s almost two dozen other bus stops that will soon be getting benches.

The group is organized by two UNC Charlotte students, Jacob Unterreiner and John Holmes.

Last year, the bus bench program started with an idea from Unterreiner. He grabbed some folding chairs from a thrift store and started putting them out at bus stops, he said.

“But I noticed that they didn’t stay very long,” he said. “So I revived the idea once we got this group going and we’ve been building proper benches and securing them.”

The group plans to secure the benches to bus stop signs with bike locks, Unterreiner said.

Charlotte Urbanists also put survey stickers out at bus stops across the county to gauge interest in the new benches and crowdsource locations for the next benches. The group hasn’t been in contact with CATS, Unterreiner said.

CATS did not respond to questions about the Charlotte Urbanists bus bench project.

Charlotte isn’t the only city with a big gap in seating at bus stops. Last year, the Raleigh News & Observer reported that more than 1,000 of Raleigh’s 1,400 bus stops had no bench or shelter.

Raleigh installed a new bench at one stop in Raleigh last May after the newspaper reported one 83-year-old woman had been bringing plastic buckets to sit on while she waited for the bus near her home.

‘Small changes’

Holmes first became interested in urban planning and public transportation when his motorcycle was broken for more than a month while he was living in Concord a few years ago.

“You need a car to do anything,” he said. “I was literally just stuck there. It was the most isolating experience I have ever had.”

The group isn’t stopping with bus benches, Holmes said.

Charlotte Urbanists meet every Saturday and have projects including neighborhood tours, sidewalk cleanups and pop-up bike lanes in the works. The group posts details for its weekly meet-ups on Twitter.

“These are small changes that we can make with a shoestring budget with reclaimed materials,” Holmes said. “And if we can do it as just a small group of people, I think the implication is: hey, we can do this. Why can’t the city do it?”

The group is committed to making such changes throughout Charlotte that have a big impact on individuals, he said.

“We can’t make CATS run on time, with a 15-minute interval (between buses),” Holmes said. “It’d be cool if we could, but we just can’t.

“But what we can do, is we can see a small problem in the community and take a step to fix it.”