photo by: Contributed Photo

An example of a Lawrence bus stop with a shelter, located at 19th and Delaware.

The United Way of Douglas County hopes a $15,000 grant that it recently won will help the community address a longstanding problem: a lack of seating and shelter at bus stops.

Many bus stops around Lawrence lack permanent benches and shelters, and residents have left a hodgepodge of chairs and hand-built benches to provide seating at stops that don’t have permanent benches. Some look better than others; many are labeled “bus bench.” It’s an issue on which the Journal-World has reported, and there’s even an Instagram account dedicated to documenting the homemade benches in town.

photo by: Nick Krug

In this Journal-World file photo from 2016, improvised bus seats are located at 16th Street and Haskell Avenue.

Daniel Smith, director of marketing and resource development for the United Way of Douglas County, said that people frequently bring the issue up to him. And he said that every time he sees a folding chair next to a bus stop, it becomes a symbol of a Lawrence problem that’s “lurking beneath the surface.”

So Smith wrote a grant proposal in April for the AARP Community Challenge, which provides funding for quick-action projects to help make communities more livable for people of all ages. AARP is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Americans 50 years of age and older.

“When I saw that the AARP had this opportunity available, it was kind of perfect for the bus stop issue here,” Smith said. “It kind of seemed like we had to go for it.”

On Aug. 20, AARP announced that the United Way of Douglas County was one of two Kansas projects to receive grants. (The other project is in Coffeyville.) The United Way will receive $15,000 dedicated to building bus stop amenities.

“The grant will enhance the usability of a successful public bus system for disabled and elderly residents by installing culturally-relevant and artistic bus stop shelters and benches,” AARP’s website states.

Smith said the United Way of Douglas County is working in conjunction with Lawrence Transit to use the $15,000 to help support improvements at about 20 bus stops around town.

In July, the Journal-World reported that Lawrence has 360 bus stops, but that only 85 of them have some type of seating. Adam Weigel, who as of March became Lawrence’s transit and parking manager, said then that improving bus stops was a priority for his staff and that the bus system was actively working on improving seven stops around town.

On Wednesday, Weigel said that these seven bus stops are separate from the stops that will be improved with the help of the grant. He also said he’s always excited when community partners want to work together to improve the transit system.

“There’s just so much enthusiasm and interest … to make our bus stops more aesthetically pleasing and accessible,” he said.

The AARP grant is unlikely to cover all the costs of improving 20 or so bus stops on its own, Weigel said. For context, he said $15,000 was roughly the price tag of improving the seven bus stops the department was already working on. For the United Way project, Weigel said the grant funding would be supplemented with budgeted funds the transit department has for amenity improvements.

The goal is that the roughly 20 sites will be improved by the end of this year. Weigel did not share which bus sites would receive improvements, because he said the list had not yet been finalized. He did, however, say that the sites would be spread throughout town.

Another goal of the project, as outlined in the AARP grant announcement, is to make some of the new bus stops more visually appealing, Smith said. The United Way has been in communication with local organizations about how to bring that to fruition.

Decorative elements would hopefully “bring more warmth in and make them match with the spirit of Lawrence a little bit better,” Smith said. He also hopes it would be a deterrent to people who vandalize bus stops.

Smith said that spending the extra effort to add decoration will hopefully drive home the point that both United Way and the transit department recognize that bus stop amenities are an important issue for the community.

“I also do really want to emphasize how much confidence I have in Adam and the transit department,” Smith said. He’s said there’s been a lot of inaction over the past five years, but “with Adam on board I think it’s going to get done one way or another,” he said, noting that Weigel took over just this spring.

The lack of city-provided bus stop benches and canopies is something that has been bothering Lawrencians for a long time, Smith said. He believes this grant will do a lot to help push things forward.

“Bemoaning bus stops has become a uniquely Lawrence thing over the past few years, but our residents might have to find something else to gripe about,” he said.