Maybe I'll just hang out at the bus stop

Bus stop in Denmark with a curved design and the graffiti
only adds to the conversation topic

This may seem more like a R post, but I think it's pretty cool anyway. When I visited R in Chicago, we went to a bus stop with a fancy bench and discussed how if the bus stop is boring no one notices it, why would you talk about a boring bench?  Then we talked about LA designer Julie Kim's experiment to give people a conversation starter and thus make people happier while they interact at bus stops.  She put a coffee table with flowers and a newspaper at the bus stop and filmed as people sat at the bus stop to see if they would interact more, thus added an element to public transit that she felt it was lacking.  

The train station near R's house.

This experiment allowed people to talk about the bus stop and thus interact with each other.  I wonder if some of these bus stops encourage people to talk while waiting for public transit as well.  Some of them were designed as for a competition and others seem to have been colored by children.  That also reminded me of Chicago, I'm beginning to see why R feels so at home there with all the quirky public transit.  The train station near her house was also painted with murals and hopefully encouraged interaction between riders.

I have frequently suggested that BART stations should become cultural centers, allowing them to be tourist attractions and increase ridership, especially on the weekends.  Each stop could be decorated to represent a different culture (preferably one that represented the community near the stop, similar to the stop in Chicago shown above).  I would go as far as to suggest that at times when there is not high commuter ridership sales stands could be open in the stations to sell local products.

S