Bus Stops and the Internet

If you are familiar with the bus routes and have two options on a rainy day, you may choose your route based on having good shelter at the transfer point.

This doesn't necessarily really belong here but I don't feel it belongs on Walking While American either, which is another blog of mine linked above.

I have done what I describe above of choosing between two routes on a rainy day because I was already familiar with the transfer point. 

One option was a bus stop with a bench to sit on no shelter, so in practice I'm probably standing the entire time rather than sit on a wet bench. The other option was the transit center that provides some cover for walking to your next bus without getting rained on.

But I recently was taking a bus on a rainy day, which is what inspired me to finally write about weather as someone who lives without a car, and I was wondering if I could optimize my transfer point for waiting under shelter and trying to use the Internet to research that.

I stopped after checking Google maps and taking a look at a familiar stop I had recently been to and street view showed a bench and no shelter at a stop with a shelter. So that information is out of date and won't meaningfully help me research this.

I don't know if there's a good means to research this online. I don't know if the official website for the bus service in question would have that information or if some transit app would have it.

I'm assuming not because apps tend to be written by well-heeled, well-educated people who may have never taken a bus in their lives, so condition of the bus stop likely doesn't make the radar of anyone making the Internet work, which is why Google maps is out of date to begin with.

Similarly, urban planning types and politicians and others who decide what to spend money on information are also typically well-heeled people in the prime of life who drive everywhere and typically they are completely comfortable with spending piles of money on roads for cars and nothing for "good for nothing losers riding the bus."

So they tend to not allocate a relatively small amount of funds to make sure there's a bench and adequate shelter at most bus stops.

But really there should be a way to check this online and it's a crying shame the Internet isn't leaping up to point me to that information and fast track that the way it desperately wants me to know about the latest Hollywood gossip.