“Lively” and “pleasant” waiting spaces: quality criteria for attractive bus stations and bus stops

This project seeks to elucidate quality criteria for the planning and design of attractive transit spaces and enhance users’ experience of bus travel. The broad aim is to understand waiting practices in relation to the physical and social environment of the transit spaces. The concrete aim is to assist Swedish municipalities and bus service providers in their work to develop sustainable public transport services. Skåne County and Gothenburg City have, together with Gehl architects, formulated quality goals and criteria for planning and designing bus stations that serve not only as transport nodes but also as spaces of social interaction. However, when using the goals and criteria as guidelines in their planning work, the practitioners found that some of the social quality goals and several criteria are rather broad and vague and need further clarification to be able to translate into concrete planning and design measures. Such are the quality goals towards bus stations that are “lively”, “pleasant”, serve as “meeting places”, for which implementing criteria involve “shared space” and “varying levels of activities”. There is also a need of tools for assessing the fulfilment of these criteria. This project seeks to clarify these quality criteria and highlight features of the physical and the social environments that contribute to their fulfilment. It also aims to propose planning recommendations and assessment tools to assist the municipalities and bus service providers in the application and the assessment of the criteria.