JohnHeuston1

By JohnHeuston1

Due consideration

The pic is a city-centre bus-stop, taken from my usual seat (it's not my usual seat but my minor OCD is looking on the brightside of someone being in it). Bus deregulation through a main city arterial street means you have a lot of, let's call it 'thinking time' - very little patience at the time it takes to crawl a few hundred yards but at least I have the time to think about how impatient I am.

The painted sign on the street is two buses in length, and the actual stop is on the pavement halfway between. Your regular bus driver stops at the bus stop, but by doing so leaves half a bus length to the front and to the rear. Shortly before I boarded the bus I'm on (yes, I'm 'live blipping' - in years to come there'll be actual jobs in that) a bus pulled into the stop. It didn't stop at the stop though, it stopped at the end of the painted box. This in turn allowed my bus (not mine, but my dream is to own a bus - weird perhaps, but more in a future blip) to fit into the space. I think we could call it 'due consideration' - the driver on the bus in front was thinking of the one behind, and went out his way, by a matter of feet, to make things easier for the driver behind, and in turn, boarders and alighters.

Would that we would all think like this. We do, I'm not misanthropic, but are we always conscious of it? Are we thinking of the other person in our actions small and large, even if it's to our detriment, that we go slightly out of our way? Maybe with the bus-stop, it's a design step change that would change behaviour, but it makes you then think of the importance, and dare we say 'seriousness' of design. Move the stop sign a few yards forward, and two lots of commuters board buses. Not changing the world, just a thought. Just due consideration.

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