Traverse City Record-Eagle

Grand Traverse County

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  • Jan-Michael Stump

    FIFE LAKE BUS STOP
August 30, 2008

BATA installs six bus shelters

Assembly has been delayed for months

By MELISSA DOMSIC

TRAVERSE CITY -- A half-dozen bus stops in Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties now are fitted with shelters after months of delays.

Bay Area Transportation Authority installed the shelters more than six months after the Record-Eagle reported in November that BATA hadn't erected 14 shelters it had owned for months. Officials contended the structures hadn't been raised because they hadn't ironed out details of a grant.

Work, they said, was further delayed by cold weather.

"They're needed, especially during the winter when it's really cold and there's nothing to block the wind so you're standing there shivering until the bus comes," said Cecelia Leavitt as she waited for a bus this week.

Leavitt, of Traverse City, caught the bus across the street from The Father Fred Foundation on Hastings Street, where BATA is considering placing a second bus stop shelter.

Shelters also went up in May and June in Northport, Fife Lake, Garfield Township hall on Veterans Drive, Garfield Township Fire Department on Albany Street, and Salvation Army on Barlow Street.

"It takes a while to do this because we have to get the land either from a private land owner or it has to be property in a road right-of-way and we have to get permission," said George McBath, BATA's assistant director for administration. "Each one of these cases is a different case of what kind of permission and information they need. It's not just going out and saying were going to go out and put a shelter in today."

BATA is waiting to install shelters in Empire, Cedar, and two in Kingsley because of construction or other site issues. Maple City and Glen Arbor sites are ready, but workers will wait to do those at the same time as sites in Cedar and Empire.

One should soon go in at Munson Medical Center, and another is still up in the air.

"It's not our holding it up, we're ready to go, but we can't go until they're ready," McBath said.

Riders at those stops won't have to spend another winter waiting in the cold, officials promise.

"We'll get them all in before the weather gets bad," BATA Interim Director Don Scharmen said.

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