Burlington’s city council has settled down for a multiyear endeavor that promises to add dozens of bus shelters to those that currently serve the Link Transit bus system.
During a regularly-scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the council formally extended a contract to the John R. McAdams Company to design and construct these proposed shelters for the city-owned bus system over the next three to four years.
The city’s elected leaders ultimately tapped McAdams for this project on the recommendation of Mike Nunn, Burlington’s transportation director, who proposed this particular contractor during a city council work session on Monday.
During the work session, Nunn told the council that the proposed contract would have McAdams evaluate 25 to 30 potential locations for new or enhanced bus shelters. The shelters would then be constructed over a three-year period – with a possible one-year extension to the contract if necessary.
Nunn said that most of the proposed installations would resemble Link Transit’s existing shelters along Chandler Avenue and Hanford Road. Some of the smaller shelters will nevertheless eschew the conventional covered bench look in favor of “semme seats” – or a pair of compact, plastic perches on either side of a shaded canopy.
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“They’re less expensive,” Nunn went on to explain at a city council work session on Monday, “and you can do them much quicker.”
Nunn said that the city will be able to draw on $878,850 in federal funds to compensate McAdams for its work on these shelters, although it will also need to chip in some of its own dollars to cover 20 percent of the project’s expense.
In the end, Nunn’s vision for the proposed bus shelters seemed like a step worth taking to city council member Dejuana Bigelow.
”Even though it’s three years,” Bigelow said during the work session, “the community wants to see more of these shelters in place, and they actually make the city look good.”
The council went on to give the contract a unanimous nod on Tuesday as part of a so-called consent agenda of presumably routine or noncontroversial items that its members adopted en bloc.
