Southcenter is very much a typical suburban mall, surrounded by vast parking lots (and a pair of parking garages added in the 00s), but they're at least trying to be transit-friendly, with a nice covered walkway leading in from the main bus stops. The vast majority of people here drive (unsurprisingly, since there's basically no housing in the area, just retail and industrial uses), but every time I take the bus here, there's at least one or two other people heading into the mall with me. It's nice to see suburban retail that isn't actively hostile to people who didn't drive there, at least.
Although the local mall is in the City of Houston and has bus service (bus service also operates outside of city limits, but it tends to be better within city limits), the mall, and most malls here, are actively hostile towards the buses. The bus stops are on the far perimeter of the mall such that it is a very long walk to the mall. There is a perception around here that people who take a bus to a mall aren't the people who the mall wants to have on the mall property. The reality is that most of the car burglaries and such that plague malls are done by people who have cars so they can make a quick get-away. However, that doesn't change the negative views towards those using public transportation here and probably in many places.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Albany, NY last year at Crossgates Mall, I noticed they built quite a large bus stop complex next to the mall within close walking distance. It is almost like a mini-bus station. It was getting a lot of use when I was there, though the Google Maps image doesn't really indicate that. Link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ggeAsMXCywfXeRyU8
It is kind of funny that they recently built those enclosed type bus shelters at Crossgates Mall because the trend here in Houston is to stop using those types of enclosed bus shelters because they get extremely hot during the summer to the point that nobody wants to use them unless it is raining. Sitting in those enclosed bus shelters is a bit like being in a hot car, and even then, ours have tinted glass and the ones at Crossgates just have clear glass. Granted, it doesn't get as hot in Albany as it does here, but it still gets hot there during the summer.
It seems like malls can go one of two ways -- either they're actively transit-hostile like your mall, or they're transit hubs like in Albany. There are a lot of transit hub malls around here! But that's not surprising, considering that Seattle is a very transit-supportive city, and that extends to most (but definitely not all) of the suburbs.
DeleteI've never even considered the possibility of bus shelters becoming overly hot! That's definitely not a problem around here (and most of the bus shelters around here even have translucent roofs to let the light in!). Unfortunately, Seattle is trending towards shelters with less and less enclosure/weather protection anyways, just to keep people from living in them. Most of the newer ones are basically just a roof, which doesn't help all that much when it's raining sideways, which is a lot of the time around here!
Bus shelter design in Houston has been a hot topic, no pun intended, the last couple of weeks. It seems there was some new academic research published discussing Houston bus shelter design and how some of the traditional designs trap heat in and make things dangerous for those who use the bus shelters: https://phys.org/news/2025-05-bus-relief-result-higher-temps.html
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