Friday, July 6, 2007

Bus Stopped

Raleigh N&O:

RALEIGH - Shopping centers in Raleigh increasingly advertise themselves as "upscale" or "affluent." In other words, don't come by bus.

Four plazas in Raleigh now forbid city buses from entering the property, even the parking lots. At Brier Creek Commons in northwest Raleigh, that can mean that workers must trek up to a quarter-mile across hot asphalt .... A good walk never killed anyone, but bus riders call the shopping centers' rules another indignity that poor shoppers and workers must endure.

(Via HypePipe.)

Sheesh.

Here in GSO, the new Wal-Mart at Cone and US 29 not only allows buses, it has a covered bus stop right in front of it. The site appears to have been designed specifically to accommodate public transportation.

I love Wal-Mart!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Several years ago, in Buffalo, NY, a shopping mall did that. What happened? A teenage girl, who had taken the bus to the mall, was forced, since the bus couldn't enter mall property, to walk across a busy street. She was hit and killed by a car.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't remember when that girl was killed, so I just looked it up and found this: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~cohenp/strat/buffalofamily.html

Interesting story. I was wrong...I guess they didn't ban ALL buses from the mall...just certain ones.

Sigh.

Stuff like that should never happen - then or now.