Civil Engineering In the Mile High City

So, I’m freezing my butt off on a Monday morning, waiting for the bus. We had our first “real” snow storm of the season, and now the temperature has dropped to 5 degrees F.

The bus stop headed into town at Elizabeth Street & 12th Avenue has a shelter, so, I’m not bothered too much by the weather since the shelter provides some protection – or at least it used to. I don’t know exactly when this occurred, but I’m standing there in the shelter, and the cold wind comes whistling through. I guess I have not been paying attention to the changes in the neighborhood, but all of the sudden I am noticing the plexi-glass / clear plastic walls of the shelter have been replaced with punched steel panels – sort of like metal grates.

There on the benches, within the shelter is about six inches of snow that has blown in through these lovely steel-walled grates. Why bother, I ask myself? I suppose if I thought about it for a while, I could come up with one or two reasons that the city decided to make this “upgrade.”

The reason behind the change was quite possibly to reduce graffiti, I am not exactly sure.
What I am sure about, is that except for the roof of the shelter remaining intact (I look for "them" to add the “see through” steel grates to the roof of the shelter next year) there is no shelter per se.

This is probably as good as an example as I can find where “improvements” have wound up improving nothing. I’m not a civil engineer, but my butt is sure freezing as the wind blows up my pants. And that damn bus it late, more than likely due to the weather. Sort of makes you want to cough up the cost for covered parking downtown, and forget doing the “right” thing and using public transportation. But, on the bright side, there is no graffiti……and there really is no shelter. Thanks Denver and RTD