AURORA | The air is crisp, the sun is shining and the trash from the nearby bin has been emptied for passengers waiting at the bus shelter at the intersection of Peoria and Iliff.
“Sometimes, you can just see trash and cigarette butts everywhere,” Kevin Weir said. The 22-year-old Aurora resident waits at the shelter on weekdays to board the 21 bus to his job in an office farther east on Iliff and Blackhawk.
He said he notices a difference in cleanliness between shelters such as this one and larger shelters like the one at Nine Mile Station. He’s right; there is a difference.
Weir spends weekdays at a shelter owned by CBS Outdoors. The company, one of the largest lessors of outdoor advertising space in the U.S., owns 83 shelters and 780 benches throughout Aurora and has a franchise agreement with the city that lasts through 2018. CBS Outdoors did not respond to questions about trash at its bus shelters for this story.
The Regional Transport District has no part in building or even maintaining CBS-owned shelters, and RTD officials said there wouldn’t be a shelter at the Iliff and Peoria stop if it weren’t for CBS Outdoors. The company pays for its shelters and their maintenance through the advertisements displayed on them.
RTD owns 26 shelters in Aurora. RTD spokesman Scott Reed said there needs to be at least 40 boardings a day at a bus stop to provide more than a sign on pole. There are 10,000 RTD-owned bus stops that only consist of a sign on a pole located throughout the metro area, and to convert those stops to managed shelters would cost millions. RTD officials said a standalone shelter costs around $14,000 to construct and around $3,000 a year to maintain.
For Weir, the idea of having no shelter is not really an option. “It’s Colorado, October is coming, and that snow is going to be hitting soon. If I’m still going to be riding the bus around that time, it’s a big deal to have a shelter,” he said.
RTD-owned shelters undergo more cleaning and maintenance than CBS-owned shelters. Reed said RTD stations are scheduled for daily trash removal and weekly power-washing of plazas, while they monitor stations on the weekends as needed.
Under its contract with the City of Aurora, CBS Outdoors is required to clean its shelters and bench areas three times a week, and is responsible for cleaning graffiti and picking up trash within a 6-foot radius around the shelter.
Aurora spokeswoman Julie Patterson said the city has contracted with CBS for more than 25 years and is pleased with the company’s responsiveness to complaints.
“Issues periodically arise in high-ridership areas where occasional littering occurs, sometimes shortly after CBS has cleaned,” Patterson said in a statement. “For the most part, however, the city gets very few complaints about the maintenance of bus stops considering how many there are in Aurora.”
Reed said that residents who are unhappy with their bus stops can opt into an “adopt-a-stop” program. The program allows individual businesses and residents to volunteer and maintain a stop, and in return RTD provides a trash can and liners for the stop.
Aurora City Councilwoman Molly Markert said that plan sounds like avoiding responsibility for the stops, and said she has received complaints from residents about dirty CBS-owned shelters in her ward.
She asked in an email why a nearby employer needed to become a trash collector.
“Why don’t they (RTD) just pick up the trash? I’m up to here with it,” she said.
Weir agreed. He said RTD should have some sort of involvement in bus stops that it services.
“It would help to have some kind of partnership,” he said.
Sounds to me like the citizens dump the trash, they should pick it up.
You have to be kidding. In parks and campgrounds I have seen people walk right by trash barrels to throw stuff into the bushes or the street. Too many like to talk environments, but don’t practice it. Some one else’s responsibility.
I’m sure those 2 pieces of trash in the picture were littered there soon after an employee cleaned it. People are disgusting and have no respect. If this Councilwoman is so worried about this, maybe she should be part of the solution by becoming part of the adopt-a-stop program. By complaining that a company isn’t doing their job, she is doing more harm than good to the community. If the company is holding up its end of the bargain (cleaning the sites three times a week), then it is ridiculous to blame them for the cleanliness of a bus stop. If people would stop throwing their trash on the ground, I guess that would be helpful too.
Littering in Aurora is becoming commonplace. It’s a reflection of the growing culture of disrespect and lack of pride in our complicated city. The city council should do more to ticket those that litter, and provide more useful receptacles for trash collection. For instance, trash cans with lids would help keep trash in the bus stop cans on windy days. Solar powered trash compactors work well in other cities, and collect more trash than a simple garbage can. Signage encouraging residents to be respectable to their environment could help boost awareness, along with signage warning of steep fines and penalties for those who choose to litter. It’s time for Aurora to take out the trash, or it will continue to earn it’s reputation as the septic tank of the entire metro area.