Allison Hanes: Remimagining public transit for the post-pandemic city

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It started with a contest to reimagine a humble bus shelter on Concordia University’s Loyola campus.

More than a year later and in its third iteration, it has morphed into an international design competition, asking participants to rethink the future of taking public transport in a metropolis altered by the pandemic.

This is a conceptual question in search of creative answers. But it’s also a practical matter facing Montreal and cities around the world.

For Carmela Cucuzzella, who is Concordia Research Chair in Integrated Design Ecology and Sustainability for the Built Environment (as well as a founding co-director of the institution’s Next Generation Cities Institute), contemplating how people move around cities and how to get them to use public transit has always been central to her work.

Cucuzzella was pondering ways to improve the experience of waiting for the bus before COVID-19 hit. She helped launch a design challenge to create a solar-powered shelter in collaboration with the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions, Mediations of Excellence at Université de Montréal, the Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies and the Conseil régional de l’environnement de Montréal.

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“The discussions that followed when we asked the first question were a bit too technical,” she said. “We felt that we somehow escaped the more conceptual questions around the real questions of using the bus shelter. The second competition was called: ‘More than waiting for the bus.’”

It challenged contestants to think about how the bus shelter, as a neglected space in the city, might be animated to make the time spent waiting more fun, thereby attracting more passengers. It brought in hundreds of interesting ideas that Cucuzzella said ranged from the  playful to the interactive.

“But then COVID came, everything changed and people stopped using the bus, people stopped using cars, nobody had anywhere to go.”

The pandemic has been a disruptive force for public transit. Ridership plummeted as much as 80 per cent in Montreal during the first lockdown, and left people fearful of crowded buses and métros once things started opening up again. 

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“We saw lots of people going back to their cars, we saw lots of Communauto, we saw lots of people not wanting to take public transit. We can’t have that,” Cucuzzella said.

A year later, the world and people’s lives have changed, in some ways permanently. Many of those working from home will continue to do so some or all of the time, meaning they won’t be relying on the bus, train or métro for a daily commute to the city centre. Yet public transit remains as vital as ever to fight the climate crisis, reduce congestion and make cities more liveable, healthy and green for residents.

“We said ‘We can’t be blind. We can’t be disconnected.’ The pandemic became a drastic reality and changed our lives it sunk in that everything’s going to change,” Cucuzzella said. “So we said, ‘Ok, we’ve got to make this a very relevant thing, not just for the pandemic, but for life after the pandemic.”

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After the second batch of entries, they decided to take the competition one step further and solicit submissions for refreshing and reviving public transit for when COVID-19 recedes. The contest has essentially evolved with the on-the-ground reality for cities and transportation operators worldwide. It also recognizes that with these challenges come opportunities.

“It’s really about trying to imagine how all our lives have changed and how all of our experiences of mobility have changed, but at the same time how can we continue to make public transportation a key part of this urban experience? Different, maybe, than how it was before, but how is it different?” she said.

As proof of how much is at stake, this latest effort is also sponsored by the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain, greater Montreal’s public transit planning and funding body.

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The deadline to register for the competition closed Saturday. Nearly 150 teams of students now have until May 20 to submit their ideas.

Besides Canada, Cucuzzella said there are participants from Brazil, Malaysia, Germany, Egypt, Bangladesh, Libya, U.A.E. and Zimbabwe studying in faculties as varied as architecture, design, urban planning, geography, computer science and pedagogy. Each will bring their own approach to tackling what is in fact a pressing universal issue.

There is $7,500 in prize money up for grabs. All the entries will be published online and eventually in a book. A selection of finalists will be put to a public vote — which is one of the main reasons for hosting the design competition in the first place.

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“We’re trying to act as a central figure in bringing these discussions to the public, and design competitions are a way to have this kind of public conversation on these very important topics,” Cucuzzella said. “The conversation is going to live for a while.”

ahanes@postmedia.com

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