DDOT: "No benches for you - you just sit on that overturned garbage can"
Okay, so that isn't exactly what they said.
http://www.freep.com/article/20130502/NEWS/305020159/Bench-students-built-Detroit-bus-stop-might-removed
This reminds me of when some genius in city hall told the Navin Field Grounds Crew [[which mows and maintains the old Tiger Stadium site since the city doesn't) that the site wasn't "zoned for baseball" and kept trying to kick them out of there so it could be the unmaintained, trash-strewn empty lot it was intended to be.
Or remember when the unions started terrorizing the Motor City Mower gang for cutting grass in the city? Why, if they can do it better and faster, then the folks at the union would really be sweating like pigs, wouldn't they? Well, they are now anyway with RTW, so it didn't really matter anyway.
My biggest gripe with city government isn't even the corruption. It is the absolute bureaucratic stupidity. Chicago is corrupt but can at least get things done. Officials in this city are too stupid, uncreative, and blase to actually accomplish anything. We have unbelievable problems and confront them as if it were 1975. Where are we with Belle Isle? Square one. The financial crisis? EM, despite knowing about it for years. This is what happens when you have a bunch of uneducated, provincial people working in city government, elected and as employees. Getting anything done at the City-County building is a nightmare. Getting anything substantial done in this city is impossible.
We need creative solutions like the ones these young people have started. Instead the powers that be would have them call somebody's cousin's never-answered desk phone to get a full voice mailbox. I know how this shit works. Been there, done that.
Meanwhile, your seating during your hour-long wait [[that's if it ever comes) for that dangerous, fart-smellin', rolling shitbox we affectionately call "a bus" around here is an overturned garbage can. Hey, at least you can count how many SMART buses will pass you while you wait. Assholes.
It is like the residency requirement thread. City council will talk about it, but never propose any substantial reforms. If I were mayor, I'd electrocute the lot of them - city council, department heads, horse-shoers - like the McPhailures they all are. Then I'd make them get off their fat asses and put some benches at the bus stops and clean up some of this freaking garbage.
"...for every one that they pick up, there will be two more out there..."
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/22...ll-be-replaced
Bench No.3 will be at Henry Ford Hospital, come Monday.
From FOX2 News:
DETROIT [[WJBK) -Studentshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png building benches by hand and putting them at bus stops where there is currently no seating say they have been told by city officials to stop.
Most people when they see something they don't like or when they feel like something just isn't right, they just complain about it. They don't turn that passion into a plan. But 22-year-old Charles Molnar and 25-year-old Kyle Bartell did.
"We're filling the void where the city kind of lacks on certain things," Bartell said.
Sadden and sick and tired of seeing people standing or sitting on the ground at the bus stop, many of them older individuals unable to have a seat because there wasn't one, that is until Bartell and Kyle and their team of volunteers from Detroit Enterprisehttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png Academy came along and built a bus stop bench of recycled wood. This project was all out of compassion for the people.
"Rebuilding the city with material that was once part of the city," Molnar said.
"We've been getting very good feedback from the general public. People love this. People enjoy it. It's convenient. That's just kind of what's been feeding us," Bartell said.
There is now a second bench at Trumbull and Grand River. We're told this is what happened after the first.
"DDOT does not want our bus stop benches. They said that they did not approve them, and that they're going to start removing them," Molnar said. "My answer to that is we're going to keep putting them out, and for every one that they pick up, there will be two more out there and there will be one where they took it from. We're going to replace it."
Bartell and Molnar are both students at Wayne State University. They told me that they did get approval from someone at DDOT, although it was unofficial. They said they were told they could put them up. DDOT cannot technically approve it, but they won't take them down. They said they will track that person down and make him keep his word.
Read more: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/22...#ixzz2SISYW0fv