Silly Bus Stops, volume 2

Happy New Year, everyone!  What better way to start off 2015 than with more redundancy in our bus stops!  Today, we visit Richmond @ Weslayan, just west of Greenway Plaza...

Here is this stretch of road with proposed Reimagined routes as well as bus stops...

As always, the blue bus-icons along roadways denote bus stops, and if everything worked out all-right, you should be seeing a gigantic version of my annotated map.

Currently, we are still using our old local bus network.  The Reimagined network should go live this coming June.  With our old bus network, we currently have running this particular section of Richmond the 25 Richmond & 53 Briar Forest Ltd.  East of Timmons also runs the Galleria Branch of the current 73 W. Bellfort.

With Reimagining, we will have (as currently proposed) the 48 Buffalo Speedway and the 7 Richmond.

Eastbound on Richmond from just west of Weslayan through Cummins, we've three bus stops.  Were there a streetlight at Cummins, we could reduce the number of stops to only one.  However, I see the 48 Buffalo Speedway does not continue south on Weslayan, but turns east on Richmond, thereby negating the need for the Richmond eastbound stop just west of Weslayan.

I also see there being 0.35 mile separating Weslayan from Timmons.  We can remove the Cummins stop as well, leaving the stop in front of the Sushi Wabi (and servicing the Edwards 24 among other places).  Easy access to both directions on both routes is assured as well as easy access to all sorts of businesses and destinations.  Eastbound between Cummins and Weslayan, we need only take out the stop at Cummins.

East of Cummins, we run into a low tolerance of office workers for walking.  Without question, stops in both directions at Timmons must remain (since we're gutting everything west of there), but really, do we need this stop?  (the one in front of 'Pathways for Little Feet).  I know it gets hot in Houston, but couldn't our workers walk just a little farther to help ensure the trips of thousands of other people all along Richmond is that much quicker?

This sort of redundancy plagues our system.  It plagues the trips of every local bus rider.  It forces our Operators to have to start, stop, and brake far-more often than they should, which brings on wear and tear on our buses, which costs METRO more and more money.

Keeping bus stops in front of retirement homes, large houses of worship, major shopping areas, and places where the physically-challenged congregate and/or live en-masse, a full-scale and ruthless bus-stop consolidation is in order.