Ghost Bus Stops

popjellyfish's picture

I got to talking with Nova about the idea of ghost bus stops. Of seeing if there are any stops from dead bus lines up and lying around. So much could be done with them. They're just shrines/altars waiting to be made, packed with a wealth of energy.

Then I got the idea of making a ghost bus line myself. It's purely theoretical since it would probably cost a nice amount of dough to do, but the basic idea would be thus: you map out a route through the city meeting your needs. Maybe you want to reroute energy from city center to a given area to make it flourish. Or maybe you want to hardwire a 93 current, say, throughout the city. You construct bus stops(similar but much more straightforward to the idea of street altars), spacing them out for however far apart you feel is necessary or can afford. Make bus stop posts that have the line number on them. Mark it line 93, or 23, or whatever number you feel strongly about. Or a fictional name for your space. "New Alamut", for an example of a current being fed in the main SE of Portland. They can look as professional as you can afford to make them, maybe mimicking your cities bus stops, with benches and poles for line markers. Maybe do that, but paint them white to indicate their ghostliness(similar to the ghost bikes around the city). Or if you can't afford, representational ones that can still be identified as a bus stop. Walk/bike/drive the length of the host bus line as much as possible to feed it. Sit at some of the stops when you can and empower them.

I like this idea of literally hardwiring one's environment as a form of reality hacking. Thoughts? Hate Mail? Yawn?

bus stops

halleyween's picture

I swear that someone is doing that already. There is a sign on NE Alberta Street near the MLK crossroads. It says "Temporary Bus Stop" but it has been there for the last month and there is no number and no buses have actually stopped there.

My personal opinion was that TriMet was given money as long as they have a certain amount of bus stops per area, so they just started arbitrarily putting up bus stop signs so that they could get a grant or whatever. . . .

totally not even related to you blog, which was actually a kind of cool idea.