JADE CAMPOS | LNP Staff Writer
A downtown Columbia bus shelter was removed in March after borough officials determined it had become a public safety issue.
Police Chief Jack Brommer said the borough received multiple reports of human feces at the Locust Street shelter in addition to a growing amount of litter. Brommer contacted the South Central Transit Authority, which operates the bus route, to assess the state of the bus shelter. Ultimately, he said, officials agreed the shelter was in poor condition.
An SCTA statement shared online by the borough resident who runs the Columbia Spy blog, noted Brommer requested SCTA remove the shelter because of “vagrancy, safety and hygiene issues.”
“I think the shelter itself was limited in size and didn’t really accommodate the number of people using the bus stop,” Brommer said. He added that he told SCTA that one solution could be to relocate the shelter.
The bus shelter was erected 20 years ago, Brommer said, and had not been properly maintained. Maintenance fell to SCTA, though Brommer said the authority contracted workers who did an “insufficient” job that left borough staff cleaning up afterwards.
Greg Downing, SCTA executive director, said the shelter was removed at the borough’s suggestion. He said a cleaning service stopped by the shelter once a week, but the conditions would become so bad in the interim that people wouldn’t wait inside of the shelter unless it was raining.
Brommer said the borough would be open to adding a new shelter at the stop in the future, though nothing is concrete. He noted that buses still stop at the location, which has two benches.
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