Students at UBC have developed the Tree Canopy Bus Shelter, an interdisciplinary project that combines sustainability and street infrastructure providing shelters that serve ecological functions.
An interdisciplinary team of UBC students combine sustainability and street furniture, with the support of the SEEDS Sustainability Program, to provide ecological services. They are now reaching out to the public to fund their first prototype to be built on the UBC campus.
A group of 9 students in film, engineering, landscape architecture and urban forestry worked together with several community partners to design a prototype for bus shelters with green roofs that will be used to research the value of small, replicable structures that can slow down storm water in dense urban areas.
“We are not just building bus shelters with a rain garden, we are building hubs of interdisciplinary growth and we want to present you with the opportunity to invest in cities that behave like ecosystems” said Tabinda Shah, one of the students involved in the Tree Canopy project.
Krista Falkner, transportation engineer at Campus and Community Planning gave some detail on the future of the project. “Although currently envisioned to be a pilot program, the shelters could be in place longer to satisfy other pick-up and drop-off needs such as ride hailing like Lyft and Uber when the bus stops get moved into the new transit exchange in 2019.”
The current goal is to build one bus shelter, which would be located on Wesbrook Mall, and would provide weather protection to the bus stops there as well as add some greenery to an otherwise hardscaped area. Currently, the students, faculty and staff involved are trying to secure funding for the construction of one Tree Canopy Bus Shelter, $180,000 would be required for the completion of three bus shelters, and this would also enable the structures to provide a research purpose to the University.
Learn how you can support this innovative and sustainable project and donate now at crowdfundraising.ubc.ca.