As if to show that even small cities can waste gobs of money on transit infrastructure, Grants Pass, Oregon (population 35,000) recently debated the wisdom of spending more than $100,000 each for several modest three-seat bus shelters to serve the Josephine County Transit system. As The Oregonian notes, this is roughly the cost of building a modest three-bedroom, two-bath home, not counting the land.
The story began when Grants Pass decided to boost transit ridership by building five bus shelters using federal Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality (CMAQ) funds. Under state and federal rules, the city did not have any engineers who were considered qualified to design such shelters, so the city had to hire an outside consultant. The shelters designed by the consultant were originally expected to cost $76,000 apiece, but due to cost overruns the cost rose to $106,000. By comparison, the nearby city of Roseburg, Oregon (population 21,000) built similar (though perhaps not quite as pretty) shelters for $7,000 to $11,000 each.
