Valley Metro was awarded grant money a year ago to equip a busy bus stop near the Valley View Walmart with a lighted shelter and wheelchair ramp, but riders still wait at the side of the road because of project delays.
Striving to go forward, bus system officials endorsed a contractor’s $255,000 construction bid exactly a year ago, on Sept. 9, 2016. But the contractor was released after the project stalled over an issue of consent, said Valley Metro general manager Carl Palmer.
“I cannot get approval from mall management,” Palmer said.
CBL & Associates Properties in Tennessee, the owner of Valley View Mall, said it has the plan under review.
The case for the shelter is clear to Audrey Humphrey, a 72-year-old retiree who takes the bus to Walmart about once a week. The bus stop she uses is 90 feet from the store’s lawn and garden entrance.
“You have nowhere to huddle,” Humphrey said.
Of the 800 stops in the Valley Metro system, 14 have a shelter, bus officials said. Most stops are unimproved and many of them “lack the appropriate pedestrian infrastructure for people to access the bus stop or to wait for the bus in a safe or comfortable place,” according to a 2013 study of bus stop accessibility issues written for the Roanoke Valley Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.
“The challenge is compounded for people with disabilities,” according to the study, which tied its recommendations to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The study found the Valley View Walmart stop, fourth in overall use in the Valley Metro system, “long” in need of improvements. It has no seating, shelter or wheelchair ramp. Bus patrons stand on the grass or gravel or on a concrete slab that encloses underground utilities.
The state and federal governments awarded Valley Metro a $250,000 grant in 2010 to pay for bus stop shelters.
In 2014, after Walmart agreed that Valley Metro could put a shelter and ramp on its land, the bus system brought in an architectural engineering firm to create a design. The proposed changes would enclose 200 square feet of space under a shelter linked to Walmart’s parking lot by a ramp for walking that would double as a wheelchair route.
Shoppers using carts could drop them off in a cart corral before retiring to a bench in the shelter, which would have solar-powered lights.
The spot picked out is at the edge of the mall ring road used by the bus and near the existing bus stop.
In September 2016, bus system officials received a second grant for bus stop improvement specific to the Walmart project, this one nearly $62,000, and settled on a builder and $255,000 price for the job. Officials expected completion of the shelter by February 2017.
But a change requested by Walmart shifted the project partially onto land that belongs to Sears, Palmer said. The revised plan went out for approval by the mall and Sears in February, he said. Palmer said the wait for approvals grew to the point he had to release the builder.
Palmer said the bus system, which has a $10 million budget and provides more than 2 million trips a year, has done everything it can to advance the project. The hold-up isn’t on his end, he said.
On the other hand, CBL officials “haven’t said ‘no,’ ” said Sherman Stovall, assistant city manager. The project is “just going through the hurdles that have to be cleared.”
Sears, an anchor tenant at the mall, has not reviewed the shelter proposal and won’t until after receiving a recommendation from the mall, Sears spokesman Howard Riefs said.
Roanoke Valley public transit advocates such as Cristina Finch recall recommending the shelter four years ago.
“It’s really unfortunate how big a challenge that location has been,” said Finch, the director of transportation at the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission. She spearheaded the bus stop accessibility study.
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