Where have all the benches gone, long time passing?
Where have all the benches gone, long time ago?
Here is a major newsflash, that seems to have gone unnoticed by most, but all the benches in the city bus shelters having gone missing. One by one. It is an unsolved mystery.
Does the city know? Where have they gone? The truth must be out there somewhere.
Are some vandals stealing them? No one knows. But you would think, a vandal walking down the street carrying a metal bench under his or her arm, would be noticed by someone. Maybe it is a nefarious gang of scrap metal thieves stealing them late at night in a well orchestrated heist? And let’s not rule out aliens who may be taking them as souvenirs of the planet we call earth. If you think this is strange, just consider all the things humans will take, which is a polite way of saying steal, as souvenirs.
Does the city know their benches are going missing? Well surely a bus driver or city employee would have noticed by now that the benches are gone and surely the city would put out an all points bulletin because I bet those benches aren’t cheap. This leads one to speculate that it is the city itself removing them, but without telling anyone why. Which of course begs the question, why? If they have a reason, why haven’t they communicated it to people. Also, what is to happen to these benches now. Do they end up in the dump or the scrap metal yard and at what cost? Maybe the city is planning to raffle them off.
People waiting for a bus, now have no choice but to stand and wait. Stand and wait in the summer heat and the winters cold. Stand and wait for five, ten, twenty minutes or more. It may not sound like much of a hardship to some people, but it is for others.
If you happen to be a senior, pregnant or carrying heavy shopping bags, standing still for ten minutes can seem like a very long time indeed. In fact, Wikipedia says that standing in one position for over 8 minutes is bad for your health. When I was younger, I might have scoffed at this idea, but as a senior I get it. Standing is not as much fun as it used to be. To stand in a bus shelter waiting for any length of time could be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment to some. So why is the city, the bus company or whoever is removing the benches, doing this? This is affecting the health, comfort and well being of people and shouldn’t have been done with some consideration and dare I say consultation.
Maybe the city has a reasonable reason for removing the benches if they are indeed the ones taking them, but they certainly have not bothered to confide it to the long-suffering public. Also, when they make decisions like this, they should take the comfort and well being of those affected into consideration. We live in a land of summer and winter extremes. So maybe we should rethink just what type of bus shelter we want and need.
Maybe the bus shelters should have a little heat in winter. I know when I lived at Northlands, often in the winter if it was too cold for my truck to run, I would walk downtown rather than stand and wait for a bus, because walking at least I stayed warm. So, a little heat would be nice and many of the shelters could be attached to existing buildings. Lots of furniture at the dump, so they could have couches and easy chairs rather then hard metal benches.
The bush shelters could be turned into places that the waiting public find pleasant for a few minutes while waiting for their ride. Who designed them? They look like some sort of medieval plexiglass torture chamber. Nothing that a tourist might want to snap a photograph of. So back to the song. Where have all the benches gone? Probably removed by the city, everyone. When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?