GerritsenBeach.net had been tracking the young life of a new bus shelter at Gerritsen and Cyrus in Brooklyn. Shortly after it was completed, someone tagged it and then shattered much of the glass. Then GerritsenBeach.net reported:
Today we found it with a note on it. Asking parents to ask their kids, who and why! We agree.
We asked around, and we gathered that the ones causing the bus shelter destruction are most likely the pre-teen crowd.
CityRoom then takes up the story and gives it a happy ending: The Department of Transportation sent a crew to fix the shelter shortly after. Someone had called 311 about the damaged shelter, but assistant commissioner Kerry Gould-Schmidt said, "The shelters are inspected twice a week by the department’s contractors and sample inspections are completed by D.O.T. field staff, but the more eyes on the shelters the better.”
Which is great news. But we have one quibble - we hate to say it, but 311 isn't always that efficient. We actually called 311 yesterday to report that a bus shelter at 61st Street and Broadway needed some repair (nothing as terrible as the Gerritsen Beach shelter; the bus shelter bench outside the Trump International was missing a bolt or something) and that took about ten times longer than it should have. The 311 operator initially told us that requests for bus shelters were made through the Department of Transportation; no, no, we said, "The bus shelter's bench is damaged." But we stuck with the call and made the report.
Photographs by GerritsenBeach.net
