Can I suggest a new TfL design competition?

With the ‘design a new bus for London’ competition now closed it seems timely to suggest a competition to redesign another part of TfL’s kit – the temporary bus stop.

Last week I needed to catch a bus on an unfamiliar route but when I got to the stop it was closed owing to yards of road works. Some way up the pavement was a temporary bus stop but the design of these things seems totally unaltered from my childhood, they’re still free standing metal ‘lollipops’ with no useful information on them and given the absence of any signage or TfL staff it was impossible to know for certain if my bus was coming to the stop or being diverted.

Almost a week later the road works are still taking place so the ‘temporary’ stop is having a pretty lengthy outing.

Waiting at one of the current temporary stops is like a trip back to an era of public transport I thought we’d left behind.  Is it really impossible to deploy a sturdier stop with a shelter (pretty useful this time of year) and useful route and time of arrival information?