When I first saw a photo of this living green roof in Downtown Buffalo, I thought that someone had done a good job in Photoshopping. I assumed that the project was a proposal rather than a finished product. I'm happy to say that I was wrong. Earlier this morning I paid a visit to the NFTA bus shelter to see what if I could find any signs of the living roof, and there it was... a functioning green roof on top of the shelter at Ellicott and Division. When I got home I checked out eco_logic STUDIO's Facebook page and found some photos of the roof-in-progress (seen here).
"A demonstration project for NFTA utilizing an existing bus shelter. In the last year NFTA has installed about 100 PV (photovoltaics) systems on bus shelters. This is the first green (living) roof!" - eco_logic STUDIO
I IMd Kevin Connors moments ago to learn more about the project and he wrote, "It was something Mike Jackson, sustainability officer at Milkbone proposed to ED Minkel at NFTA. He then proposed it to Dave Lanfear (Green Top) and me, and we put together a presentation for a group at NFTA. We then worked a long while on how to go about doing it, initially as a design-build entity, Natural Building Systems."
The benefits of the living roof at the bus shelter range from oxygenation to pollution absorption to cooling measures to rain retention... though the size of this particular roof is "largely symbolic" says Connors. "NFTA has done some very extreme green things at the airport, with glycol treatment. They also covered the root of the Frontier Bus Garage with PVs. We wanted to promote green infrastructure, but we also really liked the challenge of covering one of these. We worked very collaboratively to do the design, but Dave has done a lot of research into soil mixes, especially using recycled materials. We had to do a load test on the polycarbonate, because the literature didnt go that high. Just got everything together on Friday."
^Hybrid bus next to the living green roof...
Photos: Mix of Buffalo Rising and eco_logic STUDIO
Looks great. Now if they would only bring back the nice contemporary bus shelters from a few years ago, instead of the garish blue ones, we'd really be looking good.
Probably because the NFTA is broke, and they realize that contemporary bus shelters won't do squat for a city with much more pressing issues.
Every city in history has had "more pressing issues". Buffalo should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. This is why we have different departments and authorities.
Also, bus shelters are not luxury items. Even a tight budget should include money for building and maintaining bus shelters. If we must have them, why not do the job right?
I think the company installs the shelter and then gets the proceeds from selling ads.
So NFTA doesn't pay for them or own them. You know one of those "win - win" situations people like to talk about.
This was exactly my thought. That is the tackiest blue and these shelters are dumpy looking.