Traffic passes a newly installed bus shelter along Southmost Road on Wednesday in Brownsville. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald)
Brownsville Metro is seeking individuals or organizations that would like to adopt a bus stop to help keep the city clean and beautiful.
The “Adopt A Stop” gives the public the chance to assist in keeping the bus stops clean of litter, graffiti, and vandalism, said Victoria Leal, grants and public outreach coordinator for BMetro Multimodal Transportation. There is no fee to participate.
Leal said several groups and members of the public have already called and expressed interest in adopting a bus stop.
“Anybody could participate, it doesn’t have to be a group, organization, or company. It could be one person, a family, anybody is welcome to participate,” Leal said.
BMetro officials have seen other cities running similar programs, and this had been something BMetro staff had been thinking about for the past year.
“ Basically we do have people who maintain our bus stops, we do have our maintenance crew, but since we have so many bus stops but there are only so many hours in the day that it takes a while for our maintenance to get to each bus stop in a certain amount of hours, so we just want to have the public be able to participate in the community and help us maintain the livelihood and beautification of our bus stops in Brownsville,” Leal said.
Those volunteering to adopt a bus stop will be provided with startup kits that include trash bags, gloves, and safety vest. They will remove litter, debris from their bus stop once a week and report any graffiti or vandalism.
“We do encourage people to not clean the graffiti themselves because we want to do that ourselves and we don’t want them to put themselves in danger. Basically, what they will be doing is making sure the trash is removed and just making sure it looks pretty and then reporting anything that is happening at the bus stop to us,”she said.
The city has about 600 bus stops and of that number 100 of them will have shelters. The organizations or individuals can adopt either one.
After a few months of commitment, those sponsoring a bus stop will receive a sign at the bus stop showing they adopted it, and after one year they will receive a certificate and recognition on all social media and Brownsville Metro, Leal said. “They will be getting a plaque on the actual bus stop.”
Anyone wanting to adopt a bus stop can reach Victoria Leal at (956) 541-4881 or [email protected]
“We encourage everyone to come out and we also appreciate everyone who has reached out to us. We do know it’s hard to maintain the areas so we do try our best, and that’s why we would just love the help of the public to help us maintain the bus stops as well as giving back to the community,” Leal said.
