A rendering of a proposed bike share station in front of the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.

Whenever I leave my apartment for a stroll around my neighborhood, I walk past a former bus route. The B71 used to run, now and then when it felt like it, up and down Union St., and the CEMUSA shelter sits unused around the corner. Now, though, the city could find a use for these useless structures.

The bus shelters that are remaining on now-defunct bus lines are pretty much the pinnacle in useless infrastructure. Unless one believes the MTA is going to one day restore those bus lines — an unlikely proposition that would still be years off — the shelters serve only to satisfy an advertising agreement the city has signed with CEMUSA. They take up valuable sidewalk space, burn bright in the night sky and exist only to serve ads in high-traffic neighborhoods. What’s the point?

Today’s useless structures could have a purpose tomorrow for the city is starting a new initiative that could change the way we get around. The short of it is bike share. As Janette Sadik-Khan and city politicians announced yesterday, the city has signed an agreement with Alta Bicycle Share for an extensive bike share network. Included in this plan are 600 bike-share stations and 10,000 bikes. It would be, as Streetsblog noted, “a network of comparable size and density to bike-share systems in cities like London and Paris.”

The initial reaction from transportation advocates who have long fought for such a program focused on the integration of the bike network into the rest of the city’s public transit infrastructure. “Bike share will be the latest and greatest addition to New York’s menu of transportation choices,” Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, said in a statement. “A subway or bus trip is rarely door-to-door and New Yorkers make hundreds of thousands of short trips a day that could benefit from the convenience of a public bicycle. This affordable and practical transit choice will empower New Yorkers with a new freedom of mobility and will harness the potential of bicycling to make our lives easier.”

Kate Slevin, from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, issued a statement with a similar sentiment. “In cities like Washington, people use bike share to get to the train station, pick up the groceries, and visit that park or restaurant that was always a little too far of a walk,” she said. “Bike share will give New Yorkers another way to get around and improve everyone’s quality of life.”

The bike share, in other words, will complement the subways and buses, but how? To include the public as much as possible in the planning process, DOT has opened up a website asking for the public to request bike-share locations, and nearly every corner in Brooklyn and Manhattan seems to be claimed already. People clearly want access to bikes.

A clear answer came to me immediately, and I posted it to Twitter yesterday morning: “The obvious solution for bike share stations would be to use abandoned bus shelters along axed routes.” These shelters exist already, and many of them are along well-established routes. The city doesn’t have to use every bus shelter, but those, for instance, along Union St. would be ideal for cross-Brooklyn bicyclists. Reactivating wilting infrastructures whose only current purpose is to serve ads could do wonders for the streetscape.

Those responding to my plan questioned the location. It’s better to have bike share kiosks near major retail locations, of course, but the point of the bike share is to reach all neighborhoods. With 600 stations — that’s over 130 more than the number of subway stations in the city — DOT can blanket residential neighborhoods as well as key retail hubs, and the shelters, especially those at key intersections, provide them with a clear location.

As proponents have noted, the city will have to tred carefully over the next few months. The media is always skeptical of bike initiatives, and even though this bike share program will be paid for via private contributions and user fees, it’s going to arouse those who want to keep fighting the battle for city space between cars and everyone else. Once the fervor dies down, though, and the city begins to whittle down the list of bike share locations, they can look to former bus routes for guidance. The bikes can’t fill the holes left by the service cuts, but it’s a start.

A glimpse at the Queens bus map shows intricate lines in overlapping colors but little usable information.

An article in last week’s Queens Courier made me laugh. “Queens Buses Lack Helpful Maps,” the headline read. Of course, Queens buses aren’t the only surface vehicles suffering from a map deficit. Have you ever tried to use an MTA bus map?

The article itself covers some familiar territory. The maps are hard to read; drivers don’t announce enough stops or connecting services; and bus arrival times are a mystery. Take a read right here. The big news seems to be that the MTA is hoping to beef up the information offering on buses. Says The Courier:

Traveling on MTA buses in Queens is dizzying for even the most experienced commuters – let alone the every day New Yorker. On most Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) buses, the only route indicator is a map located directly behind the driver’s seat.

The red, green and blue lines that wind and swerve across the borough’s bus map look like a board game gone terribly wrong. For most bus riders, the map is the only way to navigate neighborhoods unknown to them, and the over 100 lines that operate throughout Queens further complicate their commutes…In compliance with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the MTA requires bus drivers to announce bus stops at “transfer points, major intersections and terminal arrivals, as well as any stop requested by a customer,” said Charles Seaton, an MTA spokesperson.

In many cases, there are vandalized and torn maps or no map at all. Buses also lack route identification, providing riders with little to no assistance in planning their trips…According to Seaton, the authority has plans for audio and visual improvements, which will follow the MTA protocol for bus stop announcements. Riders can also use their phones to find directions from online services such as Google Maps and Hopstop.com.

The problem is one of familiarity. Those who know the Queens bus system, for instance, can use the map to supplement their own knowledge. A quick glance will reveal approximately where various routes intersect with each other and where they provide connections to nearby subways.

Problems arise, however, for those who aren’t regular users well versed in the ways of the map. The current MTA bus maps make planning a trip on the fly awfully difficult. Stops aren’t delineated, and frequencies are nowhere to be found. While the MTA has relied on apps to fill the information gap, those riders without the ability to check their phones will be left guessing or waiting if they don’t opt to drive instead.

Personally, I know these pains quite well. I’m very familiar with buses in Manhattan as my parents allowed me to take buses long before I could take the subway on my own, and I have a working familiarity with some Brooklyn bus routes. But if I’m going somewhere new and considering the bus, I’ll have to meticulously plan the route ahead of time or use my phone while out. The current maps, in their PDF or physical form, are a mess of contrasting colors, overlapping route lines and bare outlines

Better solutions are out there. Cap’n Transit has explored the idea of frequency maps for bus service, and others have taken a stab at streamlining the visual presentation. Yet when the MTA overhauls its maps, the subway diagram gets some cosmetic upgrades while the bus maps are left to their own confusing devices. As one rider — Matt Klopfer of Glendale — said to the Queens Courier, “It is very difficult to figure out where you’re going, when to get off and whether you’ve passed your stop or not once you’re on the bus. You need a magnifying glass and a college degree to both read and understand the map that is provided on the bus.”