Simone Sheats couldn’t tell heat was on in the first place.
Sheats, a high school student, waits inside one of the city’s five new downtown heated bus shelters, outside 55 Church St., every day on her way home to Hamden from Wilbur Cross. She said Thursday she wouldn’t have known that the shelters are heated if not for a sign staring her in the face, saying so.
“When the air comes in, it just blows right out,” she said.
That’s about to change. The city’s tweaking the shelters to make the heat work better.
City Engineer Richard Miller said he has ordered a newly designed part to modify the heater “to allow for a little more air flow and temperature.” If it works well, he’ll add it to another one on the block.
The problem there is the north wind; when it’s blowing down Church Street, it blows the heat away with it. “It’s not as comfortable as I’d like it to be.”
Meanwhile, Miller has ordered two pieces of specialty glass for two other shelters, on the Green, to seal openings that allow hot air to escape. The glass pieces will cost a total of $3,318.90, he said. (He didn’t have a figure yet for the new heater part for the other shelter.)
The first of the shelters was completed last October. (Click here to read a story detailing the project.)
Miller stressed that such “tweaking” is understandable when trying out a new design like the heated bus shelters. He said Thompson Architects did a good job in designing the overall $1.15 million set of shelters.
“It is very innovative. Most places that have tried to provide heat in the shelters “ have had trouble because they use infrared systems, which get vandalized. New Haven decided to work with newly designed air blowers instead. They turn on when people enter the shelters whenever the temperature drops below 50 degrees.
Some people may have had unrealistic expectations about how hot the shelters would get, Miller said. They’re not designed to “go up to 70 degrees,” but rather to take the chill off. They’re still open to the elements, not an enclosed, confined room.
Still, Miller said, he’d like to capture more of the heat through the improvements.
Told the news, Sheats was unimpressed.
“It’s kind of too late,” she said. “They should have thought of that when it first opened.”