Bus Shelters Don’t Protect You, They Slowly Cook You

If you’ve ever tried to ride the bus during summer, you know firsthand that a bus stop is essentially an oversized convection oven that roasts you as you wait.

Even if it’s been designed to keep you cool with ventilation slots that allow a breeze to pass through and with tinted glass that protects against the sun, they still somehow bake you alive.

That feeling is not just your imagination, either. According to new research, that’s exactly what seems to be happening.

Scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston studied 17 Houston bus stops during sweltering Texas heat. Temperatures were somewhere between 95 and 103 degrees Fahrenheit. They found that some bus shelters, depending on their design, actually made heat stress worse.

Some Bus Shelters Are Ovens That Are Cooking You As You Wait

They used a unit of measurement called Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), which accounts for temperature, humidity, and wind. The worst offenders were shelters with acrylic walls and aluminum frames. These things trap heat like a microwave, raising the WBGT inside them by over five degrees compared to just standing out in the sun.

Meanwhile, bus stops that were cooled by the shade of a nearby tree consistently cooled things down by about six degrees. That’s on par with what the team determined was the best shelter design: one with a stainless steel frame, roof, and glass walls. The lesson? Stop trying to out-design nature and just plant more trees.

Co-author Kevin Lanza summed it up nicely: Heat stress is more than a temperature; it’s solar radiation, humidity, and being stuck in a translucent oven at 1 p.m. in Houston.

The next time you’re sweating through your clothes at a bus stop, remember that futuristic shelter might look like a cool oasis in the hot summer sun, but the thing might as well have been explicitly designed to turn you into a giant rotisserie chicken. Meanwhile, trees don’t need to be air-conditioned. They also don’t trap radiation, and they don’t restrict airflow.