The woebegone bus stop is on a traffic island along Cambridge Street near Soldiers Field Road, where tufts of weeds and grass poke through the cracked sidewalk like tiny arms reaching for help. Until transit officials rushed to fix it Thursday, the sign was upside-down, clinging to a pole by a single bolt.
This week the desolate spot, littered with bits of trash and rocks, came close to the dubious honor of being crowned “America’s sorriest’’ place to wait for a public transit ride.
The national transportation website, Streetsblog USA, launched a March Madness-style bracket in July, pitting 16 equally wretched contenders from across the country against one another.
The Route 64 bus stop made it to the “Final Four’’ of the quirky competition before it was ousted by one in Silver Spring, Md. In earlier rounds, the stop beat out a stop in Lawrence, N.Y, on “an extremely busy and congested road with no shoulder.’’ It also bested a stop in Henrietta, N.Y., during the “Elite Eight’’ round.
The MBTA stop stands on an island between streams of cars departing the Massachusetts Turnpike, headed toward Allston, and two lanes of vehicles zipping up Cambridge Street from Soldiers Field Road or the River Street Bridge, in Cambridge.
Angie Schmitt, Streetsblog’s editor, said the T’s bus stop lost to Silver Spring by a 399-122 vote of the site’s readers. The information about the Route 64 stop had been submitted by an anonymous user who claimed to be from the Boston area.
Schmitt said she started the bracket to show “how terrible the conditions are for many people who rely on buses’’ to get around.
“We hope it gets people to see these places with fresh eyes,’’ she said. “A lot of the stops in our contest were not just uncomfortable or degrading, but outright dangerous — by busy roads with no sidewalks and no crosswalks.’’
The Route 64 stop, which is across multiple lanes of traffic from the Doubletree Suites by Hilton Hotel, seemed to fit the bill, according to the unnamed person who submitted it for consideration for the contest.
“The stop is on a median island surrounded by on-and-off ramps to the Mass. Pike, and the 5-lane Cambridge Street, which has no crosswalks and no curb cuts,’’ the person wrote. “There is no shelter from the elements, and in the winter snow gets plowed onto the sidewalk, which is never shoveled.’’
The stop is accessible by crossing over the River Street Bridge, then walking down a sidewalk peppered with orange reflective traffic drums and plastic bollards.
According to MBTA officials, the stop isn’t used very often. Joe Pesaturo, a spokesman for the agency, said that last fall, an average of three people per weekday boarded buses there.
When asked about the stop’s odd placement along Cambridge Street, he admitted the location is not ideal.
“But there doesn’t appear to be a better alternative in the immediate vicinity,’’ Pesaturo said in an e-mail.
Pesaturo said he had asked the MBTA’s customer service employees to search through five years of records to see if the agency had received any complaints about the stop.
“They found none,’’ he said.
Hours after the Globe published a story about the sign online, MBTA workers fixed the dangling sign, whose post was attached to another post by a liberal application of tape.
Boston officials said the small parcel where the stop is located is under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Officials from MassDOT did not immediately return a request for comment.
A single bus passed by the stop early in the morning, as a Globe reporter stood waiting to see if any passengers would materialize.
Another Route 64 bus driver, who was waiting at a red light on the other side of Cambridge Street but said he was not authorized to give his name, said he very rarely picks people up at the stop. He said it’s mostly used by hotel employees or guests.
Although this particular spot was among the four finalists for “sorriest bus stop,’’ the driver said that in his opinion, it was not so bad.
Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.
