In Petaling Jaya today, we have the World’s Most Useless Bus-stops. Useless because in typical Malaysian style, these bus-shelters were designed keeping in mind the Malaysian philosophy of ‘style over substance’.

The bus-stops in question (below) can be found scattered throughout Petaling Jaya and no doubt their designers the Petaling Jaya City Council and Parisign Sdn Bhd are very proud of this aesthetic achievement.

They do, indeed, fulfill one of the prerequisites of good design in that they are aesthetically pleasing but look, if we want good design we will go Guggenheim Museum. While waiting for the next bus, however, we would like a bus-shelter that fulfills the function of a bus-shelter.

How difficult can it be to design a working bus-shelter?

Well, judging from the result as exhibited by these PJ bus-stops, the exercise is very difficult indeed. So difficult that they completely failed! Or maybe they thought they succeeded and thereby gleefully foisted their so-called ‘bus-shelters’ onto the public.

Nevertheless, anyone with half-a-brain and no primary school education would be able to tell instantly that these bus-shelters are, well, stupidly designed. Those with higher inclinations will be bugged by a Zen-like conundrum - ‘Why set out to design and build something which serves absolutely no purpose at all?’ Art for art’s sake is not what public transport users are looking for right now, thank you very much.

But I may be mistaken. Our Great Glorious Government (3G) has been advocating us to appreciate the arts more and this may be the MBPJ’s way of ‘educating’ us plebeians on the higher forms of art. Well, I can tell them where to put it...

Now, what is a bus-shelter supposed to do? (nope, this is not a trick question). Well, of course, firstly, it is supposed to indicate a spot where a bus may stop and drop off or pick up passengers. Elementary. And secondly, (not rocket science this) it is supposed to provide a reasonable amount of protection from the elements for bus users waiting there for buses.

Apparently, the designers of these PJ bus-shelters found the second point extremely difficult to grasp. The result? Look at their bus-shelter - the roof is way too high, god, almost eight feet from the ground! What on earth for?

A lower secondary kid will tell you that the higher the roof, the less protection you will get either from the sun or the rain. Except when it is directly overhead, the sun is always at an angle. So these bus-shelters with a high roof are useless. Depending on their location, you get the full brunt of the sun until about 11.30am. Or similarly from after noon till evening. A tree gives better shelter than this bus-shelter.

And if you thought you would be able to get some respite from the heat at around about noon, well, get ready for the masterstroke - the roof is made out of some perspex-like material which still lets through some light and a lot of heat.

Brilliant. What the point of a bus shelter if you still need an umbrella? Just have either one or the other. Having both is redundancy.

Furthermore, I suppose to emphasise the ‘oh-look-how-creative-we-are’ angle, the narrow three-feet roof rises upwards a few inches, mockingly asking you to figure out its role.

But wait. Maybe this bus-shelter is more of a ‘wet-design’, I hear you say. Here again, logic and commonsense seem to have been genetically absent. Stand under this bus-shelter during even a light shower and you will get wet. No prizes for guessing why.

Yup, the absurdly high and ridiculously narrow roof which further slants upwards with virtually no protection at the sides save for two-feet glass panels of either side of the bus-stop. It’s no-win situation either way for a hapless public.

Have we sunk so low that today we can’t even design a simple, functional bus-shelter? What has happened? More troubling is that MBPJ and Parisign could see nothing wrong with these bus-shelters. And why were public transport users not consulted? Oh, forgive me, what am I talking. Public consultation indeed. In our dreams.

This bus-shelter is a microcosm of our dear country. Time invested and money spent but nothing functions. But it is ‘Malaysia Boleh’ all the way meaning they either can’t see or they don’t know or they don’t care or they don’t have the ability to comprehend what’s going on. Or a simply a case of ‘our advertisers’ money is more important and to hell with the public’.

The result? Well, the ‘World’s Most Useless Bus Shelter’. But then again, when you have the ‘World’s Most Useless Bus Service’, why not get something to complement it?