COSTA MESA – As temperatures soared to 90 degrees in Costa Mesa late Thursday morning, Mariana Aparicio stood at her normal Harbor Boulevard bus stop, wishing aloud that she could escape the oppressive sun and complaining about the lack of shade and seating.

A few weeks ago, she might have had both.

For three years, the 20-year-old Golden West College nursing student has ridden the same bus to school. But last month, her bus stop changed, when Costa Mesa removed a shelter and bench there as part of a larger citywide effort to discourage homeless people from loitering at transit stops.

Costa Mesa has budgeted $132,000 for three bus shelter replacements and 100 new “anti-vagrant” benches – seats that have bars in the middle to prevent people from lying down and that lack back rests to keep people from sitting for extended periods of time.

The city is removing benches and shelters and installing new ones at locations where there have been numerous complaints of people “taking over” bus stop rest spots, staff said.

But bus riders have begun to complain that the city is taking too long to replace some of the infrastructure it has torn out, and that public transit commuters are being unfairly affected.

Alan Stein, a 68-year-old Costa Mesa resident who says he has a disability that requires him to travel twice a week to Kaiser Permanente’s Harbor-MacArthur Medical Offices in Santa Ana, recently complained to the city after it removed a shelter and bench where he often waits.

Stein said he sometimes waits 15 to 20 minutes during his transfer to the northbound 43 bus, at a stop on the northeast corner of the intersection of Harbor and Wilson Street.

“A lot of elderly people and disabled people take that bus,” Stein said. “And now they have to stand in 90 degree weather with no protection and fewer places to sit.”

Costa Mesa has removed nine benches and four shelters at city bus stops since 2012. The city said it has replaced “a couple” so far.

“We’re only doing it where there is a chronic issue of the bus benches being taken over,” said Costa Mesa spokesman Tony Dodero. “You want to supply the amenity for people, but if (bus riders can’t use) it anyway, and it’s becoming an attractant for homeless and drug users, better to just remove it.”

Costa Mesa doesn’t own its bus stop benches and shelters, but the city, not the Orange County Transportation Authority, makes decisions about removing and replacing them.

“Anti-vagrant” benches are nothing new. They have been installed in parks and bus stops from Salt Lake City to Tokyo in recent years. On Tuesday, the Irvine City Council approved $3,000 to purchase similar benches for city property.

“The (anti-vagrant) benches will provide (a) needed amenity to legitimate transit riders and elderly,” the Costa Mesa budget reads, and will “eliminate a hazard to public health or safety.”

Costa Mesa’s recent ramped-up effort to replace bus stop benches is the city’s latest move in an ongoing attempt to make public spaces unwelcoming to homeless people. It’s also not the first to have an unintended impact on other residents.

Faced with an increase in crime and drug use around Wilson Park, Costa Mesa recently removed the park’s picnic tables and locked its bathrooms after police reported people had been shooting heroin inside the restrooms.

During a recent weekday at the park, a parent complained about the closure, saying her child had nowhere to use the bathroom. Later, a mentally disabled man spent five minutes tugging at the restroom door, ignoring people who told him it was unavailable for public use.

But city officials contend they have also worked to help homeless people: finding housing for 90 local homeless people, reconnecting another 23 with their families in other cities and paying to send them home, and forming a task force of advocates, church groups and city staff that meets weekly to discuss homeless issues.

Homeless advocate Tony Capitelli, a member of the Costa Mesa Street Team created to build relationships with the local homeless population, said the city has done some good work to help homeless people. But he also criticized city officials for “putting Band-Aids on the situation and attempting to drive homeless people out of the city,” rather than “dealing with the root issues.”

Another homeless advocate, Trellis Executive Director Ian Stevenson, said he backs Costa Mesa’s decision to remove and replace bus benches.

On Thursday, as Aparicio and other bus riders stood in the heat, waiting for the bus, one man chose to sit atop a trash can, while others stood at a distance, under the shade of a nearby McDonald’s.

Though city staff had removed the shelter and one bench from the bus stop, another bench remained. But none of the seven commuters waiting for the No. 43 bus would sit on the other side of a man who had sprawled across the seat, his bare feet extended outward, with three backpacks and a half-smoked cigar strewn around him.

The man, Jason Faith, said he was 37, originally from San Clemente, and had moved to the Costa Mesa Motor Inn two years ago with his parents and brother. When that temporary housing fell through two months ago, he began living on the streets, Faith said.

Now, waiting for a friend to arrive, Faith lamented his own state. And as the commuters boarded the bus, he complained that even though the city was pressuring him to leave the bus stop, he knew he had nowhere to go.

Contact the writer: jgraham@ocregister.com or 714-796-7960