Monthly Archives: July 2012

Wayfinding challenges for WMATA’s Rush Plus

WMATA’s recent service change, branded as Rush Plus (probably over-promising things just a bit as “rush hour reinvented”), involved deviating from Metro’s fairly straightforward delineation of lines and services via color.  Metro’s increasingly complicated service pattern is getting to the point of requiring a similarly robust nomenclature for services.

When a rider speaks of the Red Line, they refer not just to a set of tracks but also the service that operates on them.  Even this wasn’t perfect, as many Red Line trains wouldn’t operate for the full line – they would short-turn at Grosvenor or Silver Spring.  GGW’s Metro Map contest identified each of the separate services Metro regularly runs, counting ten current services, plus the future Silver Line.  Ten services is obviously more than the five colors on Metro’s map.

More problematic is the fact that color and line terminus are no longer paired.  Yellow line trains can terminate at both Franconia-Springfield and Huntington; Orange line trains can terminate at both Largo and New Carrollton.

When devising a new map to show these service changes and to prepare for the introduction of the Silver Line, Metro opted to keep the map (and service nomenclature) that riders know well the same.  However, the increasingly complex service pattern demands nomenclature to match.

WMATA’s move towards using colored bullets to help identify train services helps:

However, those bullets still only identify the all-day services, not the ‘Rush Plus’ services.  WMATA’s in-station signage uses something else:

YL Rush Only service bullet, GR bullet. CC image from justgrimes.

The striping within the bullet matches the pattern for such services on Metro’s new map, but it just doesn’t read well on in-station signage:

Rush Plus signage at Gallery Place-Chinatown. Photo by author.

From afar (or in the above case, just standing at the platform), you can’t tell the difference between the rush-only YL bullet and the regular service YL bullet.  Which means that the bullet isn’t useful for wayfinding if the rider still needs to focus on their terminal destination.  A different rush-only YL bullet adds nothing.

One potential solution would be to take a lesson from a system that has lots of different services, operating on different lines (both are distinct concepts) – New York.  Differentiation among similarly routed services can be accomplished via graphical means.

    

For some rush-only, peak-direction-only services, New York’s diamond bullets might work as an example for Metro’s rush-only services. Regular Orange Line trains [identified as (OR) in shorthand] would go to New Carrollton, while rush-only trains [identified with a diamond <OR> bullet] would go to Largo.

This wouldn’t solve all of Metro’s service naming challenges – the fact that some rush-only services bring new service to places (like more trains to Largo) while other services do not (how most Yellow trains at the peak end at Mount Vernon Square, not the ‘regular’ listed terminus of Fort Totten) and that some service patterns are not rush-only (short-turning trains on the Red Line at Grosvenor and Silver Spring) makes a simple switch difficult. Still, there’s a need to change.

This isn’t the first time this issue has popped up, and so long as Metro’s services are getting more (and not less) complex, it won’t be going away anytime soon.

Streetcar lessons from France

Paris T3 - image from wikipedia - note the seven-segment vehicle, dedicated right of way, and grass tracks.

Last month, Yonah Freemark’s post on the rapid expansion of tramways in France caught my eye.  These systems offer several key lessons for the streetcar projects popping up across the US, as well as here in DC. The thinking is to make the tram different from just a streetcar – a transit option that isn’t much different from a bus in terms of geometry.

In many ways, this is about further blurring the already fuzzy distinction between light rail and a streetcar.

Some key takeways:

Give transit the edge:  For most cases, this would mean putting transit in a dedicated right of way.  Taking advantage of the urban design elements with grass tracks is nice, but the key element is the dedicated right of way to speed operations and increase capacity (call it mostly Jarrett Walker’s ‘Class B’ right of way).  Leaving an expensive investment to slog along in traffic like the bus would isn’t giving that investment the fullest chance to succeed.

One commenter notes the explicit trade-off:

US so-called light rail is more like a cheap suburban railway, with near absolute segregation, needing large compulsory purchases – again not endearing them to householders or shopkeepers. San Diego had one of the cheapest build costs, but even so had to pay $18 Million for the route – an old railway.

France seems to have decided, rather than buy up property, remove the cars which clutter up the street and replace by a tramway which more than doubles the street passenger throughput. A much better way of doing things.

Take advantage of capacity:  One of rail’s clear geometric advantages over bus is capacity.  The newer tramways in France take advantage of this with longer vehicles than the streetcars currently in service in the US. As an example, the T3 line in Paris makes use of 7-segment Alstom Citadis 402 trams, measuring in at approximately 140 feet long – more than doubling the per-vehicle capacity of the vehicles in use in Portland and Seattle.

Standardization saves money:  These new tramways are, for the most part, fairly standardized in both construction and in rolling stock, allowing for substantial cost savings.  Many of the vehicles feature modular construction, both adding flexibility while maintaining standardization and making procurement of replacement parts easier.  Standardization doesn’t mean a similar look, however – customize-able front ends allow each city to personalize the look and feel of their trams.

Go big or go home:  Well, sort of. Scale matters, both in producing a project large enough to be a successful link in the network and big enough to achieve some economies of scale.  The wiki graphic shows the scale of the tramway network in and around Paris alone:

Building at scale (and with a predictable pattern of expansion and reinvestment) helps control costs.

Moving US systems to this kind of standard could be seen in one of two ways: either in terms of removing a great deal of the over-engineering of US light rail systems, or in terms of increasing the standards of US Streetcar systems.  Given the length of some of DC’s proposed streetcar lines, offering this kind of advantage to transit would be a sure-fire way to give these investments every chance to succeed not just as economic development projects, but as transportation projects as well.

Urban skiing above the Arctic Circle

[iframe_loader src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/44652785″ width=”600″ height=”338″]

Not unlike the video of tiny Jackson Hole, I love a good ski movie. Combining it with post-industrial soviet urban landscapes from the Murmansk Oblast – even better.

Hat tip to the folks at Atlantic Cities for finding it. It took me a while to figure out how to fix the WordPress iframe loader, but I can now embed Vimeo stuff again.

More from these Finns here – in old Scandinavian mining towns:

[iframe_loader src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/22300621″ width=”600″ height=”338″]

…and in Sarajevo, including some transit-oriented skiing:

[iframe_loader src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/39202260″ width=”600″ height=”338″]

Video credits:

1. Nipwitz – Russia from Flatlight Films on Vimeo.

2. Nipwitz Two from Flatlight Films on Vimeo.

3. Nipwitz – Sarajevo from Flatlight Films on Vimeo.