Legibility
Singapore: Mysterious, Providential Buses
[Slightly revised 22 August ’10 to eliminate some innocent mistakes. The overall naive tone of this post was intentional; this was, after all, my first full day in Singapore, so I was seeing as one sees when first trying to figure out a network.]
My first transit adventure in Singapore began in at the remote wetland reserve, Sungei Buloh, in the northwest of the island. It’s adjacent to a curious area called the “Kranji Countryside,” billed as Singapore’s “homegrown agritainment hub.” It’s a small patch of farmlands and vineyards designed to serve all the agrarian tourism needs for the 5 million people living just down the road. Continue Reading →
Minneapolis: Unlocking Downtown with Transit Malls
Are the streets of your downtown all too similar to each other, all full of lots of cars and maybe a few trucks and buses? Do the differences between parallel streets, in commercial character and pedestrian life, seem feeble compared to the mass of identical traffic lanes that dominate the visual impression? Often, the most efficient downtown network designs, and the best urban design outcomes, result from making parallel streets more different from each other, more specialized around different functions. Streetcars (trams) used to drive such specialization, and sometimes still do, but elsewhere cities need to find their way back to that logic, with or without streetcars. One of the first big American successes in this direction was the Portland transit mall, which opened in 1977. There, two of the most central streets in downtown were given over primarily to transit, while parallel streets one block over were devoted mainly to cars. Continue Reading →
Paris Rapid Transit: The Four Levels of Nomenclature
A continuation of this post.
The core branding idea of the Paris RER is a really powerful one. Here’s
how it used to be presented, as a consistent citywide product
(click to enlarge; full-size map here):
Welcoming Guests to Your City: A Reader’s Checklist
On my post on failed welcoming, commenter Pantheon suggested an excellent checklist for transit agencies who want to care about newcomers to their city:
Legibility as Marketing: The “To-Via” Question
From Portland’s newly rebuilt transit mall, here’s a great example of the idea that clear information is the best marketing.
Every transit line goes TO some endpoint VIA some street or intermediate destination. But which matters more, the TO or the VIA? Which should be emphasized in the naming of a route and the signage on buses and stops? Both, if you can do it succinctly. But if you have to choose, think about where on the route you are and what information is most likely to be useful there. Continue Reading →