Despite all the love for London-style maps though, I have to say I still really prefer DC’s style and wish that were the standard.

For showing headways, I definitely like this general concept. I’d have more tiers though. A lot of people in this region seem to think that a bus every 15 minutes is frequent service–as much as you can reasonably ask for. I find 15 minutes on Broadway and many other busy places really inadequate. Montreal’s bus stops list the times each bus arrives until they come every 6 minutes or fewer. DC has routes that run every 3 minutes during rush hour (42/43), and even then they still list the exact time each bus is supposed to arrive. Sit on Columbia Rd. NW or Mt. Pleasant St. NW and it’s remarkable to watch the parade of buses–they clearly dominate the traffic, and that’s the kind of bus service for which you truly don’t need a schedule. Every 10 minutes, as Rapid Ride anticipates, hardly qualifies.

Somewhat related, I emailed Metro recently and suggested they shade their paper schedules to indicate the Free Ride zone just like they do on the schedule side to note which runs are peak fare.

Here’s a few more errors I noticed:
- 212,217,225,229 do not stop at Mercer Island
- 101,150 do not stop at Othello or Rainier Beach
- 106 does not stop at South Renton P&R

There’s no point in getting in the details; there are lots of errors and many of these routes are going to change anyway in the September (post-link) service change.

Visually, though, it’s beautiful and easy-to-use.

I also mocked up an in-bus route leaflet and a bus board advertisement which you can see on my Flikr account.

As far as the DSTT, I’ve heard (on this very blog I believe) that its going to be open late as soon as Link service starts, which I assume metro will take advantage of by changing some routes.

After about 7 PM (and before 6 AM) on weekdays, Routes 71, 72 and 73 are locals which travel via Fairview and Eastlake between the U District and Downtown rather than I-5, in other words, they ARE NOT full-time express routes. This is why I am anxious for the DSTT hours to expand—as it is, there are few local 70-series trips running through the tunnel. He might want to add Eastlake and Havard and Fairview and Denny to his map to take this into account.

Sound Transit used my ST2 2023 map to develop a similar version that they use to represent the Sound Transit rail system at open houses and in publications (2009 milestones, 2009 annual report to WSDOT). We’ll see whether they use it in rider information.

You might be able to get away with posting these in your business or community boards or near but not at bus stops. I’ve seen the OneBusAway.org stickers at some bus stops but those are small.