frequently contributes photos, video, and transit maps for the blog. He grew up in Wallingford riding the 44 and 16 and enjoyed collecting bus timetables before spending 10 years in Bangkok, where he enjoyed its chaotic vibrancy, but was frustrated with its massive gridlock and poorly-run transit system. He holds a BS and MS in Civil Engineering from the UW.
Oran currently works for CHK America, producing maps and passenger information solutions for numerous transit agencies across the United States, including LA and DC. He has been living car free in downtown Santa Barbara, California since April 2012. Prior to that, he lived in Kingsgate and was a regular rider of the 255. Previous work experience include traffic operations and safety at the City of Seattle and King County. He joined the blog in November 2008.
The near final draft of the Seattle Transit Map featuring U Link and Metro’s new bus service taking effect on March 26 is ready for your review. Thank you to everyone who gave their feedback on the first set of drafts. Comments on this map are due March 6. The priority is to finish the map for print.
We are aiming to have printed copies of the map available for free beginning on U Link opening day (March 19). Details on where to get a map will be confirmed as we get close to the big day but I will have maps with me at the meet up. If you’re on Twitter, follow @SeaTransitMap for updates and peeks into the making of the map.
March Madness in rail line openings begins on the 5th in Los Angeles. The 11-mile, 6-station, Foothill Gold Line extension in the San Gabriel Valley opens March 5. When the Regional Connector through downtown LA opens in 2021, the Blue and Gold Lines will be joined, forming a continuous line 48.6 miles long between Long Beach and Azusa. A future extension from Azusa to Montclair will add another 12.6 miles, making this line rival the Everett-Seattle-Tacoma Link spine in length.
Phoenix’s 3-mile, 3-station, Northwest extension opens the same day as U Link, March 19. This is their second extension to open. Last year Phoenix voters approved funding for 70% more bus service and 42 new miles of light rail.
[UPDATE March 25, 2016] the March edition of the map is now available at seattletransitmap.com. Paper copies of the map are also available from SDOT, Transit Riders Union and Sound Transit. Please contact them for details on getting a map. Maps and posters will be available for purchase from the map’s website in the near future.
Not since the early days of Seattle Metro has there been a definitive map of transit in the city of Seattle. As Metro’s map expanded, the city became a smaller part in an expansive countywide network. Details were lost as the city was scaled down to make room for the county. Metro’s latest maps tried to correct that by creating larger scale subregional maps but there still is no single rider-oriented map that shows the city’s transit network in its entirety… Until now.
Today I am proud and excited to introduce to you a draft of my latest work in progress: the Seattle Transit Map and Guide, a map of transit for the city of Seattle. The Map features the entire network of frequent service, regular all-day service, and peak-only commuter service in the city, all on a single stylized-geographic map, plus a few specialized maps showing detail of busy areas or certain services. The Guide summarizes the frequency and span of all service in a few tables. Currently the Map and Guide depicts service effective September 2015; a draft depicting March 2016 service will be released when it is ready.
You can view the draft Seattle Transit Map in a mobile-friendly website. There is also a PDF for offline viewing. I am collecting your feedback on the content and design which may be given in the comments below or on the map’s feedback form. Your feedback will help refine the map to make it ready for publication in March.
Unlike the Frequent Map, it is not designed to be printed at home because I wanted to show more detail without making everything too small. In a pilot project with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and the Transit Riders Union (TRU), we are aiming to distribute paper copies of the map for Metro’s big March 2016 service change in conjunction with the opening of U Link. In the meantime, TRU has paper copies of this draft available for anyone who would prefer to give study and give feedback on a handheld copy. Though to be clear, this is not an official SDOT transit map. Not yet anyway.
The map was a long time coming. I made a concept in 2009 that went nowhere until late 2014, when TRU approached me with their ideas of more accessible and easier-to-read transit maps. Encouraged by their support and in collaboration with CHK America where I work, I spent a lot of my free time in 2015 creating a city transit map that I hope is a pleasure to use and look at. There are a number of design features that I would like to highlight.
The two new U Link stations will introduce a new way of delivering information to passengers but the design needs to be more user-friendly. Unlike the LED signs at Link stations today, the new stations use flat panel screens. When I went by UW Station last month, I was not impressed with the test screens I saw. Sound Transit told me and a few other concerned people on Twitter stating that the screens I saw were not the final look. While I await their final design, I would like to critique the test screen and suggest improvements.
The test screen’s layout is divided in three parts: an area for images like a distorted Sound Transit logo; an area for showing train arrival times; and an area below the two spanning the width of the screen showing the familiar text seen on signs at other Link stations, “Welcome to [station name] / Sound Transit Link Light Rail / [current time]”.
The biggest problem with the design is it attempts to cram too much information on a single screen, resulting in text much smaller than the signs they replaced. The most important information on the screen, the train times, is given a third of the space with very small text that is difficult to read from a distance or while walking. Two-thirds of the screen is dedicated to irrelevant information like the Sound Transit logo and the welcome message. Such information belongs on permanent station signage, not a dynamic screen like this.
By breaking that information into multiple screens each focused on a single message, readability would be greatly improved. An example of this are LA Metro’s station information displays. Prior to their redesign a few years ago, LA’s signs tried to do what ST did with a three section layout. There was a running ticker in the bottom for service alerts, a large area for more alerts, graphical marketing & public service announcements, and a small column to the left for next train times.
LA Metro’s screen before (apologies for the poor quality)LA Metro’s screen after
The new design gives each element its own screen for a few seconds at a time. This allows the layout of each screen to be tailored for the message. Service alerts are given a bright yellow and bold text to call attention. Eye catching, full-screen graphics can be used for marketing and public service announcements. Train times can be shown in large text that can be seen from afar. Even the date and time has its own screen. Each screen can be given a different weight so some screens stay up longer or show more frequently than others or in the case of an emergency, normal programming can be overridden to give important messages.
The other design aspect I like about LA’s screens is they fit in with the LA Metro look. The typography, colors, and symbology match those used in Metro’s branding and wayfinding system to make it a consistent experience across all mediums, static and dynamic. While the approach shown is not the only way to design a passenger information screen it is clearly better than the test screens I saw.
