Calgary Public Transit - Discussion

[yads]

Great idea to finally name the trains via colour, but the map definitely needs more work.

[Jimmy Stang]

I agree with Bunk on the station dots. They need to straddle both lines and should have an arrow indicating the direction of the stop.

I wonder if CT would ever consider doing a strictly horizontal, linear map. It would be cleaner than having it loosely reflect the actual geography of the city. NW and W could be the forks to the left of the map, downtown in the middle where both lines converge, and NE and S could be on the right.

If I'm a resident of the city, it will be clear that the south line is being represented for the sake of compactness. If I'm a visitor to the city and wanting to go to Chinook, for example, all that I'd really care about is the line colour (and direction based on the terminus station) and the stop name. I really don't need the map to physically represent that South = down.

[You Need a Thneed]

There's two versions of the map there, the one on the web page itself appears more up to date, but still has some of the same issues.

[Regular_John]

Dang that new map is a bit of a mess. I get the value in showing destinations near the stations, but list of bullet points crammed between stations just adds visual clutter.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by jaydorn

Dang that new map is a bit of a mess. I get the value in showing destinations near the stations, but list of bullet points crammed between stations just adds visual clutter.

The more I look at the new map, the less I like it. Too cluttered.

[Joborule]

They should only acknowledge high points of interest. Such as areas that have important destinations and tourists may want to visit like sport venues, the zoo and university.

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

The more I look at the new map, the less I like it. Too cluttered.

Oddly enough, the freaking Super Mario 3 Style map did a better job of explaining the LRT system... and it had the hammer brothers on it!

But having said that I think the new map suffers from "too many chefs in the kitchen" syndrome (AKA: Design by committee), every individual "hey wouldn't this be great?!" idea got included and it ended up being a hodgepodge of everyone's input rather than a simple overview of the system.

Individually things like parking/destinations/airport transfers all sound like good things to include, but collectively it's a mess.

[Bigtime]

Do not like this new version at all, as many others have said it is way too cluttered with extra information. It is not user friendly at all, especially to those not familiar with the system.

[Table 5]

Maybe because I do this type of stuff for a living, but that map looks like it was designed by amateurs using MS paint. It lacks the clean refinement of the old one, and barely gives you any more useful info, while looking infinitely more busy.

[Bigtime]

Table 5, time to step up and offer CT your services. In light of the Peace bridge and Devonian gardens may I suggest a fee of $40M for your work?


I'll take a 10% finders fee.

[worth]

I was thinking the new map looked good...

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Table 5, time to step up and offer CT your services.

Ha, believe me, part of me has thought about it, just no idea who makes these types of decisions there.

Either way, Calgary does have some really solid designers. I have a feeling this looks terrible for a variety of reasons (lack of money, lack of appreciation for good design bureaucracy, timing, too many chiefs, wrong man for the job.....or all of the above!).

I'm going to be teaching an Information Design class at ACAD this fall... having the students re-desig this thing seems like a perfect class assignment!

[Regular_John]

Wife's out shopping, I was bored. This could be much prettier, but my focus on was on clarity. Particularly the downtown core which after 8 years in this city I still have to check the map if I'm going anywhere besides work.

[Bigtime]

jaydorn, in your free time you came up with something better than the new proposal. Bravo.

[SebC]

^ I think the arrows should point in the direction of travel for the one way stations. Visitors may not all be used to the convention of travel on the right.

Ultimately the map should do two things well: show which stations serve which lines, and show which stations serve which directions. Yours does the first well, but not the second. (Still better than CT's proposal, which does neither.)

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by SebC

^ I think the arrows should point in the direction of travel for the one way stations. Visitors may not all be used to the convention of travel on the right.

Ultimately the map should do two things well: show which stations serve which lines, and show which stations serve which directions. Yours does the first well, but not the second. (Still better than CT's proposal, which does neither.)

Agreed fully, I did toy a bit with the directions thing for the core and I found left/right arrows added a lot of clutter. In all honesty the alternating stations in the core is just a poor design. Each stop should be double sided with a 1 block buffer between stops. But, that's in a perfect world, not the one we live in.

I may still play with this further, but the biggest issue with CT's new map is clutter & inconsistencies. For instant the south line, there's no reason to alternate which side of the line the label is on, yet it's alternating sides as a style que, which creates a Christmas tree shape for a reader's eyes to follow instead of a single hard break.

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

jaydorn, in your free time you came up with something better than the new proposal. Bravo.

Thanks, but at the end of the day what I can whip up on my own time is far cry from what the designers at the city have to deal with. As a self indulgent exercise I'm able to throw aside details I feel are unimportant and I'm not at the mercy of a bureaucracy, regulatory bodies, material considerations etc etc. So it's far from an apples to apples comparison.

But at best some one from the city will catch wind of this and reconsider their solution to the mapping problem.

On that note, a brushed up graphic including the downtown departure directions and the return of the Park & Ride indicator.

[frinkprof]

I had put it in the back of my mind to get back to this post but I didn't remember and have the time until now. Sorry it's so late.

Originally Posted by Barnes

Well, thanks for the lecture, I guess. So effectively existing transit in the SE can't be improved because it's challenging.

Existing routes that don't meet their primary objectives, driven by drivers who are usually being paid overtime, serving the same low demand, high vehicle traffic areas with numerous bus routes is the best we can do.

I am not asking for a bullet train to my office door just that CT maybe re-evaluate their decisions.

They pay lip service to riders in terms of surveys and open houses yet fail to understand that a number of people would prefer to burden the south line by driving to Anderson, Sommerset or take the community bus to the LRT because it is faster, more convenient alternative to SE transit. Look at the comments from the open house in January.

I know I went off on a bit of a tangent with my last post. It kind of got away from saying what should have been my main point.

Whether it is Deerfoot or the current route, the bus network in that area really can't see a marked improvement in service. It will be either long, circuitous, unreliable or more likely all 3 of those (even relative to most other transit service on those fronts) without an influx of infrastructure improvements. This brings us to SE Transitway. Originally I was actually very much against it because I thought it would be a lot of money to spend on a temporary measure that would just push back and complicate the inevitable (LRT) and wouldn't make a significant enough improvement to even justify the expense today. I figured it was better to just wait for LRT and that the current BRT would just have to do for now.

I am now for the SE Transitway because the fact of the matter is that service to the SE is so bad using existing infrastructure that the BRT and express routes will utterly fail to achieve ridership growth and establish a travel pattern that will justify the LRT. It needs immediate improvement to have any hope of doing so. After learning that much of the infrastructure that would be built for the Transitway could in fact be leveraged into the eventual LRT with minimal BRT operations setbacks during construction of the LRT as well as minimal sunk costs on short-term infrastructure for the Transitway, I was a lot more sold on it.

It will be expensive but it will see some return as it's really the only thing that will improve transit service in the southeast in any significant way. The reality is that BRT and expanded bus service in the southeast is nowhere near the easy interim situation on its own as it was in the west and north central areas of the city. Both this reality and the fact that it will be expensive is an inherent trait of this area.

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by yads

Great idea to finally name the trains via colour, but the map definitely needs more work.

Still the greatest subway map going, once you know how to use it:



http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/subwaymap.pdf

[Senator Clay Davis]

Fine increases coming?

Getting busted on the CTrain without a ticket will be more of a wallet-buster, under Calgary Transit’s proposal to hike several of its fines.

The $150 penalty for fare evaders hasn’t changed since 1993, when a monthly transit pass cost $46. The price of a pass has more than doubled since, and on Wednesday a council committee will consider boosting the fine for cheaters to $250 — what officials hope will prove to be a bigger disincentive to taking a free ride outside downtown’s free-fare zone.

“Many people told us they do a risk calculation, and if they think they can get away with it,” said transit security head Brian Whitelaw.

“Part of the solution is to have a sufficient consequence that if you do get caught, you would have been better off to regularly purchase a fare than to do that risk calculation.”

Other proposed increases would boost fines for graffiti on transit property to a minimum $2,500 — in line with the city bylaw for graffiti elsewhere, and way up from the transit bylaw’s current $150.

The $2,500 minimum fine would also be levied against riders who ride on the outside of a bus or LRT, or interfere with a transit vehicle and force it to stop — the sort of fine security officers have to consider giving to about a dozen troublemakers annually, Whitelaw said.

But fare evasion is a much bigger problem on the CTrain system. Peace officers have found a 4.5-per-cent cheat rate on the LRT in recent years, which costs the city roughly $4.5 million in lost revenue, Whitelaw said.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...#ixzz20eBk1KG6