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Most transit services do a piss poor job on communicating generally, and sadly DDOT is no exception.

I did notice when I was in Montreal that STM seems to do a pretty good job with notice information at bus stops when service changes, although the information is still somewhat cryptic, and hardly good enough for non-regular riders.

- http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/4948313552/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/4948313544/in/photostream/

I am sure that somewhere within APTA, either at the national assn. technical assistance level, or TRB, or out there in the transit systems, there is a best practice manual-checklist for what to do in communicating service changes at the level of individual stops, and generally. DDOT, WMATA, and MTA in Baltimore fail miserably on this.

But we do a piss poor job with what I call "transit wayfinding" generally, especially in terms of explaining surface transit overall and especially to non-regular riders (visitors) specifically.

All of the Metro stations from Union Station to GWU and downtown, and all the Arlington stations on the Wilson Blvd. corridor and in Crystal City-Pentagon ought to have transit wayfinding boards (+ regional bikeways maps too).

Arlington does a better job with this and sets an example with the information posted at bus stops for their shuttle service:

- http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/351758838/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/351757488/in/photostream/

If I had the time, I would work with "my" designer Christopher Taylor Edwards--we did proof of concept signage for intra-neighborhood commercial district directories and history for Florida Market:

- http://www.scribd.com/doc/19889319/Florida-Market-Directory-Handout

but given the way my career is breaking (moving towards bicycle facilities and systems in a big way) I am not sure this is something I can get to any time soon.

by Richard Layman on Sep 1, 2010 8:59 am • link • report