Union Station as a key visitor entry point into Washington

Union Station, Washington, postcard
Originally uploaded by rllayman

ANC6C has a Transportation Committee, which is meeting tonight (that's where the presentation on traffic calming will be tonight, which I mentioned a couple days ago). They mentioned that David Ball, president of the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, will be making a presentation, so I wrote this in response:

Somewhere I saw that you are getting a presentation from David Ball about Union Station. I didn't really think about it at the time, but you have the opportunity to raise some very important issues.

(1) We need to "use" Union Station to explain transit -- we don't utilize any Metro stations really with "wayfinding and interpretation" about transit. It really came home to me when I overheard a tourist exclaiming angrily "$20 to get to the White House!" because he went up to one of the tourist trolleys (on and off throughout the day) in front of the station.

OTOH, he could have taken the subway or a Circulator bus, but a comprehensive but simple signage system explaining all these options doesn't exist.

Think of those handouts on taxi policy that they hand out in the line at National Airport, but signage. Beyond the bus map signage, but using that idea, to explain how to get around more generally.

(This is actually a mouse pad version.)

(2) we should also utilize Union Station as a visitors welcome center. We don't, even though it's the most highly visited (because of the subway, MARC, VRE, and Amtrak) place in the city, with over 20 million visits annually.

(3) Union Station's anniversary was last year. I think I was one of the only people to mention it, although I see that US's advertising for the shops has started to acknowledge it. In any case, Union Station doesn't have interpretative signage about the station, other than some Burnham photos in the Station Grill, and some plaques about Amtrak scattered about.

(4) Bill Wright is writing his dissertation on Union Station. (www.washingtonunionstation.com). He was supposed to do a presentation about this last summer, but one of the other speakers went way long, and we haven't rescheduled it. Maybe it's time to bring him back. (He's a great writer. And he has posted many of the chapters up on his website.)