(US) National Travel and Tourism Week, 2019: Transit Wayfinding lessons from Japan

One of the digital tv channels by the WMPT PBS stations in Maryland carries the foreign television service of NHK, the national broadcaster in Japan.  There are many interesting shows that feature tourism, railways, etc. In addition to broadcasting in DC and the entire state of Maryland, the NHK World service is broadcasted in 9 other US metropolitan areas, and is available online.

One thing I learned from an episode of the program, "Cool Japan," is that the foundation of the pictogram system used in wayfinding (and the root of emojis) was created by Japan in advance of the 1964 Olympics, as a way to communicate with foreign visitors given the reality that at that time, few people in Japan spoke English ("The Power of the Pictogram Developing the Legacy of the Tokyo 1964 Olympics").

From "Olympic Design and National History : The Cases of Tokyo 1964 and Beijing 2008, Hitotsubashi ournal of rts and siences:

Since Japan had not adopted the principles of the International Traffic Signs, introduced at the United Nations Geneva conference in 1949 and accepted by most European countries, the Olympics were regarded by graphic designers as an opportunity to establish a more unified and internationally legible symbolic language across the country. It was along these lines, searching for universally understood visual languages, that pictograms (ekotoba, in Japanese, a word used prior to the design of pictograms) were for the first time designed for the Olympic Games, embodying at the same time Baron deCoubertinʼs aspirations of universalism…A major task of the Japanese design team of the 1960s was to de-traditionalize Japanese visual languages by subscribing to the abstract, non-iconic principles of the modern movement, found also to be more appropriate for expressing the new corporate identities of postwar Japan.

The system continues to be refined, and proposed new pictograms are field tested, not just in Japan, but in focus groups in countries around the world, especially those with a high rate of tourist visits to Japan. These field tests usually result in refinements and changes.

Speaking of Olympics, another television program is "Tokyo Eye 2020," which covers the Tokyo area vis a vis next year's Olympics.

One of the episodes, "Exploring Tokyo Underground," covers the Tokyo Metro system. Technically, the system is integrated with lines operated by two different companies, all of which are covered by special 1-, 2-, or 3-day transit passes available only to foreign tourists.

While the Tokyo Metro system has had information centers for some time, partly in response to serving the needs of tourists, in advance of the Olympics they have also introduced large wallboard systems called "welcome boards" mixing analog and digital information.

The Welcome Boards provide information in English, Chinese, and Korean, and the companion  digital screen supports additional languages.

They have 6 staffed information centers, all of which can provide information in English and Chinese, while 10 stations have a service manager (not backed up with a service center) to provide information.  Welcome boards have been installed in 14 stations.



It's definitely a model for what highly used transit systems should be doing in North America (press release).  (Most transit stations in the US have attendants, but in terms of delivering high quality information for visitors, it is hit or miss.)

The fact is that in the US, transit is not a highly used travel mode, and most Americans aren't too familiar with how to use it.

Making instructions-wayfinding information more widely available and in bold ways is something that we can learn from the Japanese.

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Another NHK show is "Japan Railway Journal," which features trips around Japan enabled by trains.  Japan's railway system was privatized, and it has regional railroads serving the main centers, often complemented by what are called "third sector" railroad lines, usually short lines and a mixture of private and public owners, providing services beyond the JR transit station network.

Many of these railroads, and the JR system, have developed a wide variety of tourism promotion and marketing programs, with special trains, events, and services.  For example, this episode, "JR Central: Enticing Tourists with Helpful Services & Events," broadcast last week.