May is National Bicycle Month | More on the concept of adding services icons to bicycle route wayfinding signage

I have been so busy with other projects with hard and crunch deadlines, so I haven't had the time to write more about May's two big events, National Bicycle Month and National Historic Preservation Month.  I should have some time next week to catch up and finish some partially written entries on the two topics.   

This wayfinding sign for the Pioneer Historic Byway and visitor services in Soda Springs, Idaho, list public restrooms as a "destination."

On Friday, in "Man peeing in hiding because there are no restrooms," I mentioned how a half mile up from where this guy stopped to pee, is a new public restroom at the Glendale Regional Park.  

But why would he know that?  There is no wayfinding signage on the bike lane or sidewalk abutting the park that points people to the restroom.

I also pointed out that the Jordan River Parkway signs at the 1700 South entrances, don't list nearby restrooms.  

It's understandable for the new park, because Jordan River Commission hasn't updated signage for awhile and the Park just opened its first phase.  

But across the street is "the old" Glendale Park and it has restrooms too, and the Parkway signage didn't acknowledge that restroom either, and it's been there for many years.

I suggested that how the Iowa State Department of Transportation's Bicycle Map uses a standard set of icons related to services for bicyclists could also be ported/adapted/adopted for bicycle route signage as well.

Something like this.  Hey, I'm not a graphic designer.  It could also somehow include the distance and direction to reach these services, just like the signs on the highway do.

Below, on the left is a pedestrian scaled wayfinding sign from Europe, where the sign just doesn't point to single out disabled people for additional accommodations, but adds and acknowledges pregnant women, young children and seniors as people who could benefit from the ramp as well.  

On the right is an example of the off the highway signage that provides more detailed direction information to the services as listed on the highway sign.

There are many opportunities here for better and more innovative wayfinding signage treatments for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Even the award winning Route Verte network of long distance bicycling routes across Quebec could do a better job, listing not just bike routes, but services too.  Especially because VeloQuebec has organized a lodging certification program, "Bienvenue Cyclistes" to better serve cyclists on long distance trips.

Man peeing in hiding because there are no restrooms

This man is stopping to pee in the trees on Jordan River Parkway at 1700 South in Salt Lake City.  This is a vote for those Throne restrooms.

The funny thing is with the new restrooms at Glendale Regional Park, no more than one mile behind him, he could have peed there.

But unless you know the park, which is brand new and in fact parts are still under construction, you wouldn't know because there isn't pedestrian or bicycle wayfinding signage for restrooms on 1700 South.

It makes me realize more than ever we need to add restroom proximity to wayfinding signage.

There is wayfinding signage on the Jordan River Parkway--although it's often out of date as here it points to "The Waterpark" as a destination and that's now the Glendale Regional Park.  It could highlight the restroom too.  It can be words like on the sign below, or the pictograms used in highway wayfinding signage systems.

Top: Jordan River Parkway Sign.  Wayfinding signage, Pioneer Historic Byway, Soda Springs, Idaho

Middle Top: new restroom at Glendale Regional Park.

Middle Bottom:  pictogram signage, Eight Dollar Mountain & Jeffery Pine Loop Trail, BLM

Bottom: Legend, Bicycle Map, Iowa State Dept of Transportation.  Wayfinding sign, Salesforce Park, SF

But there isn't signage like that on bike routes.  But it would be easy to do by adding it to the bottom of a sign, reserving the bottom section of the sign for "services."  I'm pretty sure I thought about that when writing about "Making Cycling Irresistible" but it's been almost 20 years.

The Throne automated restroom could be perfect for other spots on the trail.  

I don't love their design which could feel discordant in a nature setting.  But maybe just having a nature focused mural on three sides would make it fit better.

They are good because they're small and they don't need expensive connections to the water and sewage networks.  They have that self contained through tanks, albeit they have to be refilled.

Christopher Taylor Edwards, Rest in Peace | A grassroots leader in design thinking

Later he grew a huge beard but this is how I remember him.

I just heard that a past colleague, Christopher Taylor Edwards, died from cancer.  

Open-casket visitation Sunday, August 3, 3pm (service begins 4pm) at Colvin House, 5940 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660. Reception 5-7pm. Parking is limited. Guests are encouraged to take public transportation or rideshare.

(I like the nod to public transportation.)

He moved around a lot and since I am not a big Facebook user we lost touch, but my partner kept following him, from his getting another design degree in NYC and being the first design fellow in a Knight Foundation program at Parsons, to Chicago.  Before that he lived in Oakland and DC among other places. 

In the early 2000s when blogs were the supreme social media (having long since been superseded by other media like Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), there was a small blogging community in DC devoted to the city and its urban issues and that's how I met him.

-- Christopher's old blog

As part of my activism then I used to lead walking tours of "Florida" Market (now renamed Union Market, which was the original name, also see "Revitalization of the wholesale food Union Market in DC to a consumer focus," [2025]) to increase awareness and to ford off the attempt at urban renewal-ing a cool food business district, mostly oriented to wholesale customers, but a number of businesses also sold to the consumer.

I was also interested in the visitor/tourist/guest experience, these days the profession is often oriented to computers using the shorthand of UX--user experience.  But the principles last.

In the tours besides going to businesses that sold to retail customers, we talked about missing amenities,  like directories, trash cans, etc., which were used as reasons for urban renewal.  My response was, yes it's dirty, why doesn't the city have trash cans?  Yes, it's hard to find things, why isn't there a directory?  Etc.

I knew Christopher as a "graphic" designer, but he was also into museum exhibiting and urban design, and he offered to help develop a "proof of concept" in wayfinding signage for the market.  

The city already had a wayfinding system, but I discerned gaps, and the concept of a district area directory map was one.  I also thought the "Discover DC" headers were more oriented to tourists, rather than both residents and tourists, so we developed a "Discover DC" concept as well.

The city sign.  Maybe it's merely a quibble, but I liked the idea of "exploring" being open to all, not the implication of "discover" being you had to be an outsider to find something, ignoring the fact that these are existing places known to many.

I had been aware of the concept of "design thinking" before this project, but he and I talked about it and related issues to design.  These blog anniversary pieces draw a lot on design thinking, business process redesign, design method, and systems thinking. This was in 2008.

(I started blogging in 2005, and these anniversary pieces draw a lot on design thinking, business process redesign, design method, and systems thinking.

--  "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part one -- (in)FAQ and my influences," 
-- "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part two -- not transportation
-- "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part three -- transportation"

In my writings, I prefer the application of design thinking to the typical urban planning process of constrained scopes, because that allows for an iterative process that can explore and incorporate new ideas, rather than be limited to the client's defined and usually constrained scope.

-- "Florida Market proof of concept wayfinding signage and the need for a wayfinding conference," 2009
-- Explore Florida Market (history)
-- Florida Market Map and Directory

In the project I had a idea leap using design thinking on the Florida Market Map, and how to represent necessary items like transit.  

I came up with the idea of using the local transit system's iconography rather than weak lines and or the weird looking industry-standard rail transit icon.  We extended this to mapping bus routes using the WMATA graphic design as well, although it's not as pathbreaking.

FWIW, I still haven't come across a similar use of integrating local transit map graphic design into other map products. 

 There is tons of writing and display of great transit map design, but not about incorporating some of that design into different kinds of maps.

WMATA Metrorail map.

Extract from an old WMATA bus system map 

(WMATA has since changed all of its bus-related routes, naming conventions, and map designs.)

The design method, graphic design, and design thinking offer a lot to making better government services like parks, libraries, schools, forms, etc.

-- "City branding versus identity | Branding versus Urban Strategy," 2019
-- "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012
-- "PL #7: Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward," 2017
-- "World Usability Day, Thursday November 9th and urban planning," 2017
-- "Branding's (NOT) all you need for transit," 2018
-- "Illustration of government and design thinking: Boston City Hall to Go truck," 2013<
"Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method," 2013,

Thank you Christopher.

============

Over the past week, I came across some design thinking publications, downloadable, from the UK Design Council.

-- The Design Economy: Environmental and Social Value of Design 
-- Design Economy: People, Places and Economic Value, 
-- Design for Neighbourhoods: A design agenda for the new government
-- Future of Motorway Service Areas (interesting speculation about electric cars)
-- Public Design Beyond Central Government Key Insights and Recommendations

-- "Five components of social design: A unified framework to support research and practice," Design Journal

New York City Subway Map, 1951, inset as part of the Esso Gas Station Road Map for New York City, 1951

I thought the Esso road map from London was the only "gas station" map that included a subway map. 

It turns out, NYC too.  And, I'm going to have to do further research because it's possible that the NYC map with subway information was published earlier than the Esso London map.

Both produced by Esso's map division, General Drafting Co.  

That division also produced subway exclusive maps for banks and other organizations in New York City.

It's possible that a gas station map includes rail transit information for Chicago, Paris or Montreal, although the Montreal system didn't open until 1966. I'll research that every so often.

-- "When Maps Reflected Romance of the Road," New York Times

Pedestrian wayfinding signage in Thessaloniki is adding information of the calorie burning value of walking

That's pretty creative.  And something that should be done for every center city wayfinding system.

A number of years ago, I wrote an article on culture-based revitalization in Thessaloniki for the Europe in Baltimore program sponsored by the EU National Institutes of Culture Washington Chapter.

-- "Thessaloniki: Regeneration as an ongoing process"

And in the Bangkok Metro system, they have painted similar information on stairway risers.

Again, a good idea that needs to be implemented in more public places as a way to promote healthy mobility behaviors.

If you want people to act, provide them with the means to do so: neighborhood historic district sign lacking contact information

Yalecrest is a neighborhood historic district in Salt Lake City.  The State oegislature makes it exceedingly difficult to create locally designated historic districts with controls over development.

A National Register historic district provides protections only against federal undertakings--urban renewal, a freeway, etc.--so it provides little in the way of substantive protection against incursions, demolition, inappropriate rebuilds, etc.

And those are the problems faced by Yalecrest and other neighborhoods of historically eligible building stock in Salt Lake City.

K.E.E.P Yalecrest--Keep Educating and Encouraging the Preservation of Yalecrest--is the organization focused on historic preservation matters in the neighborhood.

I write often about wayfinding and cultural interpretation signage systems. As well as neighborhood/commercial district branding and identity systems ("Basic planning building blocks for urban commercial district revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged: Part 2 | A neighborhood identity and marketing toolkit (kit of parts)").

And I have written about historic district signage ("Reassessing historic preservation on account of it being National Historic Preservation Month," 2010).

As the Internet--URLs, and QR codes have been widespread, there is no excuse for erecting a sign in 2022 and not having a URL or QR code link, ideally to a website or app with more information about the community, a webpage on the historic district nomination (context statement), link to the sponsoring organization, meeting and events page, etc.

In Downtown Logan, Utah, some of the bus stops also provide information on walking

 The London Underground is noteworthy in how it's created a map with a list of walking distances between stations, in part to communicate that in some cases, rather than transfer between lines, it's faster to get out and walk.  They have maps for specific lines, as well as for all the stations in Central London.

Many transit wayfinding maps are typically organized around presenting a walkshed at 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 mile distances.

Separately, there are walking oriented wayfinding systems like Legible London (which actually is based on the system first created in Bath, England).  Although London uses the same wayfinding system for transit, walking, and biking.

 

There are "guerilla wayfinding" systems encouraged as an element of tactical urbanism, to call attention to walk distances wrt locally-available amenities.

But I haven't seen bus stops and shelters conceptualized as an element of the walking network, or at least incorporating walking information as well as transit information in one place.  But the Cache Valley Transit District has done that at some--not all--bus stops in Downtown Logan.

It orients riders and tells them in which direction are the major destinations and how long it will take them to get there.

 

This would be an easy addition to bus stop signs and shelters. And it's a small transit system with a national best practice.

-- "Arlington County's bus shelters and a public realm framework of quality," 2013

Step Streets and pedestrian (and biking) networks beyond street side sidewalks

The movie, "The Joker" has brought attention to a public stairway in the Bronx  ("'Joker' Stairs Become a Bronx Tourist Draw. Hope You're in Shape," New York Times).

 Apparently the Bronx, like Berkeley, California ("Book details secret staircases of Berkeley and Oakland," Berkeleyside), has a number of public staircases providing footway connections between streets, because of the hilly topography.

This stairway between Shakespeare and Jerome Avenues is featured in the movie.

Wanting to get an image of it, I came across a thread ("Step Streets") in Wired New York, which references a 2002 New York Times article, "Afoot in Stepstreet Land," along with multiple photos and reprints other newspaper articles not always sourced.

One of the images in the Wired New York thread, from a DNAInfo article, is of a fabulous horizontal staircase connecting Teller and Clay Avenues at 168th Street.

Also see "6 1/2 Avenue: Manhattan's Secret Street," Atlas Obscura; "6 1/2 Avenue, New York City, Open City Projects, which discuss the creation of an interior block walking corridor, which knits together public and private rights of way--the private rights of way have public access rights, which in New York City are called "privately owned public spaces."

The street sign for the walk way, in a somewhat joking way referred to as 6 1/2 Avenue as it is between 6th and 7th Avenues, has an marking on the bottom denoting it as an "arcade."


(This reminds me of how I suggested that trails be treated as streets for map and signage purposes, following the addressing conventions of the DC city street grid.)

Anyway, in "Further updates to the Sustainable Mobility Platform Framework," I argue that a robust typology for sustainable mobility framework needs to include public staircases, elevators, and escalators as an element.

Some cities, notably Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal, have a different wrinkle, with public underground walkway networks, usually in dense places making connections between buildings and transit stations, while Minneapolis and St. Paul have skywalk networks providing connections between buildings so that people don't have to go to the ground floor and then back out and up to get where they want to go.

Minneapolis skywalk.

One problem with these networks is that most of the walking space is provided by the private sector and there can be inadequate coordination between all the players in terms of planning for a complete network as well as wayfinding signage systems.  There are various efforts in Chicago, Toronto, and St. Paul to address this.

In Chicago, the Environmental Law and Policy Center is spearheading the "Revitalizing the Chicago Pedway" project, with a report and workshops.  There's been a lot of media coverage in the local papers, etc.

Public elevators are common in cities on the French Riviera, but also in other places. Hong Kong is known for public escalators. Medellin has added stairways, public escalators and cable cars as a way to provide connections for communities in hilly and mountainous areas, etc.

The point is that planning for pedestrian mobility needs to consider not just the horizontal dimension but also the vertical ("(In many places) Public improvement districts ought to be created as part of transit station development process: the east side of NoMA station as an example" and "Hong Kong needs to create a formal and planned pedestrian mobility network).

While cited in blog entries, the Regional Plan Association's Urban Design Manhattan report (1969) is a particularly good introduction to thinking about these issues in both vertical and horizontal dimensions.

Biking.  The same is true for biking in terms of deploying special infrastructure to make connections in areas with severe access challenges like rivers, highways, and topography.

Bridges, tunnels and switchbacks are the typical access treatments.  The DC area has a number of bicycle and pedestrian sidepaths on bridges crossing the Potomac River and elsewhere across highways.

However, recently to save money but after one of Maryland Governor Hogan's first acts in 2015 was to cut tolls ("Maryland cuts tolls on Bay Bridge, ICC and other roadways," Washington Post), they've elminated a sidepath for bicyclists and pedestrians from the plans to replace the Nice Bridge connecting Maryland and Virginia across the Potomac River ("Maryland approves narrower Nice Bridge replacement option," WTOP radio). From the WTOP article:

Local and regional leaders had pushed Maryland to include an originally promised bike and pedestrian path as part of the bridge, but the MDTA board led by Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn voted against that proposal Thursday at a meeting in Baltimore.

Under the selected bid, the path would have added $64 million to the cost.

The Hogan administration said that was too expensive after the administration cut toll rates on the bridge in 2015.

This is but one of many examples of the cost of political pandering to sustainable mobility, in particular biking, walking, and transit.

Bicycle Lift/CycloCable.  The rarest form of bicycle assistance through infrastructure is the Trampe Bicycle Lift (now called CycloCable) which has been deployed in one city in the world in Norway as a way to "lift" people up a steep hill ("This Bike Elevator Makes Steep Hills a Little More Manageable," CityLab).

(I definitely could see something like this in Salt Lake, although not only have I identified a couple streets that are somewhat out of the way but easily ridden, I can bike the hill up 1300 South without walking, although not the very first time I tried, at night and when I was tired...).

Society of Environmental Graphic Design as a resource | Seattle Children's Research Institute street signage project

A few years ago, when I did an entry on wayfinding signage, a blog commenter mentioned the Society of Environmental Graphic Design and all the great resources they have.

I am working on a project where signage in terms of both wayfinding and identification is one of many issues, so I am doing some image research on "market" signage and I came across an SEGD article, "Seattle Children's Research Institute Neighborhood Visibility Project."

It's about how the Seattle, Children's (Medical) Research Institute used neon signage with particularly creative messaging to enliven the street frontage of what would normally be a closed off "office building", drawing on the great history of neon signage in Seattle, especially for the interior and exterior of Pike Place Market.

Of course, the Breakthrough sign is particularly appealing to me, since I believe, perhaps fulsomely, that the kinds of ideas, concepts, analysis and frameworks for best practice  presented in this blog are usually "breakthroughs."

(My joke is that I endeavor to do so, including providing references, because I don't want other people to be able to savage my writings the way I can in response to other pieces elsewhere.)

I often worry about becoming "stale." 

But my stale is still a lot better than most people's creative. 

Then again, my insights are always further developed, extended, and improved by interaction with others, which is why I appreciate the regular commenters I do have, and wish I had more.

Great transportation wayfinding information from Experience Columbus, the "destination marketing organization" for Columbus, Ohio

In writing a piece that will publish tomorrow, I was looking for an image from Columbus.  I couldn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a webpage on transportation options from Experience Columbus.

The webpage isn't the greatest design-wise but it has great content.  The printable version is great in both content and design.

It's a model for the kind of "transportation wayfinding" information that I think should be provided in Metrorail stations, other transit stations, at hotels, etc. 

Also see "(US) National Travel and Tourism Week, 2019: Transit Wayfinding lessons from Japan" for other examples of better practice.

Infographic, "Help Make San Francisco Streets Safer," Walk San Francisco, 2012

I am trying to reduce the amount of "unnecessary information" I have stuffed in boxes, so I am doing some "processing."  Most of the articles I've clipped no longer seem that necessary.  But I still come across some gems.

I like this infographic from Walk San Francisco, promoting their advocacy for more investment in walking infrastructure.

Speaking of walking, the Toronto 360℉ Wayfinding Strategy Plan is a exemplary document Although the fancy pdf doesn't seem to be available online, the accessible version without graphics is. (Toronto Wayfinding Strategy - Valuing the Benefits).

The webpage for the project links to four related wayfinding programs--Metrolinx, the "underground" pedestrian walkway system called PATH, parks, and cycling.

I haven't read the Implementation Handbook or the 2019 Project Handbook.

And while in Alexandria recently, seeing one of their wayfinding signage setups on Cameron Street by Gadsby Tavern made me realize that the signage "fails" in that it is focused on King Street but doesn't extend outward from King Street as necessary, such as along Washington Boulevard, and in the streets perpendicular and parallel to King Street.

Plus, while the wayfinding program for the Del Ray neighborhood predates the later system in Alexandria, they probably should have been integrated.

Guerrilla wayfinding sign at 3rd and East Capitol Streets SE, City Walker/Eastern Market Main Street

Don't know what's up with this. This is the only sign I saw going eastbound for many blocks. I do like that they've used the basic "City Walker" template. Some groups do their own thing and usually it's not better. But that could be said for this effort, which is different from the original Walk [Your City] tactical urbanism.



I have been thinking for many years that DC's wayfinding signage, created c. 2000 has long been in need of a rethinking.

-- "National Mall 'stuff'," 2009
-- "Florida Market proof of concept wayfinding signage and the need for a wayfinding conference," 2009
-- "The real question is far broader than the state of the DC area subway map," 2010

This piece takes the thinking in new directions:

-- "World Usability Day, Thursday November 9th and urban planning," 20

Of course, the fact that so many other entities, especially the National Park Service and the Architect of the Capitol, and WMATA, the area transit agency, do their own thing, doesn't help.

Cities like London (although it didn't start with them) aim to link their transit mapping systems with their wayfinding systems and extend this to other forms of mobility (like maps at bike sharing kiosks). So that if we were like London, the maps on bike sharing systems would be from the same design family as the maps on wayfinding signage and at transit stations and stops.

Great resource: Urban Wayfinding Planning and Implementation Manual

-- Urban Wayfinding Planning and Implementation Manual, published by the Sign Research Foundation which it turns out has a resource library with more than 4,600 items, and the International Signage Association

Park benches as cultural information and wayfinding devices

Designed by FitzpatrickWoolmer on the Brecon Beacons Canal for the Canal And River Trust.

Often such benches are used to display advertising, but there are plenty of creative opportunities to utilize them differently.

Rome 2 Rio is an incredible website integrating all forms of mobility to get from one place to another--globally!

US intercity bus service map produced by Michael Buiting.

In a back and forth set of comments spurred by Larry Littlefield's post which in passing discussed inter city bus service in New York State, we were talking about bus route network maps.

In the old days, railroads and intercity bus systems like Greyhound and Trailways published complete maps of their route systems.

Now it's very hard to find such maps. Michael Buiting produced one on his own.  See the past blog entry, "Inter-city bus services are typically a gap in transportation planning."  The entry references some academic research and other writings on the subject.

Larry said you can't find these kinds of maps for Coach USA/Megabus services at the scale of a state or region, let alone a complete network map.

Yes you can plug in stuff online, but you can't get a sense of the full system and all its possibilities, counter to "the old days."  (Similarly, regularly published complete guides for railroad passenger and airline service provided this function, showing all available services.)

Mein Fernbus/Flixbus, Germany.  I mentioned that when I was in Germany, I saw a variety of intercity bus companies in service, near train stations in Essen and Hamburg.  (In Hamburg the Intercity bus terminal, ZOB, is in close proximity to the train station.)

Because some of the Mein Fernbuses I saw had rear-mounted bike racks, I looked into their services more--note they have since merged into Flixbus.

They publish route maps comparable to the maps once published by Greyhound and Trailways, even differentiating between their day and night networks, but I like best an earlier version of their night map (below).

It turns out their website and computing systems are developed by stfalcon, a Ukrainian firm.

Were I in charge of finding a programming team to set this up for a transit system, they'd be one of the contenders, clearly.  This webpage discusses the work stfalcon has done for Mein Fernbus.

Rome2Rio Global Travel Planning website. While tracking done some URLs, I came across Rome2Rio, a travel search and ticketing website that has managed to integrate airplanes, trains, intercity bus, ferry, local transit services, and taxis into one system.

It's pretty remarkable.

US and Canadian inter city bus service map, based on route information collected by Rome2Rio.

But they don't have a function where you can produce and print out master route systems maps as a website user, although on occasion they have blogged about doing it themselves, such as when they added US and Canadian inter city bus coverage to their system.

Wanderu.  Note I have mentioned/used Wanderu to do bus trip planning in the US, as they have a master set of information.  But Rome2Rio takes integration and mode coverage to a whole new level.

Another example of a discoordinated transit system in DC proper: maps in bus shelters

I wrote last week about how the various separate BRT planning efforts around the metropolitan area are an example of a lack of metropolitan-scaled transit planning.  The maps displayed in DC bus shelters are another example.

DC has four types of bus transit service.  The primary service comes from Metrobus, the bus service delivered by WMATA, which provides the bulk of intra-city bus service on major and minor routes and some transit between DC and other jurisdictions.  (Many of the lines end at the boundary between DC and Maryland, reflecting age-old service patterns.)

Unlike the suburbs, DC doesn't provide an extensive intra-jurisdictional bus network separate from WMATA, but the five-route DC Circulator is an example of such a service.  (Note that in a couple of instances, RideOn, the bus system for Montgomery County, provides service to DC locations, including a route to Sibley Hospital.)

The third public transit service is inter-city long distance bus commuter service from distant locations in Maryland and Virginia.  Maryland Mass Transit Administration coordinates this service on the Maryland side, while Loudoun County, Prince William County, and the Fredericksburg area each provide commuter bus services from Virginia.

A fourth service is the various shuttle services provided by government agencies, businesses, and other institutions.  Shuttles operate between buildings, campuses, and Metrorail stations mostly.  Major examples include universities like American, Gallaudet, Georgetown, and Howard, the Smithsonian, and Washington Hospital Center.  These systems are not fully public, and are open only to employees, students, patients, etc.

Except for WMATA-owned station properties, the bus shelters in each of the local jurisdictions are run by the respective jurisdiction.  So DC is in charge of the city's bus shelters. 

Transit shelters as a marketing touchpoint.  From "Arlington County's bus shelters and a public realm framework of quality":

A point I make is that bus shelters are the primary marketing touchpoints for transit, for users of the system as well as for non-users, who travel by and around the bus system and its physical manifestations.  The information posted in shelters about bus service markets the service--or not.

You see this attention to the service as a whole and its marketing and branding aspects, in the implementation of bus rapid transit service, where they tend to focus especially on providing modern, attractively designed bus shelters and quality information services ranging from real-time arrival information, wayfinding in the stations, and marketing of the service.

More recently I have extended these arguments about the quality of the physical and wayfinding elements in the transit system, influenced by a concept articulated by David Barth (now of AECOM) which he calls the "integrated public realm framework."  ....

(1) transit riders deserve high quality amenities and infrastructure too, such shouldn't be the exclusive province of motor vehicle operators;

(2) transit shelters are an integral element of an integrated public realm framework;

(3) transit shelters are key touchpoints for marketing transit, especially surface transit.

Proof of concept business district wayfinding signage.  Many years ago, Christopher Taylor Edwards and I created a conceptual business district map that among other elements, showed transit routes using the same graphic design treatment WMATA uses on their own map products.

Even WMATA's bus shelter maps use a different design treatment from the Metrorail map.  I think that's a mistake.

Lack of common graphic treatment across different map products.   Maps produced by entities other than WMATA don't use the WMATA design treatment, other than the colors of the lines and the M Metrorail symbol.  The variety of methods mostly fail--not the Circulator, because it depicts lines showing complete bus routes, but only of its own routes.

The maps displayed in bus shelters that are served by multiple local bus services should include information on all of the bus lines that serve that station and the sub-city district served by the station.  For many of the transit stops, this is not the case.

Sub-city transit mapping.  When the new system of bus shelters were launched in 2006, local business districts and neighborhood associations were given the option of putting in localized maps and promotional information in the shelters, but outside of the business improvement districts, most haven't had the financial ability to pull it off.  DC didn't think to set aside money from the shelter advertising contract to assist local districts in providing such information.

There are three types of maps displayed in DC's bus shelters.  Most are provided by WMATA and show bus routes serving the transit stop and the city .  The second type are maps of the DC Circulator bus system. The third type are business district maps, mostly created by Business Improvement Districts.

At least in Downtown, WMATA maps don't show Circulator routes, Circulator maps don't show WMATA routes.  And the Downtown BID map doesn't show the Circulator either, even though an entity managed in part by the Downtown BID runs the Circulator bus service!

The Downtown BID map doesn't have bus and subway route lines on the map either, which makes it very difficult for people to get their bearings.

The photos are the Downtown DC BID map at a shelter at 7th and E Streets NW; a WMATA map on 7th Street at the Archives Metrorail station; and a DC Circulator map at a combined WMATA/Circulator bus stop at Massachusetts Avenue NE at 3rd Street.

The maps at the Pronto bike share stations in Seattle show both walksheds and bikesheds--the distance that can be covered from the station in a five-minute walk or bike ride.  Photo from Geekwire.

Maps aren't provided at bus stops for the long distance commuter services.  Only recently have these services been more consistent in putting up bus stop signs.  The presumption is that people who want to use these buses already know about them.

MTA produces a single map showing all their commuter bus services, but there is not a comprehensive map on the Virginia side showing all of their long distance commuter bus services on one map.

Maps at bike sharing stations end up being used by pedestrians as well.

The area's bike share stations have their own mapping system, while bike share station maps in cities like London and New York are elements of the city's overall wayfinding signage system.

DC's wayfinding signage system is not nearly as comprehensive as other systems, and is complicated by the fact that various federal entities like the National Park Service, the Architect of the Capitol, and the transit agencies have separate systems. 

Note that the comprehensive wayfinding signage system developed in Bath, England is the model and foundation for larger systems in London and New York City.


Showing walksheds on bus shelter maps.  Maps in Metrorail stations show the walkshed from the station at one-quarter, one-half, and three-quarters of a mile--5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes.

Some signs in the DC wayfinding signage system are posted outside of stations.  Intended for use by tourists, these maps include walkshed information.

Bus shelter maps within districts such as the Central Business District/Downtown should also show walksheds.  Some people will find it faster to walk to a destination than to wait for a bus. 

Conclusion.  Sadly, at the intra-city scale, as reflected by transit maps used in the city's bus shelters, transit planning can be as dis-coordinated as it is at the metropolitan scale.