TTC Cartography, Signage, and Wayfinding

[voilan]

I get that online transit/urbanism influencers always need something new to talk about in what is a naturally extremely slow-moving field, but the idea that Toronto's wayfinding has an appreciable effect on ridership is absurd on its face, and sets the tone for an overall overdramatic video.

 

[MisterF]

I'm just baffled that this seems like a real challenge to any number of people.

I work in a building where at every entrance there's a list of all of the offices and which floor they're on. Washrooms and elevators are clearly marked and there's a prominent security desk in the middle of the lobby. You'd be amazed how many people don't look at any of these, instead wandering aimlessly around the lobby looking utterly lost. People often ask me for directions, sometimes right next to the thing they're looking for.

Some people are bested by the simplest of unfamiliar tasks. That doesn't mean we shouldn't improve wayfinding of course.

I don't disagree with most of the criticisms in the video, but one I take absolute umbrage with is the issue he has with station name combinations like Dundas and Dundas West. Personally I think that if you are an adult and you have been entrusted to use the transit system by yourself, you should be sufficiently aware of your surroundings to be able to notice additional characters in the name of station. You're supposed to pay attention to the world around you. If you change at B/Y to line 2 because you want Dundas and you read Dundas in Dundas West and thought your planning was done, you are not an adult, you are a child with bad impulse control. Funny how the sky hasn't fallen in New York, a city of many many more tourists than Toronto, with their multiple stations with duplicated names.

Or Chicago, which not only has duplicate station names, but also managed to name three of them "Chicago."

 

[allengeorge]

I pray that he never has to use the MTA. He would never be able to leave Times Square station, condemned to wander around eternally, perhaps turning into one of the buskers.

 

[allengeorge]

Jokes aside, I think there are some legitimate concerns, primarily around design consistency and signage consistency, station naming, signage around connections to other operators, as well as retail. I find the tone overwrought, but - that’s what it takes to get the clicks

I think that consistency between operators is an overblown concern. I’d rather the TTC focus first on cleaning its own design house. As usual, funding, and finding people who truly care within the agency is a concern.

 

[Mount Dennis Resident]

Maybe Kipling maybe should have been named Kipling-Dundas-Bloor? Yet St. Patrick could have been named University-Dundas or Art Gallery?

Looks like on the Line 6 Finch West LRT, they settled on the stop at Kipling and Finch West to be Mount Olive, and the stop at Islington and Finch West to be Rowntree Mills. While the Jane and Finch West stop will be Jane and Finch.

 

[EnviroTO]

I don't think there is much I don't agree with in that video. The TTC sucks at wayfinding and definitely lives in a world where they are creating wayfinding for people who already understand the TTC. VIA is the same when they announce they are bringing back train 82 like that means something to normal people. When designing wayfinding and station names the key should be to guide the uninformed. The informed probably already know where they are going.

I would say nouns aren't the issue, it is the overuse and inconsistent use of those nouns to describe things that are completely different or to use the noun when it adds no value. Stations should have been place names and the move to change Eglinton West to Cedarvale makes sense and this thought process should continue. Name stations as unique names in the GTA. Station names don't need cross streets in the name because that is relevant to people navigating by streets... naming the station Union is OK... it doesn't need Front Street in the name. Once people get off at the station, then you can guide people to streets.

The cardinal direction for a subway line adds no value. The line is yellow line 1, the directions are Finch and Vaughan... From Finch it travels SSE then WSW for a short period under Front, then NNW, then WSW a bit, then NNW, then NW then NNW... who cares. No commuter is a goose trying to fly south in general... they want to go somewhere specific.

We do need to implement it Metrolinx wayfinding standard and continue to rationalize station names. There hasn't been a perfect implementation of Metrolinx wayfinding yet, but the focus on singular meanings of terms, communicating only what you need to know when you need to know it, focusing on regional transportation rather than transit agency focus, and putting more thought into those who don't already know where they are going are big wins. Certainly Durham College Oshawa station and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station are the "winners" for worst recent station namings if the focus is on making wayfinding, or finding your way on transit, a success.

 

[Northern Light]

When designing wayfinding and station names the key should be to guide the uninformed.

Sure.... but there is a question of how far to go in that pursuit. Some people are more generous to the utterly oblivious than I.....

Stations should have been place names and the move to change Eglinton West to Cedarvale makes sense and this thought process should continue

Strongly disagree. No one I've ever met in the City would call the area around Eglinton-Allen 'Cedarvale'.

The City designates an area to the south as 'Humewood-Cedarvale' ; I don't hear anyone use that either. Its a contrivance. Most people call the area from Cedarvale Park southwards 'Forest Hill' or 'Forest Hill North'.

But since Forest Hill generally covers from just south of St. Clair to Eglinton, its far too general to be a useful station appellation.

I feel strongly the default, intuitive name for any station is the major street or streets that it is crossing. The exceptions would be for very widely known landmarks (Union Station, Museum, Pearson Airport etc.)

. Name stations as unique names in the GTA. Station names don't need cross streets in the name because that is relevant to people navigating by streets... naming the station Union is OK... it doesn't need Front Street in the name. Once people get off at the station, then you can guide people to streets.

Disagree, see above. Bus routes are named by streets, destinations have street addresses. Street names provide maximum utility.

The cardinal direction for a subway line adds no value.

Strongly disagree. When people give directions from Warden Station to downtown, they will say, take Line 2 going west to Yonge

Cardinal directions provide a relative sense of placement and the trajectory of a service. I don't require the information. You could take down almost all signage in the TTC and I'd be fine, but for someone less familiar, a direction of travel is helpful in giving one a sense of whether a service merits you reading to see if it goes to your station, or if you can dismiss it as going the wrong way.

The line is yellow line 1, the directions are Finch and Vaughan... From Finch it travels SSE then WSW for a short period under Front, then NNW, then WSW a bit, then NNW, then NW then NNW... who cares. No commuter is a goose trying to fly south in general... they want to go somewhere specific.

Sure, but beyond listing a terminus, one can't clutter a basic 'Line 2' sign with every available destination. Generally, someone has the idea, my destination is west of here, and that information helps someone sort which direction to go and which map to consult looking for their desired destination.

We do need to implement it Metrolinx wayfinding standard and continue to rationalize station names.

Disagree on both counts.

There hasn't been a perfect implementation of Metrolinx wayfinding yet

On that we most certainly do agree.

 

[vic]

I think @Reecemartin should have also clued him in to the fact that Dundas West Station is right next to Bloor GO station. That could have lead to yet another side-rant about inbreeding.

 

[voilan]

Cardinal directions add value in a city with two subway lines running east-west and north-south. The overwhelming majority of subway trips are taken by riders familiar with the city, for whom cardinal directions are useful given the (approx.) compass-aligned grid of Toronto. For the others, the terminal stations are now on most signs, apparently except the set featured in the video. I don't disagree that complete visual/wayfinding unification would be good, but the urgency expressed in the video rings hollow when you could look at any other signs in Union Station and see the termini.

The contrast with Montreal presented in the video is pretty strange, given that many Montreal stations are also named after cross streets, and Toronto also indicates subway lines and directions with termini and coloured circles. Maybe a more well-researched video (instead of focusing on a single sign in Union station) would have revealed this to the creator. I agree that Montreal is a more aesthetically pleasing system, but don't believe that it achieves a much higher ease of navigation.

Many systems worldwide use a mixture of street names and place names in their systems. Given that people in Toronto conventionally use streets/intersections to describe locations ("Jane and Finch", "Yonge and Dundas", "Yonge and Sheppard", "King West", "Queen West", "Ossington", etc etc etc), and that Toronto has a relatively consistent grid, it is sensible to use street names on the current lines.

I think @Reecemartin should have also clued him in to the fact that Dundas West Station is right next to Bloor GO station. That could have lead to yet another side-rant about inbreeding.

This is actually unacceptable and needs to be fixed urgently (unlike most wayfinding issues on the TTC).

 

[EnviroTO]

Sure.... but there is a question of how far to go in that pursuit. Some people are more generous to the utterly oblivious than I.....

Some people can't navigate at all. We aren't talking about flashing lights following a path to guide people to their destination... we are asking to have it clearly indicated if getting to Yorkdale is best done by going down a certain set of stairs at Union, and that is something University Line and Northbound don't help with. Only "Line 1 towards Vaughan" is useful guidance. As Torontonians adjust to "Line 1 towards Vaughan" and "Line 2 towards Kipling", assisted by the repeated announcements the new subways give, they will be able to give better guidance to people. Ontario Line is going to be half north-southish, and half east-westish, we should learn to say "Line 3 towards Exhibition" because south and west is less useful.

I feel strongly the default, intuitive name for any station is the major street or streets that it is crossing. The exceptions would be for very widely known landmarks (Union Station, Museum, Pearson Airport etc.)

Which is a common view in North America where cars have largely remained king. However if you look at subway maps elsewhere such as Tokyo, London, and Paris where transit and a more walk-able environment has been present throughout, stations are named after neighbourhoods and landmarks, and in some cases the station name became the place. Likewise, while people have opinions that Forest Hill better describes a different location, with the station being named Forest Hill that too will become the place people associate with it as it once was when people considered "Forest Hill" the hill that Old Forest Hill Road runs to the top of, and the hill that Eglinton goes up as it approaches Forest Hill station. Cedarvale while southeast of the station has the station at its northern most point and if you want to go to the station closest to Cedarvale Park you shouldn't be surprised to know the closest station is Cedarvale.

Disagree, see above. Bus routes are named by streets, destinations have street addresses. Street names provide maximum utility.

Bus routes run on streets so it makes sense to name them after the street they spend the most time on. It doesn't make sense to name subway stations to try and match bus routes though. At Eglinton West I think Cedarvale makes far more sense than "Eglinton West - Allen - Everden" or "Eglinton West - Marlee - Ossington". I'm not suggesting that street names don't have a place in a system run by streets, but trains and subways are at a higher scale where streets shouldn't be the focus. If you ask me naming stations by streets doesn't improve people figuring out where they are at the scale they are operating for example Vaughan Metropolitan Centre as "Highway 7 - Millway" vs "Vaughan Centre", Durham College Oshawa GO as "Bloor West - Thornton South" vs "Oshawa Stevenson", or Pearson Airport as "Silver Dart - Jetliner" vs "Toronto Pearson". The scale of the transportation has a part in determining the right sizing of the stop names. Things that go between major metros should have names that are "Metro" or "Metro-City", things that go between cities should be "City" or "City-Unique Place Name" or "City-Neighbourhood", things that go between areas of the city should be "Neighbourhood" or "Unique Place Name", and things that go through neighbourhoods should use cross streets.

 

[voilan]

we are asking to have it clearly indicated if getting to Yorkdale is best done by going down a certain set of stairs at Union, and that is something University Line and Northbound don't help with. Only "Line 1 towards Vaughan" is useful guidance. As Torontonians adjust to "Line 1 towards Vaughan" and "Line 2 towards Kipling", assisted by the repeated announcements the new subways give, they will be able to give better guidance to people.

Yes, they should indeed add the termini to that one sign. The other signs in Union already provide "useful guidance".

Which is a common view in North America where cars have largely remained king. However if you look at subway maps elsewhere such as Tokyo, London, and Paris where transit and a more walk-able environment has been present throughout, stations are named after neighbourhoods and landmarks, and in some cases the station name became the place.

Stations in London and, for example, Seoul are certainly named after streets (not sure about the other two). Your issue seems to be with the urban framework of Toronto rather than station names. If Toronto looked like Tokyo or Paris, its station nomenclature wouldn't be as appropriate. But it looks nothing like those cities. Anyway, there's no contradiction between the current system and having "the station name become the place". This can happen whether the station is called Cedarvale or Eglinton West (same for Avenue or Forest Hill).

 

[EnviroTO]

Certainly the urban layout of Toronto is part of the problem. In many cities streets don't run the same distance. Dundas exists across most of the GTA. Naming something Dundas (or many street names that run massive distances) in Toronto is to name something in a non-unique way.

 

[PL1]

I personally like destination and cardinal directions for subways (e.g. Line 1 North to Vaughan Centre [please drop the aspirational Metropolitan]), though just the destination should normally be sufficient. I have been to cities (e.g. Chicago and Boston) that use Inbound and Outbound as descriptors, which mean close to nothing to visitors to the city.

 

[EnviroTO]

When the lines are not in a straight line should the cardinal directions change over the course of the line? For example at East Harbour the directions would be North and West, but at Pape be North and South despite at both being Science Centre vs Exhibition?

 

[asher__jo]

Maybe Kipling maybe should have been named Kipling-Dundas-Bloor? Yet St. Patrick could have been named University-Dundas or Art Gallery?

Looks like on the Line 6 Finch West LRT, they settled on the stop at Kipling and Finch West to be Mount Olive, and the stop at Islington and Finch West to be Rowntree Mills. While the Jane and Finch West stop will be Jane and Finch.
View attachment 524453

Jane and Finch terrible name