MTD signs up with design experts

Company responsible for London Underground guides takes on South Coast transit maps.

By David Downs
South Coast Beacon

The Metropolitan Transit District has put a cap on the attention span of the average bus rider, and it’s eight seconds.

That’s how long it should take, maximum, for someone using the MTD’s new professionally designed transit maps and signs to figure out where they are, where they are going and how they are going to get there.

MTD’s new riding tools premiered in late November at the transit center and along the Hollister Avenue and State Street corridors. They include a new system map in the transit center, new signs at stops and, in the future, pocket maps for the whole system.

Afficionados of the London Underground system will notice an immediate similarity between MTD’s new directions and the posted routes of the Tube. That’s because the same company — CHK — is designing both guides, as well as dozens of others around the world.

Upon first glance, the system map still resembles a schematic of some psychedelic piping system, but tracing one’s route seems easy enough. Lines are color-coded to facilitate tracing location to destination.

“The color on the system map matches the color on the spider map, and that same color goes all the way down to the bus stop,” said Steve Parry, national sales manager for CHK America.

People easily relate to colors and fonts that are consistent over all materials, he said.. The net effect is a bus line of continuing familiarity, even approachability.

“Just show up. It eliminates a lot of preplanning if people want to ride on a whim,” he said. “Everybody loves it. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve noticed looking at them.”

“They’re just more pretty,” said one female UCSB rider. “The other ones were kind of ghetto.”

“I didn’t have a problem,” said an elderly woman at the transit center who declined to give her name. “I mean, I missed my bus, but that was my fault.”

Indeed, Santa Barbara’s bus system has its peculiarities. It took CHK more than 15 months to design the new charts, and more remains to be done.

“Santa Barbara runs a nice, tight system, and because of the layout of the streets you can’t run bus service on that many of them. There’s lots of bad zones that we have to limit bus access to, and MTD has also limited it economically. You have some irregular services where something will go out and convert itself into something else.”

Such idiosyncrasies have left people wondering what neighborhood they’re in, why they are the last person on the bus, and why does the sign on their bus read ‘out of service.’

MTD spokesperson David Damiano said rider-friendly features continue to roll out in 2004.

That includes new bus stops, two of which will be built on Milpas Street at some of the busiest stops in town. Parry said riders can also look forward to 13 by 7- inch system maps that fold into 2 by 3.5-inch pocket maps, hopefully to replace the bulky route books in use today.

More improvements will hopefully generate more MTD contributions from affected cities, Damiano said.

South Coast Beacon

The Metropolitan Transit District has put a cap on the attention span of the average bus rider, and it’s eight seconds.

That’s how long it should take, maximum, for someone using the MTD’s new professionally designed transit maps and signs to figure out where they are, where they are going and how they are going to get there.

MTD’s new riding tools premiered in late November at the transit center and along the Hollister Avenue and State Street corridors. They include a new system map in the transit center, new signs at stops and, in the future, pocket maps for the whole system.

Afficionados of the London Underground system will notice an immediate similarity between MTD’s new directions and the posted routes of the Tube. That’s because the same company — CHK — is designing both guides, as well as dozens of others around the world.

Upon first glance, the system map still resembles a schematic of some psychedelic piping system, but tracing one’s route seems easy enough. Lines are color-coded to facilitate tracing location to destination.

“The color on the system map matches the color on the spider map, and that same color goes all the way down to the bus stop,” said Steve Parry, national sales manager for CHK America.

People easily relate to colors and fonts that are consistent over all materials, he said.. The net effect is a bus line of continuing familiarity, even approachability.

“Just show up. It eliminates a lot of preplanning if people want to ride on a whim,” he said. “Everybody loves it. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve noticed looking at them.”

“They’re just more pretty,” said one female UCSB rider. “The other ones were kind of ghetto.”

“I didn’t have a problem,” said an elderly woman at the transit center who declined to give her name. “I mean, I missed my bus, but that was my fault.”

Indeed, Santa Barbara’s bus system has its peculiarities. It took CHK more than 15 months to design the new charts, and more remains to be done.

“Santa Barbara runs a nice, tight system, and because of the layout of the streets you can’t run bus service on that many of them. There’s lots of bad zones that we have to limit bus access to, and MTD has also limited it economically. You have some irregular services where something will go out and convert itself into something else.”

Such idiosyncrasies have left people wondering what neighborhood they’re in, why they are the last person on the bus, and why does the sign on their bus read ‘out of service.’

MTD spokesperson David Damiano said rider-friendly features continue to roll out in 2004.

That includes new bus stops, two of which will be built on Milpas Street at some of the busiest stops in town. Parry said riders can also look forward to 13 by 7- inch system maps that fold into 2 by 3.5-inch pocket maps, hopefully to replace the bulky route books in use today.

More improvements will hopefully generate more MTD contributions from affected cities, Damiano said.