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Connecting The Dots
We love the TTC—we really do—but they make it hard to like them sometimes. The Commission does a good job behind the scenes keeping an enormous fleet of vehicles running, in reasonable repair, and reasonably on time, but where they really drop the ball is when it comes to the actual transit rider. Frustratingly, they have no shortage of passionate, inventive, and resourceful riders who seem to be happily at their disposal (gratis, even!), but the TTC is notorious for even bungling up stuff that is handed to them on a silver platter.
Enter Matt Blackett again, creator of the now-legendary and ineptly-copied subway buttons, with his fantastic new mockup of a highly useful streetcar map.
“I’ve always found it perplexing that while travelling on a streetcar you have no idea of which subway stations have streetcars routes passing through or which streetcar routes intersect with one another,” he says in a post on Spacing. “My idea is to place the streetcar maps above the rear exit of streetcars, much like subway maps appear above entrance/exit doors on trains.”
A second mockup (above) is designed for subway riders and outlines the connecting surface routes.
Anyone who has seen tourists and out-of-towners attempting to navigate the tangle of connecting routes will understand the importance of clarity, especially as it relates to the landmark-less subway line. Blackett is calling for constructive feedback on the designs before he revises and submits them to the TTC for consideration in the spring.
We know—it’s a radical concept that actual transit users might have better ideas on the customer experience than the Big Red Bureaucratic Behemoth itself, but it would be even more radical if some of those ideas were actually implemented. And suggestions for usable streetcar maps are worth listening to.
Images by Matt Blackett.