A good post on Human Transit highlights the usefulness of improving bus signage – and in particular the importance of naming routes by the main road they pass along, rather than by their destiation. A good example of an effective bus sign (by that I mean the signage on the front of the bus) is the 38 Geary Boulevard service in San Francisco:
As Jarrett says in his post, this signage is great because it lets you know the bus runs along Geary Boulevard, while also saying that somewhere near the end of the route is V.A. Hospital. This compared to in many other cities (like Auckland) where it seems most of the signage relates to the place where the bus ends up:
Many other cities, including Sydney and Seattle, habitually turn it upside down, so on the 38 above they might have said “38 VA HOSPITAL via Geary.” A Sydney sign might read “380 DOVER BCH via Oxford St.” I find that less intuitive, because the path the bus follows is usually more useful than the final destination in determining if the service is useful to you. Still, it’s understandable in Sydney where street names change so frequently that it’s hard to associate bus routes with them, as “38 GEARY” does.
Auckland is a classic example of the latter situation. The 267 bus has “Lynfield” all over its signs, while the 258 says “Blockhouse Bay” loud and clear. If you didn’t know Auckland’s bus system well, you might be somewhat unlikely to think that they predominantly follow the same route – as they pass along Dominion Road. Same with New North Road buses – we have buses that say “Rosebank Road”, “Patiki Road” and “Henderson” – even though for all these services they actually only spend a tiny fraction of their time along the parts highlighted in big bold letters on the front of the bus.
One of the biggest complaints I have about Auckland’s bus system is that it’s overly complex and difficult to understand. Changing the way we name routes, so that we sell all the New North Road buses as “New North Road – to Rosebank” (for the 211) or “New North Road – to Patiki Rd” (for the 212) seems like an obvious way to at least make the system seem a lot simpler and easier to understand. It wouldn’t cost a thing to do either – just a bit of reprogramming on the buses and on the real time information signs.
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Its not just the bus signs that need this fixed up, trains are just as bad. When looking at the PIDs at Britomart it is generally easy for the western line as trains either terminate at Swanson or Waitakere however going south can be confusing. The signs just list the final destination and you have to look at the scrolling list of stations to work out what line the train is going on to get there. As most trains terminate at Papakura or Pukekohe this makes things quite confusing unless you use a station south of Westfield. I would prefer we used the names we all know them by Southern, Eastern, Western & Onehunga then just list the station it terminates at.
Yeah good point Matt, and I did think that such an approach could be beneficial for the rail network. Why go to the trouble of saying “Papakura via Glen Innes” when you can just say “Eastern Line to Papakura”. The important thing that most people want to know is whether it’s southern or eastern – a relatively small minority will be concerned about whether it terminates at Papakura or Pukekohe.
Isn’t there somebody paid to sort out this kind of things? Or is leaving the status quo a job?
Ha ha excellent question. I have wondered myself what many of the people formerly at ARTA ever did.
also on-board info that shows where abouts the bus is. Most trams and trains have this, even some very old fashioned trams in Prague have this feature.
I think the new buses NZ Bus are getting all have LCD screens so lets hope they have this instead of just advertising.
All Snapper-equipped buses have a screen showing the next stop, conveniently situated so that only the driver can see it. What a missed opportunity!
Even more bizarre: Wellington buses with real-time information capability have another screen showing the next stop – and, again, only the diver can see it.
all buses in Tokyo have audio recordings on board announcing stops by name and electronic signs doing likewise. drivers have headsets to make announcements as necessary and even have a button to push so the audio switches to a speaker outside the door so people at the stop waiting can hear where it is going.
anybody knows the meaning of the numbers of the bus routes? Do all routes starting by 600 end in the same place, for example?
Vaguely all buses starting with 1 head west, all with 2 serve the southwest isthmus, all with 3 go via Onehunga/Otahuhu to the Mangere area. Buses starting with 4 go south, with 5 serve Mt Wellington + SE Auckland + a pile of crosstown routes, with 6 serve the eastern isthmus. Buses starting with a 7 go along Tamaki Drive, buses with 8 serve the North Shore via Takapuna (generally), while those with 9 serve the North Shore but not via Takapuna. Buses starting with 0 do a pile of different things, but are generally either crosstown or northwest services.
I would like to see the core routes boiled down giving them just a 2 digit number. That way you might see Sandringham Rd buses as route 24, Dominion Rd route 25 Mt Eden Rd route 26 etc.