Comments

1
Iā€™m an airline crew member who takes Link to work several times a week in uniform. As such, Iā€™ve become the de facto conductor on the trains and I have to be able to direct people which exits to go to once they leave the trains. Please ST, relabel the exits A,B,C,D or number them, or anything! It is so much easier to say ā€˜take exit 2 and turn left, when you get to second Ave. turn left again and walk two blocks. ā€˜. VS. Get off the train, take the escalator behind the train, cross over the platform and angle to left, take the Pine St. Exit near the McDonaldā€™s. If you came up by Macyā€™s your on the wrong side of the street. Donā€™t worry, you just need to cross over. Walk west on Pine....etc.

Or O can leave my headphones off and maintain my Seattle freeze.
2
Similar stickers have appeared at the UW station months and months ago. But I can't picture a Stranger writer ever using the UW station.
3
Comon Rich, be a reporter and find out where B goes.
4
The little system strip map that shows the station name and transfers options (ferry, amtrak, airport...) needs to be updated so the streetcar symbol at Westlake is YELLOW (S.L.U.T.) and the symbol at Capitol Hill and International District is RED (First Hill Streetcar - http://www.seattlestreetcar.org). Color coding intersecting lines at transfers is standard worldwide.
5
And North arrow tiles or paint on the ground every 20'
6
Obviously, "B" is where you get off to catch the secret train to wizard school.
7
UW station has had similar guerilla labels added (and removed) multiple times.
8
Quite often P means Parking... (in office buildings, apartment buildings, shopping centers, so many places) ... such that P meaning "Platform" goes against a very strong grain.

Please let B be Balcony... that would be so useless! Or "Below Ground". Or "Beelzebub"...

@4 - YES!! Color coding is the way to go. People see color before they can process "letters" and "numbers". And letters only work if they are in your mother tongue... tourists visiting here will more easily be able to follow colors.
9
It's only going to get worse whenever multiple train lines finally start going through downtown. Nobody will know where the fuck to go.
10
As near as I can figure 'B' is just some random landing in the stairwell. Who the hell knows why the elevator even stops there.
11
Screw that, I want them to put up something in Spanish.
12
If I recall correctly, there were some dungeon-like Sound Transit office space in this station in the early renderings of the station (assuming this wasn't value engineered out at some point). B = Business? Back office? Bureaucrats?

Alternative theory: B = Button. Because someone just likes to add extra buttons that don't do anything.

Alternative alternative theory: B = Broken.
13
For some reason it takes two elevator rides just to get up a couple floors in that station
14
Wait, no. I've got it. B = Fan Room, of course.

(and apparently the dungeon-like office space is at UW station)
15
Call me naĆÆve (or maybe just one of those "Why doesn't someone do something about this??!" type of people), but isn't there some sort of department at Sound Transit, or maybe even one person, who's whole job is to make sure the system makes sense and is usable? I mean, I've never designed an entire transit system, but it seems like this topic - labels, signs, and maps - would be kind of a high priority, and not left dysfunctional for years after a station opens. If I were designing a system, one of the first things I would ask myself or my team would be, "How will people know where to go?" And this isn't my field.

Also, I'd imagine there is a fairly robust literature about what works and what doesn't as far as this kind design issue, which could have been called upon during the building of the station, or soon after it opened. So there doesn't seem to be any reason we would have to start from scratch and figure things out by trial and error.
16
B= Buttstuff
17
Wait, so is M really Mezzanine? Because, yeah.
18
Nothing for "Loge"?
19
In case anyone is curious, I'll tell you exactly how this happens. There's a design team, and some architect in the design team is certainly in charge of the look and feel of things. Then there's another architect who gets to choose where to put the elevator. Somewhere in a list of specifications they provide to the elevator contractor there's at most a note to put descriptive names for buttons.

The plans are bid on, then one of the two elevator companies gets the job, possibly reads the note but certainly ignores it. S/he checks off the factory options, and in the form that asks them what to name things looks at the building plans and writes in some letters.

They then send a submittal to the architect with that information and a massive amount of other information. The architect in charge of look and feel goes through that submittal and a giant pile of other submittals (or assigns this to a lower level designer). They run low on time (or to be generous simply miss this) and just stamp "approved" on the submittals. So does the electrical engineer, who doesn't care about the labels, and possibly some ST staff member who is also swamped in submittals.

Equipment is installed, and if look/feel architect or ST staffer notices the tags they ask the elevator company to change it. Elevator company, providing the lowest service of all machine providers, say no. Then they send them the signed submittals that show they were approved. If anyone insists, they start a change order process that involves adding money - probably way too much money for some tags. And it will add weeks/months to the schedule. Some time and money sensitive project manager denies this change and just accepts that ST will have to fix this after construction.

At some point the station is handed over, and it's maintenance's job. They have enough to do fixing escalators (same low service level company that provided elevators), and put it on some list of things to fix. Lists like that tend to get longer, not shorter and someday it ends up on a bi-weekly local paper.
20
B = basement. Don't know why it's called that, but that's what it stands for. (source: have read the blueprints for this station before)
21
Geez! Whadaya expect for a measly $53 billion?
22
Besides the idiodic elevator labels, Sound Transit screwed up ROYALLY on the development at the Capitol Hill Station ...they *knew* a station was coming for years, and yet they waited to get developers on board for housing, retail etc... so instead of having a near-finished project, it is taking multiple more years to have anything built on the site. Really bad (lack of) planning!

Please wait...

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