This guidebook will be of interest to marketing and graphics professionals, customer service personnel, schedulers, transit planners, operating staff, and others who need to be conversant with the design, distribution, and placement of passenger information materials for public transit systems. This guidebook provides instructions for designing passenger information aids. Transit systems in the United States and Canada have produced and developed a wide variety of information services. However, passenger information materials are often not easily available, user-friendly, or up to date. In addition, the materials often assume that passengers already know about the transit system and the geographic area. As a result of this assumption, connections with other routes, lines, and systems are frequently omitted. Given that transit riders come from various demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, it is important to design and prepare information materials that will meet the needs of all transit customers. Under TCRP Project A-12, Passenger-Information Services, the Texas Transportation Institute and NuStats International, undertook research to produce a guidebook that includes a compilation of principles for designing passenger information services. This research was not intended to be used to develop a high-technology, paperless approach to passenger information. Rather, it focused on traditional media (e.g., schedules, maps, and signage) for presentation of information. The guidebook primarily consists of three sections. The first section addresses the basic information needs of transit passengers, including wayfinding behaviour and decision making during a trip. The second section describes route guidance information and, where appropriate, provides examples to illustrate this information. The third section discusses the design and format details for information aids (e.g., print sizes, visual contrast, use of colour and symbols, and map legends). To achieve the project objective of producing a guidebook, the researchers conducted a review of literature and existing practices to identify the following: • Methods used in wayfinding behaviour, • Transit riders’ perceptions of printed and graphic information, • Transit riders’ memory and learning issues, and • Transit riders’ preferences regarding transit information. Transit systems from the United States, Canada, and Europe sent samples of passenger information materials (including maps, timetables, signage, and special materials such as videotapes). The materials were compared, and characteristics of the content and format were documented. Elements of several map and timetable examples were used to design the prototypes and to provide examples of different formats, which were evaluated in a representative group. Preliminary design guidelines for passenger information materials were developed from the literature search and the state-of-the-art survey. These guidelines were used to design a prototype system map and route map timetable, which were then tested, along with other maps and timetables, with a focus group of potential transit riders and with a peer group of transit professionals. The results from both groups were used to modify the design guidelines and the prototypes. (A)
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