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Museum Station

well with the new trains, won't the station name be displayed in the train? along with the announcement and the digial display of what station the train is at, i think it'll be quite hard to get lost.

as i ride the subway, when it's pulling in it's going quite fast and most of the time the names of the stations pass by too quickly to even know what stop you're at. the only way i can tell is by the color of the tiles.
 
Identifying stations by the tiles is a heck of a lot easier on the YUS line than B/D, but I agree that making the names on the wall easier to read from inside the train should be a priority...people standing on the platform know what station they're at and only care about what station they're going to, so why do they need to be bombarded with enormous signs at the expense of people on the trains?
 
With automated announcements and displays, we can turn our subway cars into the "padded cell" cars the London underground used to have. No windows except for a narrow band above the seats. No more looking out the window to check out what station you're at...

scott3.jpg


:)
 
Today, one of the giant letters was up on the wall beside the northbound tracks. But it isn't painted, so it looks very preliminary. The further you walk towards the "jail", the more progress you see. At least one column is visible.
 
Are those breaks in the wall to be filled with posters/ads?

Overall, looks pretty good. But all they needed to do was bleech the floor.
 
The medium-sized MUSEUM wall signs are visible when you're seated in the train in the station. The bottom of the letters align with the bottom of the windows - just! In any case, the eye reads the top of letters rather than their bottom, so there is legibility.
 
Urban Shocker said:
The medium-sized MUSEUM wall signs are visible when you're seated in the train in the station. The bottom of the letters align with the bottom of the windows - just! In any case, the eye reads the top of letters rather than their bottom, so there is legibility.
Click to expand...

Perhaps when you're standing. In my experience, I can only see the top half of the words when seated on the other side of the train (and I'm a pretty tall guy). It's not a big deal, it's the poor design that bugs me.
 
Though it's the top half of the word that the eye skims in order to read something. Try this test: cover the top half of the letters in a sentence and try to read it, then repeat the process covering the bottom half of the letters, and compare which worked best.

When seated, people sitting opposite you will cover the station name too. And there aren't enough repeats of the word to guarantee that the full name of the station will always be in view whenever the train comes to a stop, no matter where it is placed.
 
Though there are enough to ensure that at least one will be readable when the train is moving slow enough.

The designers of the original tiled TTC subway aesthetic obviously thought through usability and clarity rather than simply thinking about what "looks good". When it's a side platform, the station names along the tops of the walls are easy to see even when a crowded platform blocks a view of the larger mid-wall signs. With an island platform, station names are perfectly centred in the windows and station names are also placed along the tops of support pillars along the platform. The 1970s Bloor-Danforth and Spadina stations repeat this layout even with complete changes in architecture. With the Sheppard line this was all forgotten, though the hanging ceiling signage is clear to see (even if it's not an intuitive place to look for a station name).

Now with the Museum redo, the original TTC station design logic has been completely forgotten. What good is pointing out that a traveller should be able to figure out what a station name is from the top half of a word when all that had to be done for complete clarity is copy the location of the original text? If they had been placed in the original location you'd certainly be able to see it over the heads over people seated across from you. It's safe to assume that there won't be station names printed across the Doric columns or sarcophagi, so if there is a train stopped on the other platform an unfamiliar, uncertain visitor might find themselves confused. There's simply no need for this.

Museum station might turn out being the aesthetic opposite of the FSCPA, form over properly-thought-out function. That said, I'm still glad that the renovation is going forward.
 
Thanks for the pictures. I haven't been through this station recently. I can handle the hugely oversized font, since it's one station only and forms part of an artistic vision for the station (I hope!). I wouldn't want to see this huge, eye-assaulting font in all or most stations.
 
CSW2424 said:
Overall, looks pretty good. But all they needed to do was bleech the floor.
Click to expand...

I wonder how clean they could get that yellow strip. A new one would be nice.

It's disappointing to hear about the persistent visibility issues even if the redesign isn't a complete disaster on that front. Perhaps the out-of-context columns will make it intuitive that this is Museum Station, and that was probably the logic in the design, however flawed.
 
I'm not too keen on the mummy and 'wookie' columns but overall this is going to be a big improvement. I do like the clay- terracotta wall colours. Anybody know when they are starting on the other stations?
 
When your train pulls into the notorious Chewbacca station will you really need signs to tell you you're at the Museum?
 
You're not "at the museum", you're at Museum Station, which also serves the local neighbourhood. For a non-English speaking tourist heading to the Park Hyatt hotel or Victoria College, the word "museum" holds as much meaning as "Музей" holds to a non-Russian speaker.
 
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