Transportation Research Board (USA) – INFORMATION AIDS FOR TRANSIT CONSUMERS 1979

Description

The 1979 Conference on Information Aids for Transit Consumers brought experts together to improve transit marketing and passenger information. Four objectives guided work: identify marketing techniques; address needs for maps, timetables, signs, and operations; promote integrated planning and evaluation; and assess producing a handbook. Sixty-four participants concluded that a practical handbook should follow targeted research to identify effective information aids. Key recommendations emphasized a systems-oriented approach with strong senior-management and marketing leadership, centralized coordination of design/production/maintenance, and continual consumer testing. Practical guidance included pretesting and standardizing pocket-sized, color-limited, landmarked maps with clear route IDs and transfers; integrating timetables graphically; and ensuring signs carry route IDs and logos under centralized control. Conference findings noted timetables’ evolution into consumer tools, limited existing research, poor performance in experimental tests (≈41% correct), and mixed effects of color coding. The report called for focused research on which timetable and sign elements boost ridership and for a soon-to-be-developed handbook to guide agencies.