Vital signs

I pay attention to the usability of signage: in subways, airports, etc. I’m a geek. Or perhaps just highly visual. (I get it from my father, an architect. One of the projects he worked on was the BART extension in the Bay Area.) It bothers me that at the Bethesda metro station, once you exit the faregate, there are no signs to lead you to street level. The elevator is tucked away in an unmarked hallway to the left, leaving you with the mammoth escalators to the right, but without any signs (I’d suggest something in a calming green, connoting “go”), an unfamiliar traveler has to shrug his shoulders and think, “I guess this is it.”

Other stations are more explicit. At Friendship Heights (the Western Avenue exit), you emerge into a round hub of a room, with at least four different, clearly marked passageways, each leading like a spoke to a different spot in the intersection above.

Anyway. This evening at the Dupont Circle station, I noticed new warning placards affixed to the platform floor, almost like those ads you see in supermarket aisles. These round signs tell you, in a rather large, high-contrast font, to wait for passengers to exit the cars before boarding, that chimes mean the doors are closing, etc. I found one much-needed sign at the foot of the escalator, which read, “Stand to the right.” It’s often the packs of tourists, god love ’em, who stand and take up the width of the escalator, inadvertently blocking anyone who wishes to pass them. Granted, walking the entire length of those never-ending escalators is major aerobic exercise, but when you’re late for work—as I too often am—and you hear the train pulling into the station, it becomes a necessity.

Okay, I’m boring even myself. Time for bed, if I’m not to be late for work yet again tomorrow.