I wasn’t prepared to get so much (if any) response to the things I posted on thursday, and though I’m thankful I’m a bit embarrassed that I didn’t spend more time on my sketches.

Anyway, Daniel over at Singapore’s Land Transport, pointed me in the direction of the new tender to redesign the bus stop poles, so with his help I was able to find the actual design that will be implemented (subject to changes, naturally). And it was fun to see that I wasn’t completely off the mark, although the visuals provided in the tender were more thorough than mine. The new ones are actually really good. I can’t link directly to the file, so for details on the tender, go to  GeBIZ, click on Tenders & Quotations, and then search for Signcraft Installations. They fix most of the problems I’ve had with the current ones, although, I can’t help but to poke around a little bit and make some modifications to them.

This is what they’ll look like (theirs to the left, my modifications to the right):

As you can see, the new stop pole is about 1000 times better than the old one. Now for my modifications.

A. It seems the LTA is fixed on making the bus stop code the biggest and most prominent part of the stop (second to the public transportation logo on the right side). Why? How many people currently know the bus stop code of the stop nearest to them? Also, this code is not very prominent in other pieces of information design around public transportation. It’s not on the Bus Services guide, it’s not in signs in the MRT showing the way to the nearest bus stop… The only places that has them is the online journey planners and the transit link book. So, obviously, it should be smaller.

B. Instead they’ve made the actual name of the stop (which is prominent on the bus services guide, for instance) almost illegible, and especially if you were to be on the bus. Upsize, please!

C. I implemented my idea of separating the night rider buses from the “normal” ones. Since they don’t run all the time, they should stick out a little.

The biggest problem with this current tender, that I see, however, is that it only covers the actual pole. This may not mean, however, that the LTA doesn’t have plans to look into the design of the rest of the stop, but still, these should definitely be overhauled at the same time. I modified my old sketches and implemented the new design, but kept some of my original ideas:

Especially, I combined my idea for the simpler “via” information tables with the current “Real-time bus information” panel released earlier. I frankly don’t see the point of having the arrival times of the two next buses visible (when the first one isn’t very accurate for starters). Instead, make that sign more usable by

1. Providing information of what buses populate the stop, in big type that is legible from the street or across it.
2. Showing a couple of “prominent” stops that the buses stop at on their way to their termination stop

Here’s a better picture:

That’s all for now. There also have been some developments on the front of the journey planner, especially since TransitLink released their updated version on Friday. Compare that one to the one at GoThere.sg, just for kicks. GoThere may not have in their own words, the most “pleasing” design, but it does its job extremely well (at least during the time I’ve played with it), and it’s vastly superior to anything else that I’ve found. TransitLink has really taken the complete reverse approach, making something that is basically as complex and difficult to use as possible.

More on this later.