New Wayfinding Designs Unify Bay Area Transit Agencies

Pilot projects are underway to test how riders are using new unified signage designs. Riders can expect to see standardized wayfinding designs spread across the region throughout 2025 and 2026.

By Arianna Smith
Managing Editor
Transit California

On any highway in any state in the United States, passenger vehicle drivers will encounter the same familiar, easy-to-read, standardized signs and signals to help them navigate their journey.

These displays, part of the US's highway wayfinding system, are administered by the US Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration, which ensures that wayfinding tools including maps, diagrams, signs, and screens are uniform across the country and that their appearance and makeup adheres precisely to extensive, exhaustively detailed federal laws and regulations. Such design requirements largely work as intended: they communicate information to fast-moving drivers instantly and safely, in a wide range of weather, traffic, and road conditions. They're also designed to be read and understood by drivers with a wide range of abilities and experiences, including English reading proficiency and familiarity with a given region.

No matter which governing entities are responsible for the safety, security, and upkeep of the highway upon which a driver is traveling, all such corridors must meet the same wayfinding standards.

For public transit systems in the United States, no such standardization exists.

Currently, public transit riders face many of the same wayfinding and navigation concerns as drivers, but they rarely encounter standardization from one agency's jurisdiction to the next. For the most part, each individual public transit agency creates its own distinct transit wayfinding tools that riders use to plan and make transit trips.

In nearly all parts of California, a transit rider must deal with different looking wayfinding designs every time they cross a transit agency boundary.

For daily commuters and other passengers who take the same routes to make the same frequent trips on a single transit system, non-standardized wayfinding tools may not create much of a day-to-day issue. From practice and out of necessity, these riders have grown familiar with the wayfinding tools in place every day.

But in regions with large populations that are served by multiple transit agencies - not to mention multiple transit modalities - this lack of wayfinding standardization can slow down and discourage all potential travelers, from seasoned riders, to infrequent passengers, to community members who have never used their public transit system, to non-resident visitors in the region. Regular and infrequent transit riders may avoid branching out to use their local transit systems to new destinations because of the barrier of dealing with and learning to use a completely different wayfinding system. Meanwhile, a previous negative public transit wayfinding experience - or the fear of a future one, especially missing a connection or getting lost - keeps many potential transit users, including current non-users and regional visitors, from even giving public transit a try.

Association transit agencies across the state have learned as they've grappled with falling ridership, both before and after the pandemic shutdown, that any potential barrier to entry can result in ridership reductions, which can lead to the spiral of lost farebox revenues, service cuts, more lost riders, and eventually even funding cuts from local, state, and federal sources.

Bay Area Association agency members, in particular, have learned that the existing and potential riders in the communities they serve have identified unfamiliar, non-standardized wayfinding tools as a major barrier in their region.

Here's what they're doing about it.

Wayfinding Made Easier: The Bay Area's Seemingly Simple and Innovative Initiative

As part of the overarching goal to increase ridership and improve service for riders, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and its Bay Area member transit agencies are working to standardize wayfinding across the region for the 8 million people they serve.

According to MTC, "More than 90% of Bay Area residents polled by MTC in 2021 identified uniform and easy-to-use transit maps and signage as an important priority for improving the region's transit network."

"The Mapping and Wayfinding project is an example of the regional collaboration underway between MTC and the Bay Area's 27 transit agencies," said Gordon Hansen, MTC Principal Project Manager, Mapping and Wayfinding. "We're working closely every step of the way to develop new transit maps and signs that will make transit journeys easier to understand for both existing and new riders by delivering information that is clear, predictable and familiar across service areas and county lines."

MTC's Regional Mapping and Wayfinding website notes that the specific goals of the project are to "provide easy-to-understand, dependable and familiar transit information for travelers, regardless of where they are in the Bay Area" and to "[make] it easy for transit agencies to update signs and implement new standards, including common parts and processes."

In the longer term and in the broader context of MTC's vision for the region, the project is intended to "[support] the social, environmental, economic and equity goals of Plan Bay Area 2050 - the long-range regional plan - by increasing transit visibility and ridership."

Wayfinding Timeline

The project has been in development since 2022. During 2023 and 2024, MTC conducted collaborative workshops with those who rely most on transit but most frequently have issues or barriers to accessing transit: disabled people, low-income individuals, seniors, people of color, and low-proficiency English speakers. Feedback from these workshops informed the design of the wayfinding tools.

The draft designs, which include local transit mode and access maps, station facility maps, train platform and station line diagrams, pedestrian signage, and basic bus stop signs, can be viewed here.

MTC and member agencies are currently testing the new draft wayfinding tools at the pilot locations: the Santa Rosa Transit Mall, the Santa Rosa SMART station, and the El Cerrito del Norte BART station. Soon, MTC will invite the public to provide feedback on these initial installations to help inform the 2025-26 steps of the project, when the signage will be updated to reflect feedback and eventually installed in many additional locations in the Bay Area.

In 2027 and beyond, riders should be able to see and use the same, consistent, standardized wayfinding tools across all MTC's member agencies and modalities, whether using the bus, train, ferry, or a combination to travel throughout the region.

The Larger Connection

MTC's leadership in regional mapping and wayfinding standardization is just one of many ways that Association members are working to improve services for existing riders and to increase long term ridership rates. It's also undeniable proof that many individual agencies, which each serve specific geographic locations and communities with different transit needs, can work together across a crowded, high population region to provide seamless service.

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