OC Transpo

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

There is a box for free-form text entry; I suggest you made additional comments there but I'd advise against wording your reply like you worded your post.

Very true; there is an opportunity to provide free-form text entry above and beyond the inexplicably limited and exclusive response buttons, where one can provide the feedback, suggestions, and criticism that will, to the extent it does not support any decisions already made by the local councillor and OC Transpo's planners, be disregarded on sight.

[rocketphish]

Sticking with red and green transit lines 'offensive' to colour-blind people, says advocate

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: October 17, 2016 | Last Updated: October 17, 2016 5:35 PM EDT



OC Transpo is confident the red and green lines marking the O-Train Confederation Line and Trillium Line on a new rail map won’t cause problems for people with a specific form of colour blindness.

Pat Scrimgeour, Transpo’s director of customer systems and planning, said all transit signage was reviewed using the city’s and the province’s accessibility standards.

However, an advocate for people who are colour blind can’t believe Transpo is sticking with the red and green line colours to differentiate the east-west and north-south rail routes.

Kathryn Albany-Ward, president of the England-based Colour Blindness Awareness, said using the shades of red and green is a “bad idea” because it discriminates against people with a green vision deficiency.

People who have red-green colour blindness have difficulty distinguishing between the two colours.

“Knowing this and still using these colours is effectively saying to colour blind citizens that the City of Ottawa cares not one jot about them and they don’t care whether or not they can use the system easily. That’s offensive,” Albany-Ward said in an e-mail.

“Common sense says don’t use these colours, whether or not the law refers to colour blindness.”

Albany-Ward first brought up the potential problem with the transit map in 2014 when Transpo first unveiled the draft design. Ottawa’s transit commission is receiving a report this week confirming the colour scheme for the Confederation Line and Trillium Line.

Transpo believes it has done sufficient work to make sure the transit map won’t confuse customers with vision disabilities.

“The colour palette used for signage and wayfinding has been tested to assure sufficient contrast for readers with most forms of red-green colour blindness,” Scrimgeour said.

It might be too early to know how the map will work in practice at transit stations. The version provided to the transit commission isn’t production-quality.

“All maps and signs produced and installed on the OC Transpo network will meet accessibility requirements and will provide sufficient contrast for readers with most forms of red-green colour blindness,” Scrimgeour said.

Clear representation of colour isn’t possible on LED signs, he noted. The line numbering – 1 for Confederation Line and 2 for Trillium Line – supplements the colour scheme.

Albany-Ward said the different numbers for the lines might help, but a better solution would be making one of the lines a pattern.

“Good practice is to account for the most severe forms, which total 25 per cent of all cases of red and green colour blindness,” Albany-Ward said. “If they did that then everyone with colour blindness could easily tell the lines apart.”

jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-says-advocate

[kmcamp]

Seriously? They have a colour, a shape, and a number. I believe we should try to make things as accessible as possible, but you can't please everyone. I know a blindness advocate in Toronto is trying to make island platforms illegal, whereas I've heard wheelchair advocates wanting the opposite.

[acottawa]

I could see if you're London it is inevitable to use red and green, but it seems odd for a two line system using the two colours most likely to cause problems.

It would help if a transfer station were marked differently than a non transfer station (as they are on most transit maps).

[Guideway]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I could see if you're London it is inevitable to use red and green, but it seems odd for a two line system using the two colours most likely to cause problems.

It would help if a transfer station were marked differently than a non transfer station (as they are on most transit maps).

Like, instead of a circle at bayview maybe a rectangle with round ends?

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Guideway

Like, instead of a circle at bayview maybe a rectangle with round ends?

That would work.

[Uhuniau]

Just when you think things can't get any worse* for transit within the core, it got worse:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...tion-1.3810608

And look, Mathieu Fleury finally got his wish! No more one-bus service from VANIER to the downtown core!!!

[m0nkyman]

The 5!still crosses the canal. For now.

[Guideway]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Just when you think things can't get any worse* for transit within the core, it got worse:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...tion-1.3810608

And look, Mathieu Fleury finally got his wish! No more one-bus service from VANIER to the downtown core!!!

Terrible bus routing. Just terrible.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by m0nkyman

The 5!still crosses the canal. For now.

* Much of the time.


Many westbound 5s these days terminate at that infernal mall.

[Uhuniau]

New immutable physical law of the universe: where there is a conflict between LOCAL transit in the downtown core, and any other user of the street, including non-local transit, the City of Ottawa and OC Transpo will always resolve that conflict to the detriment of local transit service.

[lrt's friend]

I spoke to a lady last night from Aylmer. She was not aware of the Rideau Street closure but commented that the sink hole closure earlier this year added 40 to 60 minutes to her transit commute times. She said that buses from Aylmer were rerouted to cross the MacDonald-Cartier Bridge, completely reversing access to downtown at least in the mornings.

[lrt's friend]

Full post streetcar bus network published in the Ottawa Journal, September 25, 1959. This remained more or less in effect (including numbering) until the Transitways opened in the 1980s. Note the frequencies on Centretown routes. Those frequencies were gutted when the Transitways opened. Sorry for the size of the images. Images retrieved from www.newspapers.com

http://www.gloucesterhistory.com/The..._25__1959_.pdf

http://www.gloucesterhistory.com/The..._1959_ (1).pdf

http://www.gloucesterhistory.com/The..._1959_ (2).pdf

http://www.gloucesterhistory.com/The..._1959_ (3).pdf

[PHrenetic]

Good Day...
Vanier update... Beechwood at Charlevoix eastbound is GONE.
They just finished disassembling the shelter.
The eastbound stop at St.Charles Church has been restored and is valid.
FYI. sigh.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

Seriously? They have a colour, a shape, and a number. I believe we should try to make things as accessible as possible, but you can't please everyone. I know a blindness advocate in Toronto is trying to make island platforms illegal, whereas I've heard wheelchair advocates wanting the opposite.

Yeah, but this is an incredibly simple fix. Dropping it to grayscale this red and green are basically the same tone. Using a dark red and light green would probably fix it. Or just use a colour that isn't an issue in the first place (and doesn't add a tacky christmas tone to it.

[1overcosc]

They should have went with red and blue. There is not a single form of colour blindness that results in failure to distinguish red and blue. (Failure to distinguish red-green is by far the most common and a small number of people fail to distinguish blue and yellow).

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

They should have went with red and blue. There is not a single form of colour blindness that results in failure to distinguish red and blue. (Failure to distinguish red-green is by far the most common and a small number of people fail to distinguish blue and yellow).

But Blue is used for Rapid bus routes,
Orange is used by Frequent bus routes,
Purple is used by Connexion bus routes, and
Grey is used by Local bus routes

There aren't many colours left that have decent contrast against a white background and easily distinguishable from the other colours used.

IMHO, if we are going to use both red and green on the map, having the two LRT lines use them makes the most sense. The two lines have different numbers, and its pretty easy to figure out where the Trillium line ends even if they were monochromatic. All the other colours are used to for multiple routes so having the two LRT routes appear to have the same colour to some is better than the alternatives.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by PHrenetic

Good Day...
Vanier update... Beechwood at Charlevoix eastbound is GONE.
They just finished disassembling the shelter.
The eastbound stop at St.Charles Church has been restored and is valid.
FYI. sigh.

The replacement shelter for the once-popular stop at Charlevoix was promised to be in place "before the fall".

Then, last week, Councillor Useless told one of the critics that construction on the new shelter at Loyer - about 20 feet from a shelter that was demolished as part of the "optimization" on Beechwood - would start today, Monday.

As of this morning, there was absolutely no sign of such an impending construction project.

[Uhuniau]

Meanwhile, there is work underway at "Temporary" Baseline station. They are cutting a pedestrian cut-through about half-way down the 300-metre length of the platform.

Just as some of us were calling for there to be when they built this monstrosity seven years ago.

In order to build the cut-through, they have to move some of the already-limited amount of shelter at Baseline, one structure on each side of the station. They are already closed down in anticipation of being lifted and moved a few feet to accommodate the cut-through.

No additional shelter is actually being added, especially not on the east side/eastbound side, where shelter is woefully inadequate at peak times in crap weather. Existing shelter just being moved around, with total shelter capacity being reduced while work goes on.

In October. Late October. And into November. Because, you know, there hasn't been enough nice summer weather in any of the past seven summers to carry out this work, which is scheduled to go on until "winter".

And the budget for all of this disruptive work that should have been part of the original "Temporary" Baseline, if OC Transpo and the City cared about transit customers? A paltry $1.5-million. Cost-shared, naturally.

I'm sure there's some reason this all couldn't have been part of the original design and budget for "Temporary" Baseline, but buggered if I can think of what that reason would have been.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by roger1818

But Blue is used for Rapid bus routes,
Orange is used by Frequent bus routes,
Purple is used by Connexion bus routes, and
Grey is used by Local bus routes

There aren't many colours left that have decent contrast against a white background and easily distinguishable from the other colours used.

IMHO, if we are going to use both red and green on the map, having the two LRT lines use them makes the most sense. The two lines have different numbers, and its pretty easy to figure out where the Trillium line ends even if they were monochromatic. All the other colours are used to for multiple routes so having the two LRT routes appear to have the same colour to some is better than the alternatives.

In monochrome it isn't obvious that the Trillium line is a separate line (as opposed to a branch of the confederation line) especially since Bayview station is marked the same as the other stations.

Since a visitor to the city is unlikely to need to know the difference between a Connexion route, a local route and a frequent route, those should all be the same colour, marked as "bus route" on the legend.