Sound Transit crews are installing new “variable messaging signs” at Capitol Hill Station and University of Washington Station this week to improve how the system communicates service updates to light rail riders.
The new signs are part of a systemwide upgrade of Sound Transit’s “passenger information system” and designed to show a wider variety of information like service updates and alerts. The upgrade has been a long time in coming as Sound Transit struggled with back-end issues starting in late 2022 around the transition to a new system.
Signage and real-time information has been a long-term struggle for Sound Transit with signs so untrustworthy at Capitol Hill Station that they have been mostly ignored — or a source of entertainment while you are waiting for a train.
Sound Transit said the work at the two stations was slated to start this week and wrap up by the end of the month.
With individual arrival and departure information signs being replaced and the new system undergoing installation and testing, riders may need to turn to their mobile devices for updates over the coming weeks until the new signs are fully operational.
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I’ve seen these signs at a few stations and I like them, but I want to know what the colors of the wifi-like symbol indicate. Does green mean it’s on time and other colors mean it’s delayed?
I’m guessing a green wifi-like symbol will mean “this is based on live location data”, and there’ll be another symbol entirely to mean “we couldn’t get live data so this is just when the train is <i>scheduled</i> to be here.”
Yes, they do
Link 1 Line is a ‘1’ in a green circle.
Link 2 Line is a ‘2’ in a blue circle.
The little arcs indicate that the train is a scheduled train that will stop at the station. Currently they do not change colors to indicate if the train is early or late.
Since every rider has a mobile phone, how about instead of spending this $$ we just have small signs with QR codes for a website that shows the info to each person?
could get rid of traffic lights too and just have drivers use an app to tell them when to go at an intersection.
Not everyone has a mobile phone; not everyone who does have one carries it everywhere (I don’t); and not every mobile phone can access the web. Plus it’s often a lot easier to just look up.
Yep! I agree with this person. I like having the signs readily available. But if you are looking for an app, there already is one. It’s what the technology of these signs is based on actually. It’s called One Bus Away. You can look it up. It’s great. But I would never want the app to replace the signs. We need the signs, too. It’s wild to not have that information readily available to all people.