You’re probably going to look at one of these screens – but what order are the trains being displayed in?

It isn’t alphabetical – South Morang occupies the first two slots. Is it ordered by the network map? Possibly – Cranbourne is next to Pakenham, and Alamein is next to Glen Waverley.

Worked it out yet?

I’ll give you the answer – the next two services for each line are displayed, no matter where they terminate, and the lines are grouped by their operational ‘groups’ – ‘Clifton Hill’, ‘Burnley’, ‘Northern’, ‘Caulfield’, ‘Cross City’ and V/Line.

The same ordering logic is applied on the smaller ‘summary’ boards scattered around the station, just squeezed into less space and with a smaller font.

Given that the PTV network map has shown each group of lines in a different colour since 2017, why do the screens at Flinders Street Station persist with living in the monochrome past?

Fixing the problem

Turns out Transport for Victoria asked the same question in 2017 and set to work finding a better way, lead by senior user experience designer Carolina Gaitan.

They defined the problem in terms of user experience.

Then came up with a way to test out their hypothesis.

Spending three days sending people through a mock up railway station.

First navigating using the current monochrome design, then a new design where each railway line was a separate colour.

And the result – navigating the station was was easier with colour.

What else did they find?

An important part of the new design was realising that there two groups of users of Flinders Street Station: people unfamiliar with the station, and those who use it every day.

Some signage is tailored for people trying to find their way somewhere new.

While others deliver ‘how long until the next train to X’ information to regular users.

So what next?

Turns out what was learnt through user experience testing is being put into practice, with a wayfinding upgrade coming soon:

Flinders Street Station will be the first station across the metropolitan network to feature signage and information screens where each line has its own colour for easier navigation.

Though I take offence to the boastful “first station” claim – until the 1990s the Melbourne train network used a different colour for each group of lines.

As did the next train displays in the City Loop until 2011.

Everything old is new again?

A signage related footnote

Designer Shane Bradbury explains the new style of regulatory signage as well the suite of maps that appear around Flinders Street Station.

Further reading

You can find a summary of work at the UX Australia 2017 website: ‘Flinders Street Station: A journey to implement UX in wayfinding and customer information‘. The full set of presentation slides is also available.

Alexandra Almond has also published an article on the design process, titled Improving wayfinding at Melbourne’s busiest train station.

Meld Studios has also covered their role in the redesign of both the ‘motherboard’ screens at the station entrance, and the platform screens.

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It appears my son has been paying a lot of attention – Parliament is blue.

Footscray is red.

West Footscray is green.

Sunshine is yellow.

The last three stations were all rebuilt in 2013-15 as part of the Regional Rail Link project, hence the similar design, but the architects were smart enough to give each station it’s own identity through the use of a feature colour.

Compare this to the growing number of stations rebuilt across Melbourne by the Level Crossing Removal Authority.

Gardiner.

Ginifer.

And St Albans.

Notice a common grey theme?

Apparently the Level Crossing Removal Authority does use colour at some stations.

Hi Marcus, we try to make sure it's not just shades of grey at our stations! Colours are considered in the design stage and each one is different – take the colourful Gardiner Station entrance or the new Rosanna Station as a few examples https://t.co/pVsVfYqX8s

— Level Crossings (@levelcrossings) March 19, 2018

Ormond, Mckinnon or Bentleigh stations being three of them.

The only problem? They used the same identical colour palette of yellow, orange and red at each station!

Okay, where am I now? Well um orange and red = Ormond, Mckinnon or Bentleigh, I guess. pic.twitter.com/k3EopqxzKk

— Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) October 23, 2017

It shouldn’t cost anything more to use coloured panels instead of plain grey – so why does every station have to look the same?

A lesson from Hong Kong

In Hong Kong every station on the MTR network has a signature colour.

This interview with the MTR Corporation’s chief architect describes their reasoning

The main reason bright colours were adopted when the first line opened in the 1970s was to lighten up the subway system, according to Andrew Mead, the MTR Corporation’s chief architect. With no windows or natural light, underground platforms can be gloomy. Bright colours are associated with beauty, and they bring a dash of that to the mostly subterranean stations, he says.

The corporation could have chosen a neutral white design. But Mead says an important factor in picking different colours was function. Underground, where there are no landmarks to look out for like when you’re travelling by bus or car, colour helped differentiate the MTR stations, and gave each their own identity. That was important, Mead says, because “back in the 1970s, there was still a high level of illiteracy” in the city.

Another place that lacks landmarks is a Melbourne railway trench, or onboard a train with advertising covered windows – so why is the use of colour at Melbourne railway stations so rare?

An update from the Level Crossing Removal Authority

Five identical looking stations have been built as part of the Caulfield to Dandenong level crossing removal project.

The Level Crossing Removal Authority dropped me an email, explaining their choice of station colours:

Carnegie Station – deep yellow

Murrumbeena Station – deep red

Hughesdale Station – deep green

The colours selected for the inner urban villages of Area 1 celebrate
their strong connection to the Boyd family, and have been conceived as
a set of complementary but distinctive colours. The deep yellow, deep
red and deep green pay homage to a series of the Boyd family pottery.

Clayton Station – blue

Clayton is undergoing a significant transformation towards a larger
activity centre as part of the broader employment cluster. The colour
selected at Clayton Station signifies the precinct redevelopment as an
urban catalyst, and represents its connection to research,
manufacturing and learning (ie, Monash University, CSIRO, etc.)

Noble Park Station – bright green

Noble Park is a strong community-oriented activity centre within a
well-landscaped setting. The colour adopted at Noble Park Station
draws reference from the bright green used throughout the
municipality, including the skate park in the vicinity.

Say what you want about the reasoning behind each, but I’m glad they picked different colours!

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At the main entrance to Roma Street Station I noticed a useful feature of the next train display boards – they were colour coded.

Note that colours used matching those used in the network map.

The stopping pattern for the next train departing each platform is displayed, along with the colour for the appropriate railway line.

Additional screens list the next three trains on each route:

As well as the next trains heads in each direction out of the city.

Note how the line based colour coding makes the screens incredibly easy to read at a glance.

If only the next train displays on Melbourne’s rail network were as simple to read!

Footnote on Melbourne

Until a few years ago the next train displays at Melbourne’s City Loop stations used colour to distinguish the different lines – unfortunately the upgrade to LCD panels resulted in this useful feature being killed off.

At least Melbourne’s train network map is undergoing a much needed revamp – the almost useless fare zone information is being removed, with the different colours being used to indicate something far more important – which railway line goes where!

And for people searching for “brisbane train map”

For some reason I get a few hundred hits each month from people searching for “brisbane train map” – you can find the complete map over at the Queensland Rail website.

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With five ramps serving ten platforms at Richmond, I’ve found pink, green, blue and yellow coloured ones – so what colour is the last one?

History

The current Richmond station was opened in March 1960, having been constructed in stages during the 1950s to replace the previous six platform station, which was located a short distance to east towards Swan Street. Here is an artists impression from 1955 showing what was planned for the site.

In the end we got something a lot plainer looking.

The fifth colour?

The colours of each ramp so far are:

• Platform 1/2: Pink
• Platform 3/4: Green
• Platform 5/6: Yellow
• Platform 7/8: Blue

And the ramps to platform 9/10? Their walls are pink, the same as platform 1/2.

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On August 8th I spotted a yellow bike – supposedly it was a one-off painted in celebration of Cadel’s victory in the Tour de France:

Last week on August 21st I found another non-standard bicycle – this time coloured green:

I wonder how many more one-off colours the Melbourne Bike Share bicycles appear in?

Postscript

The coloured bikes score a mention on the Facebook page for Melbourne Bike Share, as this post from July 2012 illustrates:

Looking for our coloured bikes? Here’s where they are
Yellow – Docked in station ACCA (Australian Centre of Contemporary Art)
White – Docked in station Sandridge Bridge Southbank
Polka Dot – Docked in station Docklands @ NAB – Harbour Esplanade / Bourke St.
Green – having a checkup, back on the streets shortly

Someone also managed to photograph all four of them in one place! Presumably to achieve this they went around Melbourne and hired each one, riding them back to a central location. As for me, it is a case of two down, two to go!

Bicycle number three

Only a day after I published this entry I found bicycle number three – Polka Dot:

How long until I find the last one?

September 2012: Bicycle number four

Two weeks after my last find, we have the last one – plain white.

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Followed by a similar set of colours at the Collins Street entry to Parliament Station.

When the displays went on the fritz at Flagstaff Station recently, it made the colours much easier to notice: from left to right they are red, green, blue and black.

So why are they like this?

Each of the four colours correspond to a platform at the station, with each platform being dedicated to trains bound for a particular set of suburban destinations. The grouping of lines made the layout of the loop stations much simpler, with the need for complicated junctions being removed because each tunnel only serves trains from one part of Melbourne.

The platform assignments at each City Loop station are as follows – the names of each group come from the main station each set of lines passes through:

• Platform 1: Epping and Hurstbridge trains (Clifton Hill Group)
• Platform 2: Pakenham, Cranbourne and Frankston trains (Caulfield Group)
• Platform 3: Craigieburn, Upfield and Sydenham trains (Northern Group)
• Platform 4: Lilydale, Belgrave, Glen Waverley and Alamein trains (Burnley Group)

The use of colour for each group dates back to the opening of the City Loop in 1981, as can be seen in this railway network map from the same period (the Metropolitan Transit Authority was responsible for operating the Melbourne’s trains back in the 1980s).

Unfortunately this “London Underground” style of network map was replaced by the current style in the 1990s: the old style put an emphasis on where each railway line went, while the current style puts an emphasis on the fare zones.

In 2011 Yarra Trams ditched the fare zone emphasis for their new network map – Myki makes knowledge of fare zones less important for commuters, so one can hope Metro will go “back to the future” and add a little colour to their next network map.

Further reading

• A selection of Melbourne railway network maps, from the 1940s until now.

An update

The colours of the Northern Group have come up as a point of discussion on Twitter, as some early network maps show it as black (as per the station displays) or dark green instead of yellow (as on the later network maps). I’ve got two theories:

1. the Northern Group colour was changed from black to yellow sometime in the early 1980s but the monitors were not changed; or
2. the screens are black because yellow monitors were not possible, as the other three sets of monitors use white text overlaid on the coloured background.

Shout out in the comments if you have any thoughts on the matter!

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