On Saturday afternoon, I found myself waiting for the 2 or 3 train at Fulton St. I was waiting at the norther end of the platform when I espied the above sign hanging from a column. Both intrigued by it and somewhat confused by its necessity, I took a picture.
The north end of Fulton St., you see, is something of a dead end. There is an exit at that end of the platform, but it is open only during the weekend and does not allow a transfer to any of the other trains that stop by that busy station. Walking south brings a straphanger to the staircase that connect the 2 and 3 to the maze of tunnels that eventually lead to the IND (A/C), BMT (J/M/Z) and East Side IRT (4/5). Some day in the future, the N/R/W will be connected to rest of this confusing station as well.
Now, back to our sign. The thing about Fulton St. and the 4 is that, well, the 4 always stops at Fulton St. No matter the day, the hour, the week, the 4 train is one of the few trains that will always, no matter what stop at Fulton St. Over the weekend, the 4 had a service advisory in place. Due to communications cable work, all 4 trains were terminated at Bowling Green, and the 3 was providing service into Brooklyn. Passengers wishing to transfer from the 3 to the 4 or vice versa had to do sat Fulton St.
So I get it. The sign is there to guide passengers from wayward trains heading to or from Brooklyn back to the 4. Even though Fulton St. is covered with signs, even though this transfer is in effect no matter what, Transit wanted to make it easier for passengers traveling the route of this service change to make the connection.
There is but one problem, and while it’s a technical one, it’s a problem of communications nonetheless. The sign above does not depict a service change. At the top, in a blue strip designed to attract someone’s attention, the sign says “Service Changes,” and yet, it points the way to the normal path to the 4 train.
One of the many complaints disgruntled straphangers levy at the MTA concerns communications. With sub-par public address systems and myriad service changes every weekend, the MTA gets no credit for keeping its riders informed. In fact, the conductor of my 2 train failed to inform riders that the uptown A and C trains were bypassing Broadway/Nassau on Saturday. Had I not read my own service changes, I would not have known about this inconvenience until arriving at the platform a few twists and turns through the Fulton St. complex.
For casual riders, a sign saying “Service Changes” with an arrow and a 4 bullet will be confusing. It won’t make sense, and it will lead to head-scratching, questions and a less convenient commute. Transit and the MTA should be trying to make convoluted weekend subway trips easier, and although the intentions behind this sign are good, the execution is not.
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I’m not sure that any number of service change bulletins at Fulton St. would ever help me understand that station. Not directly related to your point here, but a less circuitous transit center at Fulton St. will be extremely helpful, if it ever gets built.
One thing that kills me about service advisory signs–and which would be so easy to fix–is the tiny amount of space dedicated to things like “late night” or “weekend.” Presumably, if someone is standing next to the sign and can linger, he/she will eventually notice the small print inside the orange strip. But a casual commuter–and certainly a tourist who doesn’t know to look out for that part of the sign–might get very confused. It just seems like terrible design.
I believe the sign itself is a template/pre-printed (since it’s color). The black ink is printed on when the actual “service change” is created.
It seems that’s the only sheet the MTA has laying in their drawers to print up a sign.
The L-Train is one exception. Their team actually sometimes prints non-service-change-template signs.
As I’ve been saying for a while now, each weekend the MTA should produce a map showing where all of the trains are actually starting/ending/being routed due to various service changes. It wouldn’t have to be a paper map, since that would presumably cost a lot of money to distribute, but just releasing one in PDF would be very helpful to a lot of riders.
It wouldn’t do much to fix confusing signage like the above, though, of course.
Josh, check out http://www.subwayweekender.com.
during my commute, especially on the weekends, they never mention the changes to transferring trains, well almost never. if a 7 isn’t running, or an e isn’t running for a trnasfer from lex, the lex conductor may mention the service disruption 30% of the time during the off hours from midnight to 5 am, also the advisories to bypass the trains with the r train, does me little good, as i have to back track to get back to vernon jackson, if the 7 doesn’t run, I’d take the e, if the e doesn’t run i’d take the 7, i had to figure that out on my own, the mta didn’t help.