Map - Dublin Area Train and Tram Services

[Colm Moore]

Have a read of the attached and I'll add any comments and send it on during the week.

[noelfirl]

I find it quite astonishing that more than 2 years ago the NTA/TFI commissioned an agency to design a comprehensive set of guidelines for the creation of public transport information that would be coherent and unified across various public transport providers:

http://www.transportforireland.ie/transitData/guidelines/Design%20guidelines%20for%20the%20Creation%20of%20 Public%20Transport%20Information_v1.pdf (warning, large PDF)

...and yet, TFI itself is still commissioning and generating maps that don't even come close to complying with these guidelines in any shape or form. Wonderful use of money, that.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by noelfirl

...and yet, TFI itself is still commissioning and generating maps that don't even come close to complying with these guidelines in any shape or form. Wonderful use of money, that.

Funding.

I took part if a project for Cork City bus stops, where the signs generally do comply.

[noelfirl]

Originally Posted by Colm Moore

Funding.

I took part if a project for Cork City bus stops, where the signs generally do comply.

Sorry, perhaps to clarify - I mean in the sense that this Dublin Rail & Tram map was made during mid/late 2016. The guidelines for designing maps, timetables, etc. have been in place since 2014. My question is why weren't the guidelines in place used to inform the design of this particular map.

i hope it's not the case that the design agency that will have actually made the map told them that they needed to pay more in order for their own design guidelines to be used. That quite frankly would be ridiculous.

[Colm Moore]

I strongly suspect it was done in-house or an ordinary graphic designer, not a dedicated agency with experience with transport maps.

The NTA only has about 35 staff.

[noelfirl]

Other previous maps have been commissioned to an external agency (Pindar), and there are similarities in this one to those maps.

Either way, internal or externally done, if they've gone to the trouble of commissioning guidelines, they should be adherent to them, particularly on occasions when they are in direct control of the information/maps. If the NTA itself isn't bothering to try and follow it's own guidelines, how can it corral the transport providers to do so?