One illustration from the presentation.
The power point presentation for the station advisory group meetings held over the past couple of months for the Westside Subway Extension. It provides a good overview of the issues involved with designing the stations along the line, including such issues as station art, portal locations and connections to other transit. More meetings will be held this spring and summer.
Categories: Projects
I know this is just one illustration of many for this presentation, but this illustration illustrates a particular peeve of mine.
At the street level entrance, I see four sets of stairs, side by side. Two escalators, presumably one up and one down.
Given unlimited space, this would not be a bad design, but urban settings typically do not have unlimited space.
Metro has typically favored wide open plaza entrances. Thankfully, these plazas have slowly disappeared as new construction has been built on top of subway entrances, but far too many stations in the system have “one grand entrance only.”
These stations have no side entrances, no secondary entrances and limited access opportunities. As we have just seen with the Oscars, that also means that if the main entrance is shut down, the whole station has to be closed.
Metro could eliminate the down escalator, make the stairs narrower, and allow for more, smaller entrances. These additional entrances would provide new riders with more entry points.
The preliminary illustrations for the Regional Connector seem to get it.