Singapore subway (mrt) information display types | Hacker News Reader

Singapore subway (mrt) information display types

sgtrains.com

59 pointsgregorvand20 comments

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I preferred the old style route display (DRMD panels, apparently) over the LCD displays.

Main reason: The most important info was always on display.

Also loved it when the new route map depicted the circle line as a circle [1].

[1] https://blog.sgtrains.com/2020/06/system-maps-over-the-years...

Yup, the old ones are so much better it's not even funny. Crystal clear at times where you are and where you're going.

The new LCD ones loop ads and random garbage half the time. The other half of the time they often show just the next station, not the whole line with its interchanges etc.

Some decades ago they changed all the train and metro clocks from analog round clocks with arms to digital number clocks… its such a downgrade, before you could read the time from any end of the platform, now you need to get up pretty close. Maybe i need glasses as well… ahh age! (Also is it just me or have most clocks in public space disappeared?)

Singapore MRT or SMRT literally means DEATH in Czech.

First heard about that from a friend during his travel presentation about Singapore. They found it amusing but little worrying, that if you ride the metro there, you are riding with death. ;-)

Came here looking for this comment.

Was looking at some billboards the other day and wondered at the new ads/ad-jokes this could generate

http://www.bryanv.com/smrt

Those are perfect, thanks a lot! :D

Best one if the poster with the lady showing the way "I want to help people reach their final destination" - indeed! ;-)

Why are plasma displays being used? I would expect they would burn in rapidly.

Now I'm really curious if they're actually plasma.

Many of the stations were built long after LCDs became the norm (the first parts of the Thomson-East Coast Line [1] only opened in 2021), so it's likely mislabelling on the website's part.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomson%E2%80%93East_Coast_Lin...

it also could be one of those things where in this specific context or dialect of English, plasma was generalized away from the term strictly being a technology to a generic term for that general shape and form factor.

after all none of us have used floppies to save for over a decade or two at this point.

Yes, they were, back then. Back in the day when the North-South and East-West line were built (mid 80s) Conrac (today DATA MODUL) was really big in manufacturing plasma screens for airports, etc. in Germany. Pretty sure they are replaced with LCD today though.

Besides that, all those plasma screens running for >18 hours a day will be using a lot of energy, and generating a lot of heat that puts more demand on the air conditioning!

Replacing them with more modern screens would save a lot of power and money.

(I know a guy who still uses a ~20 year old plasma TV. It still looks great but it doubles as a heater in the winter time!)

Stuck in an infinite captcha loop :/

Why are all the displays placed at 90°? That seems like bad UX.

They're meant to be seen from across the station.

(They could have put multiple displays, but noooooo.)

Multivariate testing

I wish they hadn't got rid of STARIS 1[1]. It was highly intuitive and informative, and showed you everything you needed at a glance, and was visible from nearly anywhere within the carriage.

In fact I am not very happy with the little things when it comes to LTA.

They ruined MRT wayfinding with highly abstract symbols[2] in the new Thomson-East Coast Line, so much so that station staff have had to regularly supplant it with ugly printed signs that aren't standardised. They also changed from using alphabetical exits to numbered exits, with no listing of nearby landmarks. Older stations still have this wayfinding, but I suspect they will be replaced in short order, as everything in Singapore is wont to be.

Speaking of standardised, LTA have two corporate typefaces: LTA Identity, and Ocean Sans. They stopped using both and moved to Stroudley, which just looks bad, with ugly vertical terminators on the 'a', 'e', and 'g' glyphs. Ocean Sans is simultaneously superbly readable and yet very distinctive, something very few fonts have achieved.

I must also be in the minority but I do not like the new map[3]; it makes the city centre too cluttered. I much prefer the one from ~2010[4], which is quite reminiscent of the London Underground's map. In fact I believe they could've simplified it further by getting rid of station codes. Which passenger needs to know Dhoby Ghaut is NE6/CC1/NE24? Even as a (self-professed) transport nerd I don't really care.

I have other rants about the giant stroads, weird cycling paths, and their decision to use 'anticlockwise' and 'clockwise' for the full Circle Line, but that is neither here nor there, and I think other creators discuss that better than I ever could. Singapore's public transport is great, no doubt, but it could be so much better still. It needs trams.

[1]: https://blog.sgtrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/c151-st...

[2]: https://www.sgtrains.com/guide-wayfinding.html

[3]: https://blog.sgtrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/05-sm-2...

[4]: https://blog.sgtrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/03-Netw...

> In fact I believe they could've simplified it further by getting rid of station codes. Which passenger needs to know Dhoby Ghaut is NE6/CC1/NE24?

I believe they're usually for people who can't read the language (typically, tourists). NE6 is a lot easier to memorize for people who can't pronounce Dhoby Ghaut (think people from China or something that isn't used to reading Latin alphabets).

The code + number system is also easier for tourists / people new to the area to know which stations are on the same line, and to find them if you don't know the map (just find any station on the same line and look for the correct number on the line).

> their decision to use 'anticlockwise' and 'clockwise' for the full Circle Line

I saw this on a banner a few days ago:

https://imgur.com/a/gMZXYRs

I don't know what kind of groupthink is festering within LTA, but I'm guessing someone who shouted the loudest got the rename through, and the no-blame, face-saving culture meant that they have their hands tied for a while.

Win liao lor[1]. I wish they made the Circle line terminating like it was before; it makes much more sense that way. Oh well. At least one can board a train in the morning and never get off, and exit at the same station eight hours later.

[1]: https://singlishdict.app/?q=win+liao+lor

I may be in the minority here, but I like Clockwise and Anticlockwise. What I do NOT like is the decision to mirror the map, so that the arrows always point in the direction of actual travel of the train. I'm not sure "which side is the train coming from" is that important, compared to "is this map going clockwise or anti clockwise"

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