This week, WMATA unveiled a concept for their “station of the future.” The press release and accompanying video flythough of the pilot station (Bethesda) for these improvements lists the reasons for these changes, including “improved lighting, better information and improved customer convenience.” And who would be against those things? All three have been criticisms of Metro in the past, particularly station lighting.

However, what they’ve shown in the ‘station of the future’ looks a lot more like a wholesale redesign of some of Metro’s iconic station architecture. Dan Malouff at BeyondDC lists the six concepts to be tested:

• New wall-mounted lights along the length of the platform, and new information pylons with larger signs and more real-time displays.
• Reflective metal panels along the vending wall will be brighter, eliminate shadows, and reduce clutter.
• Smaller manager kiosk will make room for more fare gates, which will be reflective metal instead of “Metro brown”.
• Anti-slip flooring at the base of the escalators.
• Overhead lighting in the mezzanine.
• Glass walls replace concrete, allowing more light through.

All together, that’s a mix of sensible station improvements, but also some serious assaults on the system’s architecture and design.

Some of these shouldn’t be controversial at all, such as the non-slip flooring at the base of escalators instead of Metro’s notoriously slippery tiles. Likewise, ticket vending and customer information displays mounted into the mezzanine walls seems like a welcome change. Smaller station manager kiosks in order to provide more faregates makes sense; however, the current renovations on the Orange/Blue lines in DC are putting in larger kiosks, not smaller.

Other changes aren’t new concepts, but rather long-standing challenges Metro has looked to address. The overhead lighting in the mezzanine appears from the flythrough to be the same light fixtures Metro tested at Judiciary Square. The quality of the lighting tends to be cool and harsh (a common trend for WMATA recently), but it’s certainly brighter for mezzanine users (and not nearly as abrasive as WMATA’s Friendship Heights experiment using Metro’s outdoor pylons indoors).

Glass parapet walls have been used in other stations, as well – most recently in the baseball renovations at Navy Yard. That staircase, however, is a rather surgical change to the station, cutting a hole in the mezzanine floor where there was none before. This concept proposes replacing an existing concrete parapet with glass.

The ‘station of the future’ proposes three really big changes to Metro’s design: eliminating ‘Metro brown’ in favor of stainless steel; a completely new winged pylon design; and indirect lighting provided by new wall-mounted fixtures that can double as station signage.

It’s not clear to me what’s wrong with Metro Brown. Given the multitude of other options available to improve lighting, blaming the limited amount of brown metal panels in the stations seems like a stretch. Given the cost to Metro’s architectural legacy, it’s hard to see how this is worth it.

Metro’s desire to distance itself from the color brown isn’t new. The three newest stations in the system (and not part of the originally planned system) make use of glass and stainless steel, but still use Metro brown for signage and entrance pylons. Metro’s newest railcars will ditch the brown stripe at window level in favor of a gaudy disco-ball logo.

The voiceover in WMATA’s video expresses concern about brown representing a dated look, but I’m not sure anyone really objects to the color and the role it plays in Metro’s overall visual brand. The brown pylons and signage have aged well compared to Metro’s original car interiors or the idea of carpeting. Why change what works?

It’s hard to tell the extent of the use of stainless from Metro’s flythough of what looks to be a Sketchup model, but the voiceover makes it seem possible that the new pylons could be stainless; the Sketchup signage in the flythrough is the same color as the pylon, making it hard to tell which elements are steel and which would be Metro brown.

The stated benefits of the pylon re-design seem dubious. The winged directional signage seems unnecessary to me, and putting wings on each and every pylon clutters the space created by Metro’s vaults. Adding more PID displays is a positive, but I’m not sure that many displays are necessary. Two or three along the length of any platform would probably suffice.

System wayfiding is important, but there are lots of other ways to accomplish that goal without adding wings telling you which side of the platform is for outbound trains to every pylon. Likewise, one of the benefits to Metro’s spacious vaulted stations are the clear lines of sight in most stations – alighting passengers can usually see their exit mezzanine within direct view, providing intuitive wayfinding within stations.

I’d bu curious to know if the goals of improved lighting from the indirect fixtures mounted into the walls could be just as easily met with better maintenance of the existing trackbed lighting, cleaning station vaults more regularly, and looking into the use of newer technologies like LEDs in existing lighting locations for both higher lighting levels and lower maintenance requirements.