You have a few more days to vote for your favorite MetroGreater finalists before voting closes at midnight on Friday, August 26th! We’ve told you about eight of the ten finalists over the last few weeks. Here are the last two: System map decals for ceilings of cars and color-blind friendly dots on sign posts.

Photos by Mr. T in DC and thisisbossi on Flickr, respectively.

System map decals for ceilings of cars

Many people who submitted ideas for small, quick fixes to make riding Metro better wanted to see improvements to signage. This finalist idea proposes to add more system maps to rail cars by putting them on the ceiling. Although Metro has made ceiling space available for advertising on some cars, they could make room for some maps.

Original photo by Mr.T in DC on Flickr.

Place decals of Metro system Maps on ceilings of the cars, preferably in between doors. This will encourage tourists to move to middle of car, away from doors, if they are able to see a system map that is not near a door. Ceiling system maps will also be helpful to regular riders who are having to make detours during Safe Track surges. A few commenters think this is a great idea. Daniele notes that because she is 5’3”, “it can be EXTREMELY difficult to see the Metro map! By putting it on the ceiling, I would no longer have issues seeing the map!” Rick agrees that this is a good idea, but thinks that adhesive system maps might make for tempting souvenirs. He recommends that WMATA “make sure that they can’t be peeled off” too easily by people wanting to take them home! What do you think? Should system map decals for the ceilings of rail cars be the winning idea? Vote at MetroGreater.org and share your thoughts in the comments section below. Make the dots on sign posts more color-blind friendly Many people with color blindness experience unique challenges when trying to navigate Metrorail. Difficulty or the inability to distinguish between colors means that system wayfinding tools based solely on color are confusing for some people with colorblindness. This MetroGreater finalist idea seeks to assist people with colorblindness by adding text to the rail line dots on sign posts in Metro stations.

Photo by thisisbossi on Flickr.

Diana B.‘s original submission explains:
On all sign posts, print the word color (ex. Blue on blue dot) so color-blind people can tell what line it is. People who are color-blind have trouble determining which line is which, because they can’t tell the color of the circles. My son-in-law has to ask people which line is which and sometimes gets no help because people just tell him to look at the posts.
Commenters agree with Diana. As someone who seems to have color blindness herself, Lori “support[s] this 100%.” She shares that if she didn’t already know where she was going, she would have a hard time navigating based on colors alone. To make wayfinding easier for people who are colorblind as well as those who may not read English, Mark suggests making “giant colored dots with white colored text words” in the center in both English and French. Rick, on the other hand thinks less is more and recommends “dots with the single capital letters in them, (B) = Blue, (G) = Green, (R) = Red, etc.” to reflect some of the new system maps. Do you support adding text to the colored dots on sign posts? Should it be the winning MetroGreater idea? Vote and tell us your thoughts at MetroGreater.org.