Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vancouver/Transit template

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This ongoing discussion has been separated from the main talk page due to the growing size of both pages.

[edit] "The next station is..." templates

I have added various templates for use in "The next station is..." sections of articles on SkyTrain and West Coast Express stations. (I'm posting notice of this here and not on the WikiProject Vancouver page, and leaving it to those who look after the project page to decide the best way to incorporate this into the Templates sections that are already there—provided people are okay with what I've done.)

An example of a typical template: {{Expo/Millennium Line}}

The complete list of templates includes:

I had to add customized tables for stations with complicated routing arrangements (Waterfront, Broadway, Commercial Drive, Columbia, Lougheed Town Centre, and Bridgeport Stations). Customized tables will also need to be created for Port Moody and Coquitlam Central Stations—when those articles are created—as those stations will be served from 2009 by both the Evergreen Line and the West Coast Express.

I don't quite know what to do with Lonsdale Quay (the SeaBus), as a table there in the style of the ones I've already done will just look a bit weird.

-Sewing - talk 02:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Nice work on the templates - I'd noticed them before, but hadn't gone so far as to check who did them. Thanks. A few suggestions, though:
  • Reverse the north/south order on the Canada Line templates, as it would feel more natural to have north on the left and south on the right.
  • Use your "—" motif Merge columns (as per deadkid_dk's suggestion below) on the "Next station" boxes where the next station is the same as the destination. This avoids repetition and looks a bit cleaner. (See the Waterfront Station box for an example.)
Ckatz 07:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Wouldn't the use of "—" there lead to confusion? since, in the case of Waterfront Station, an unknowing reader would be led to think that no station is after Waterfront on the SeaBus. I suggest to merge the two columns together when the next station is the same as the destination. deadkid_dk 08:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
  • That's better... thought about it after posting my initial comment, but couldn't figure out the coding for a test... (think-think-think) Got it - take a look at the Waterfront Station box now. This should address both sets of concerns. Ckatz 08:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

...

deadkid dk, Ckatz: Thanks for your comments. To address some of the jumbledness with termini, I'm working on a new design that overall, may be visually more elegant. Here's how a typical Expo/Millennium Line station would look:

To Waterfront ← Expo Line → To King George
Patterson ← Metrotown → Royal Oak
To Waterfront ← Millennium Line → To VCC-Clark
Patterson ← Metrotown → Royal Oak

And here's how a typical terminus station would look:

To Waterfront ← Expo Line → To King George
Surrey Central ← King George → (Terminus station)

For a more extreme example, I've updated the Waterfront Station article. (The table as modified by CKatz is still there, but commented out, so it's not visible to someone reading the article.)

What do you think? I know that with this design, the Expo/Millennium table ends up duplicating information, but in a way, it seems to me to be more intuitive to grasp...but that's only my opinion.

Now, the direction of travel is problematic. Certainly, for the Expo and Evergreen Lines, SeaBus, and West Coast Express, it makes sense to always have Waterfront on the left, as that is how it appears on maps. On the Millennium Line, for all the stations from Waterfront to Braid, I think it makes sense to have Waterfront on the left, but for the stations from Lougheed to VCC-Clark, it's probably more user-friendly to put VCC-Clark on the left and Waterfront (or "Waterfront via Columbia") on the right. As for the Canada Line, the reason I thought of going Southbound-Northbound and putting Waterfront on the right is because of the orientation of the YVR branch, where YVR Terminal is to the west (i.e., left on a map) and Waterfront-bound trains will be travelling east (i.e., right on a map). This orientation also works for Robson, Bridgeport, and Cambie Stations—where one or both approaches are on a southwest-northeast alignment—although it doesn't work for Yaletown.

Let me know what you think. I haven't changed anything templates or articles yet, apart from the Waterfront article. (Also, I won't be able to do any further work on this until tomorrow (April 27th), but hold tight, and I'll change everything as soon as I can.)

Also, the arrows in the tables come from a Unicode code set (not sure which one offhand; I entered them using the Microsoft Korean Input Method Editor (don't ask; long story)).... I'm assuming that in 2006, most users' Web browsers are Unicode-equipped anyhow, but if anyone reading this has trouble seeing the arrows, let me know.

-Sewing - talk 20:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I've created a variant of the original design (see below) which condenses the top layer - with the goal of making the table as simple as possible. Your new design does look sharp, but it is a bit busy and it requires two (text) lines for each transit line. This creates a lot of repetition on the Expo/Millennium lines due to their overlap. Perhaps if we can come up with a clear, simple way to get the data into one (text) line per transit line... I'll see what I can come up with. As for the directions, it's probably best to use map conventions (north/south, west/east) rather than attempting to conform to the paths the lines follow through the Lower Mainland. The Expo/Millennium overlap and circle is a big complication under any scheme, though. "Inbound/outbound" might be clearer, given the fact that all existing lines originate from Waterfront. Good work on getting this design going! Ckatz 20:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
← INBOUND WATERFRONT OUTBOUND →
Waterfront
Expo Line Burrard to King George
Millennium Line to VCC-Clark
Canada Line
(Under construction)		 Robson to YVR Terminal
to Richmond City Centre
SeaBus Lonsdale Quay
West Coast Express Port Moody to Mission


Hi, Ckatz: I agree that Inbound/Outbound might be the simplest solution—and the only one that could be uniformly applied. I was concerned, however, that some people might not realize that "Inbound" means "inwards to Vancouver" and "Outbound" means "outwards from Vancouver." But it would be simpler than trying to squeeze all four directions (Northbound/Southbound/Eastbound/Westbound) into the top of the Waterfront table!
Your solution looks good, but the only thing that bugs me is that Waterfront is not the next station going inbound, but its position in the table implies that. Perhaps "None (Terminus station)" instead?
I tinkered a bit with your rejigged table (see below). I still haven't finally settled upon the best colour for SeaBus, although I note that on the latest Transit Guides (or whatever TransLink calls them these days), it's shown as a colour roughly similar to the one I use below ("deep sky blue").
(Font colour is tricky, too. The Millennium Line should use a dark font colour, but then if the other four are all white, it looks a bit jarring. The SeaBus could go either way, given the background colour I've chosen. If I use a dark font color for the SeaBus, it pretty much has to be black. I also experimented with different font colours (yellow for Expo and WCE, blue for Millennium, white for Canada...), but it's a bit too hard on the eyes.)
As a principle, I'd prefer to make the tables flexible width (but with uniform column sizes, per what you did), so that for tables with short lines of text in all fields, the table doesn't look unduly elongated. Oh, and in the table below, the links to non-existent station articles are pointing to valid articles, so we can see what the table looks without a bunch of red links. -Sewing - talk 23:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
← Inbound Waterfront Outbound →
None (Terminus station) Expo Line Burrard To King George
Millennium Line To VCC-Clark
Canada Line
(Under construction)		 Robson To YVR Terminal /
Richmond City Centre
SeaBus Lonsdale Quay
West Coast Express Port Moody To Mission
Since this table isn't significantly different from what you came up with (except for what goes in the "Inbound" column)—and looks better than the last thing I put up on the Waterfront page, I'm going to go ahead and post this revised table there. -Sewing - talk 23:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Okay, finally done (?)

Okay, after just a bit of tinkering, I've got what I hope is the final version of the Waterfront table. It looks exactly like the last one above, except the top row reads like this:

← Next station inbound Waterfront Next station outbound →

...Just to make the table a little bit clearer, without adding an additional row. -Sewing - talk 23:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

On second thought, I'll leave the table the way I posted above (before the section break). -Sewing - talk 23:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

← NEXT STATION INBOUND WATERFRONT NEXT STATION OUTBOUND →
Terminus Expo Line Burrard to King George
Millennium Line to VCC-Clark
Canada Line
(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)		 Robson to YVR Terminal or
Richmond City Centre
SeaBus Lonsdale Quay
West Coast Express Port Moody to Mission

Some tweaks - give me a moment to post my thoughts as to why... Ckatz

OK - here we go:

  • All-caps for the station name (gives it prominence over the other data; "big" text is too big to achieve this)
  • All-caps+small for the inbound/outbound descriptor (whichever one - I created this version before your latest revision) for stylistic reasons (to give it less prominence than the other data)
  • "Terminus" instead of "None (terminus station)" for simplicity (+ I think "terminus station" is redundant)
  • "or" instead of "/" for the Canada Line destination (implies the line has two possible destinations, whereas "/" suggests both on the same trip)
  • slight tweak to the width percentages - makes the centre box slightly wider, which helps keep the outside boxes from getting too big when there is a long station name such as RCC. (nice job, by the way, and thanks - I've learned a new table trick from you!)
  • "to" instead of "To" on the end destinations (esthetics, plus - grammatically speaking - the boxes imply "Expo Line to King George")

Please toss in your thoughts on the above - I think this is shaping up nicely. My only regret is that I don't know of a way to give the table nice, rounded corners, as that would really work well with the SkyTrain theme. One element of your second design that I really liked was using the colour band all the way across the station information. Unfortunately, I don't know if we can format the boxes to get a split-colour in the combined "Burrard" box for the Expo/Millennium lines, and I think it is more important to retain the shared "Burrard" to reinforce the fact that they are the same line. --Ckatz 00:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


Looks good. I understand your rationale for the tweaks you made (I was also thinking of using "or" instead of a virgule (slash) for the Canada Line). Now, let's try to break the table with some really long station names, and see what happens:
← NEXT STATION INBOUND LAKE CITY WAY NEXT STATION OUTBOUND →
to Waterfront via Columbia Sperling-Burnaby Lake Millennium Line Production Way-University to VCC-Clark


Okay, I think in this case it looks a bit awkward, since the next stations are longer than the destinations (well, it's debatable for Waterfront, depending on whether we include "via Columbia" or not). So I massaged the four outer columns to each have a width of 17.5%, but as you can see below, the table kind of looks ugly being stretched out all the way across the page like this:


← NEXT STATION INBOUND LAKE CITY WAY NEXT STATION OUTBOUND →
to Waterfront via Columbia Sperling-Burnaby Lake Millennium Line Production Way-University to VCC-Clark


I was thinking of making the middle column a bit narrower—say, 25% versus 30%—but when I do that, on my monitor, the table below ends up having the station name (PRODUCTION WAY-UNIVERSITY) wrap onto two lines, which just looks awful. But at 30%, it's okay:


← NEXT STATION INBOUND PRODUCTION WAY-UNIVERSITY NEXT STATION OUTBOUND →
to Waterfront via Columbia Lake City Way Millennium Line Lougheed Town Centre to VCC-Clark


Anyhow, I experimented some more with the column headings (mixed case versus all caps; small versus regular size; bold versus non-bold), and I have to say I like your arrangement. Nothing else looks quite right! So let's take a look at the Waterfront table one more time, but this time with uniform 17.5% widths for the outer 4 columns:


← NEXT STATION INBOUND WATERFRONT NEXT STATION OUTBOUND →
Terminus Expo Line Burrard to King George
Millennium Line to VCC-Clark
Canada Line
(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)		 Robson to YVR Terminal or
Richmond City Centre
SeaBus Lonsdale Quay
West Coast Express Port Moody to Mission


Well, it's kind of wide for my liking—that big empty whitespace on the left-hand side of the table—but screw it. What do you think? (Not much difference after all from what you came up with—just the column widths are slightly different.) -Sewing - talk 02:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Works for me - nice job on the spacing. We can always nip-and-tuck if there are a few stations that really muck things up. I'd be happy to split up the work of placing them if you like. As for the bothersome white space, what about deleting it entirely, seeing as how Waterfront is the end of the line?
WATERFRONT NEXT STATION OUTBOUND →
Expo Line Burrard to King George
Millennium Line to VCC-Clark
Canada Line
(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)		 Robson to YVR Terminal or
Richmond City Centre
SeaBus Lonsdale Quay
West Coast Express Port Moody to Mission
  • And, of course, deleting the other side where appropriate.
← NEXT STATION INBOUND KING GEORGE
to Waterfront via Columbia Lake City Way Expo Line
  • --Ckatz 03:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


I'm very happy with that. I originally had that plan, too, to simply leave out the appropriate column(s) for termini.
I just realized that in my 3 Millennium Line examples above, I had the inbound & outbound stations reversed! (Thinking as I was of the geographical east-west orientation of the stations.) I'm still not sure of putting the eastern station on the left and the western station on the right is such a good idea for that section of the Millennium Line....
Anyhow, I've posted your revised Waterfront table to the Waterfront page, updated Template:Expo/Millennium Line, and updated the pages for Burrard through New Westminster Stations, plus Commercial Drive Station. (Burrard Station had to go from having a template to a customized table, due to Waterfront's being the next station inbound.) I don't have time to do anything else for now...if you want to start on some other pages, that's fine with me; otherwise, I'll tackle some more stations tomorrow.
-Sewing - talk 04:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, Millennium is done, as is the rest of Expo. There are a few tweaks to the others, as well. I've only updated the Expo and Millennium templates, as my tweaks removed the need for the M-NewWest template. I've tried something different for the Millennium Line direction - check out the stations on the VCC-Columbia run to see it. Should address your concerns about clarity. Also, take a look at Scott Road and Burrard - what do you think about the superscripts on Columbia and Waterfront for transfers? --Ckatz 10:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
A question, how is the superscript going to work for Marine Drive Station and Cambie Station, when the line splits in Bridgeport Station splits, but still named Canada Line? deadkid_dk 11:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


Yeah, I don't know about the superscripts. Nice idea, but it kind of clutters up the tables a bit, and dealing with the Airport/Richmond split at Bridgeport would be a bit tricky. Anyhow, I've taken the liberty of changing the "WESTBOUND" and "OUTBOUND" designations on Template:Millennium Line to "OUTBOUND" and "INBOUND" respectively because:
  • The pair should either be Westbound and Eastbound, or Outbound and Inbound (seems better than a mixed pair);
  • Since we're using Outbound/Inbound (or vice versa) for everything else, might as well use them here, too;
  • From an operational point of view, the Outbound direction is to VCC-Clark, and Inbound to Waterfront. The reader can determine from the orientation of the tables and the destinations which is which.
Apart from the template, I've also modified the Broadway, Commercial Drive, Lougheed Town Centre, and Columbia tables accordingly. Also, I added a customized table for Sapperton, since it's unnecessary to say "Waterfront via Columbia" there, as the next station is Columbia (applying the same principle as combining the next station and destination for Burrard and King George Stations, for example).
Lougheed Town Centre was the trickiest one to do, as outbound on the Millennium Line is in the opposite direction as outbound on the Evergreen Line. (Of course, if they'd designed things correctly, and simply extended the Millennium Line from north Burnaby into the Tri Cities (with an Expo Line spur to Lougheed, natch) instead of the silly loop that they built, none of this would be an issue!)
-Sewing - talk 17:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Progress report

Okay, all stations on the Expo and Millennium Lines have been done, plus Lonsdale Quay, and all stations on the Canada Line from 41st Avenue south. (I also created YVR 1 and YVR 2 articles; others have recently created other Canada Line articles.)

Left to do are:

Of these, someone has just created the King Edward Station article, and appears to be moving north to Waterfront. That just leaves the Evergreen Line and West Coast Express to be tackled.

-Sewing - talk 18:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice work. I was going to leave a comment, but you already saw my changes by the time I got back from researching TransLink information. I changed Lonsdale Quay to put the inbound box on the right side beause it feels more natural for south-bound travel to be on the right in our "northist" society... (grin). Your changes work well at the other single-direction-of-departure stations too, since it presents the information in a more logical order. I see you've been very busy, by the way! --Ckatz 19:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, too busy. Well, that's enough. I think I've solved the problem raised by deadkid_dk earlier regarding how to deal with designating Bridgeport as a Canada Line transfer point. See Cambie Station and YVR 1 Station, and click on the appropriate links. -Sewing - talk 19:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Nicely done --Ckatz 19:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm doing a little tweaking on the SkyTrain Stations template right now... not much, but some... --Ckatz 05:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)