Metro Is Rolling Out New Train Station Signs

Metro is updating signage at each rail station in an attempt to make it easier for customers to navigate D.C.

Riders at L’Enfant Plaza may have noticed fresh signs on the lower train platforms, the first in what is planned to be a systemwide rollout of new directional signage across D.C. Metrorail. The changes are meant to make traveling clearer, more consistent and reduce the confusion of traveling, WMATA said in a statement.

Some signs at L’Enfant have already been switched, with the station expected to have completely new placards by the end of October. Within the next six months, five more stations will be updated, with Farragut North, Farragut West and Navy Yard first in line. The order of further replacements will be based on ridership, service patterns and scheduled construction. Each of the system’s 98 stations will be updated within five years, Metro said.

Exits will no longer be labeled by the street intersections they lead to, but rather a letter — A, B, C, etc. — that corresponds to attractions near each exit, such as the Wharf and the International Spy Museum at L’Enfant. The new letter labeling system is integrated with apps like Metro Pulse and Google Maps to make shorthand directions easier to follow.

“This is the first comprehensive effort to standardize signage across our system so customers experience the same information in the same location regardless of what station they are using,” Metro said.

Graphics showing the remaining stops on each line will be taken off the wall of each terminal, relegating full route information to signs on the platform. That change will make it easier to update information in the future, saving time and money.

Metro said internal data shows that at some point 39% of customers have taken the wrong exit, 29% have gone to the wrong platform, and 23% have taken the train in the wrong direction. The signage updates are designed to address those pain points and were created using feedback from 13,000 customer surveys and multiple advisory boards.

But riders pushed back on social media, saying the new signs are less intuitive and make information harder to find.

“It may seem unfamiliar at first glance, but multiple rounds of feedback were considered to finalize this effort. The results are exciting — a clearer set of signs to address navigation decisions at key decision points,” Metro said in a social media post.

Beyond new signage, the pylons marking Metro train station entrances will ditch the iconic striped top design, opting instead for colored circles denoting rail lines down the side. Metro said the colored stripes were difficult for low-visibility customers to decipher and that moving to the circles increases visibility. Plus, as beloved as they have become, those stripes weren’t part of Metro’s original branding.

This story has been updated with further details.