The Bond family had only been in D.C. for five days, but public transit had already become a reliable resource.
The stations had been simple to navigate, Kise Bond said, and her kids had enjoyed riding the Metro. At L’Enfant Plaza, they appreciated the alphabetically coded entrances and exits.
“Just the fact that you have a Metro is amazing,” said Colton Bond, who was holding on to his family’s luggage as they waited for a Silver Line train to be whisked away toward their flight back to Salem, Oregon.
But the Bonds didn’t know they were joining the 14,000 other daily entrants at L’Enfant in one big experiment.
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For the last three years, L’Enfant Plaza has been the hub for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s trials and tests on the Metro system’s signage. Officials refer to it as the system’s “live laboratory.”
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Conveniently located next to Metro’s headquarters and just a short walk from the National Mall, the agency has simulated the station in virtual reality, used it to launch numerous sign iterations — ranging from bright, real-time digital station displays to minimalist Helvetica text above the third rail — and recently selected it as the first to receive updates as part of its $37.8 million wayfinding program.
After a 2023 study found that 39% of Metro passengers had used the wrong station exit and 23% had boarded a train headed in the wrong direction, testing at L’Enfant began as a process to consolidate signage across the system and improve accessibility, Brian Anderson, Metro’s acting vice president for customer experience initiatives, told The Washington Sun during a tour of the station. The agency has between 20 and 25 different sign types across its 98 active stations, Anderson said. The hope is to get that number down to just 10 to 15.
But while some of the pilot program’s sign changes were small, even incremental, the rollout of the wayfinding program has created the most customer heartburn so far.
Online, riders have expressed dismay about the new signs, describing them as “not well done” or “Metro enshitification.” The pushback to one proposed change — removing stripes around pylons outside of Metro stops — led WMATA to reverse course.
From old to new, signs on the walls of Metro stations will no longer include route endpoints indicating direction, and some signs, like those on platforms or near exits, will include points of interest like airports or the National Zoo. All signs hanging above third rails have more negative space, a minimalist design choice that has come with an updated medium-weight Helvetica font. Exits will no longer be labeled by street but by letters.
Importantly, no signs will include cardinal directions, a change made to increase accessibility and reflect that not all lines, like the U-shaped Red Line, follow linear directions. Within the next five years, all stations are expected to have the new signage, Metro said.
Cleaning up visual clutter — like reducing the number of names, arrows and colors on signs — will likely decrease the chance that users are confused in stations, said Jihyun Song, a wayfinding researcher who takes the Silver Line on her way to work at George Washington University.
But some changes, particularly the removal of directions from wall signs, may leave customers confused, Song said.
Laura Heatherly, who is visually impaired and uses a mobility cane to navigate, said the removal of directional indicators had actually made determining which train she’s waiting for at L’Enfant more difficult.
“I can normally look at a sign and easily find my way around, but now I can’t tell which one is going north or south. I usually have to ask around,” Heatherly, a frequent L’Enfant user, said while waiting on the Green-Yellow Line platform.
In some ways, the removal of information reflects a return to the ethos of the original design of the Metro and highlights an ongoing “special tension” between the agency’s aesthetics and the public, said Zachary Schrag, the author of “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro.”
With fights about signage dating back to 1976, the battle over Metro aesthetics is as old as the system itself, Schrag said. Other battles have taken place over lighting or paint along the vault walls of Metro stops.
“People do get fussy about changes. I think one of the differences with this most recent wayfinding effort is that it was more deliberate and more public,” said Schrag, a professor of U.S. history at George Mason University. Before unveiling the changes, WMATA received over 13,000 comments on Metro signage, and the final product was approved by its Accessibility Advisory Committee, its Riders’ Advisory Committee and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
“You cannot always appeal 100% to every single person,” said Anderson, who at one point stopped to offer a customer directions during the tour. “But we are very confident in what we have delivered, and we appreciate the feedback.”
Still, some riders are oblivious to the L’Enfant laboratory.
Just before a recent afternoon rush hour, Leroy Ferguson said he hadn’t noticed the new minimalist text hanging over the third rail. A D.C. resident for 15 years, Ferguson uses the Metro every day. When he sees lost tourists, he offers them simple advice.
“Always follow the signs,” he said. “Always follow the signs.”
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