Well, adding the criteria of subjective and objective evaluation, everything clears up to a point of view that is acceptable to everyone – here, for example, a very good small change in the city started and appeared for me.
In my morning walking routine for a dozen years, there was a very stressful and annoying section of road starting at the intersection of Bridge Street and Vilnius Street. If I honestly wait for the green light (which I always do, because I once got a 10 lita fine at that place), when it comes on I have to walk extremely fast (self-respecting pedestrians never run, or, God forbid, tursena) to hit the green at the Green Bridge, and when I get to the bridge, I have to walk even faster and at least cross Kalvariju street through the yellow one. Then it’s calm.
So any incident—a slow and hard-to-turn trolley, a stripper, a group of idiot tourists blocking the sidewalk (I’m adding these for the sake of examples. I’ve never seen a single tourist on the Green Bridge on a weekday morning, let alone a group of them) ruins the pace of the route, and I have to wait an indescribably long time for the new traffic lights to turn green.
The unprecedented opportunity to cross the street a dozen seconds earlier made the hysterical section easy and smooth!
One such morning, about two years ago, I was standing in front of a bridge, waiting to cross the street, when suddenly the right turn signal came on and went out much faster than usual, and a green light came on for me. What a nice traffic jam, I thought. The unprecedented opportunity to cross the street a dozen seconds earlier made the hysterical section easy and smooth! A few days later, realizing that it was not a traffic light malfunction, but a consciously programmed state, I sincerely thanked the anonymous benefactor, the empathetic specialist of the transport department, and I repeat that thanks to this day, every morning. This is what I call a small and good urban change.
And in the summer, a huge good change (no sarcasm here) took place in the history of urban design, unnoticed by anyone – new public transport schemes appeared at Vilnius public transport stops. The history of Vilnius transport schemes is not long – there was nothing at the stops until 2013, when the first geographical schemes appeared, drawn using the geographical method, placing a network of bus and trolleybus routes on a real city map. This is an ancient and very user-inconvenient transport scheme.
This way of informing in 1931 (first used on the London Underground) replaced diagrammatic diagrams, not tied to a physical city, showing directions topologically, with route lines drawn simplistically, straight, horizontal or tilted at 45 degrees. Precisely such schemes (can be viewed on the website of the municipality) is now being examined by Vilnius residents waiting for transport.
Photo by Greta Skaraitiene/BNS/Ernestas Parulskis
At the moment, I can just hear one text reader after another telling me that in the age of smart phones and great transport apps, no one uses any stop schemes, even the best ones. And they would be only partially, about 40 percent, right. I conducted a small survey, asking my respondents (Vilnius and Vilnius residents, aged 22 to 58): “If you were to appear at a bus stop in an unfamiliar Vilnius district, where would you look for initial information – in a paper transport scheme or on the phone?”. And exactly 60 percent. of the respondents said that they would first look at the scheme hanging nearby and then act according to the situation”. A few also added that the schemes are especially useful for them when they appear in other cities, because they help to make decisions faster in an unfamiliar environment.
If you were to find yourself at a bus stop in an unfamiliar Vilnius district, where would you look for initial information – in a paper transport scheme or on the phone?
I would also add that a good map, in addition to functionality, is also an excellent element of urban design, which clearly shows the level of the city’s aesthetic sense.
Of course, even in such a positive atmosphere, there are opportunities for bullying. Now, when Vilnius has entered the stage of diagrammatic transport mapping, it is worth correcting an old mistake – both the old and new diagrams are hung at the stops where the benches are installed. If someone is sitting on them (usually they are), it is impossible to examine the scheme. And if you take their exposure a step to the side, where there are no benches, the problem disappears. I specially looked at how transport maps are hung elsewhere, even in Helsinki, whose stops are almost the same as in Vilnius – they are hung where there are no benches. By the way, Vilnius stations do not have Helsinki lighting, so our maps lose their functionality when it gets dark, which, although a thousand times more efficient than the previous schemes, is still difficult to read.
Vilnius stations do not have Helsinki lighting, so our maps lose their functionality when it gets dark, which, although a thousand times more efficient than the previous schemes, is still difficult to read.
In this way, through functionality, completely clear plans for the future are formed – after using the British experience from 1931, it is necessary to implement a more recent invention of the same British – the spider web method on maps. It appeared in London in 2002 and is intended for ground public transport. Although Vilnius is not as gigantic as the capital of the UK, our transport system of three types of buses and trolleybuses is not small, and it no longer fits into an easy-to-understand and conveniently used scheme. To solve this problem, the British created a system of maps tied to local territories, which show routes passing through these territories. Local schemes connect to each other like threads of spider webs across the city.
How would this method look like in the reality of Vilnius? For example, at the well-known, intensive transit stop “Zaliasis tiltas”? There, on a local spider diagram, lines for two express buses, six regular buses and three trolleybuses would be drawn – easy! Of course! Quick!
Even for me, a local, they would be useful, because I keep forgetting which way the twelfth trolleybus goes – through Kudirka or through Lukiške?
#Ernest #Parulskis #Unnoticed #turning #point #Vilnius #design #Culture
