CHAPTER 6

Postimplementation Activities

An agency’s work is not finished once a tactile wayfinding system has been constructed. Important postimplementation activities include (1) assessing the project’s effectiveness to gain knowledge to apply to future projects and (2) maintaining the tactile surfaces so the system retains its effectiveness over time.

Assessing System Effectiveness

Although follow-up studies to assess whether a completed project has met its objectives are valuable for many types of projects, they are particularly important for tactile wayfinding projects. Many transit and transportation agencies that have implemented tactile wayfinding systems have started with a pilot project involving a small number of locations. Postimplementation assessments of these projects can provide valuable information for deciding whether the agency should implement tactile wayfinding on a larger scale, as well as lessons learned that can be applied to future implementations and shared with other agencies considering tactile wayfinding.

APTA (2020) recommends a three-part process for postimplementation assessments:

• Postconstruction experience evaluation. Transit users can be surveyed about their use of and satisfaction with the tactile wayfinding system. The agency’s accessibility advisory committee, external advocacy and assistance groups for persons with visual or mobility impairments, and other groups that were engaged during the design and construction processes can all be consulted for feedback.
• Internal validation. Transit staff can observe how various transit passengers use or react to the tactile wayfinding system. This activity could include contacting passengers as they are using the system to get immediate and more detailed feedback than possible from a survey. Staff can also observe how well the materials used hold up over time and whether there are any particular maintenance challenges.
• Complete a report of the findings. Document the project objectives, how and where the tactile wayfinding system was implemented, the results of the assessments conducted during steps 1 and 2, and recommendations for future installations. Consider sharing this knowledge with other agencies, organizations, and researchers (e.g., sharing the report, making presentations, writing scientific papers).

Maintaining the System

Routine Maintenance Activities

Depending on the context, routine maintenance activities can include cleaning, ensuring guidance paths remain clear of obstacles, and replacing damaged TWSIs. Transit agencies reported

using power washing or machine scrubbing to clean their TWSIs. BART reported that cleaning tactile tiles was a special project for its maintenance crews, that machine-scrubbing the tiles was hard on the machines, and that tiles were occasionally damaged during the cleaning process. No roadway agencies reported cleaning their TWSIs.

To be functional to users, guidance paths need to remain clear of obstacles. This is normally not a problem in a transit station environment where the transit agency has control over its property. However, in a sidewalk environment, adjacent property and business owners may inadvertently block the guidance paths because they do not understand their purpose. Outreach to adjacent properties when TWSIs are first installed and occasional follow-up afterwards (as owners or managers may change over time) can help minimize this issue. Figure 42 shows a situation where the guidance path is completely blocked by an advertising sign for an adjacent business. Farther along, outdoor table seating and another advertising sign are so close to the guidance path that a person with impaired vision might run into them while following the path.

TWSIs will occasionally be damaged and may wear out over time. A good practice is to incorporate TWSIs into an agency’s routine periodic inspection processes so TWSIs that are damaged or at the end of their functional life can be identified and replaced. Because consistency is a key element of an effective wayfinding system, one consideration when initially selecting TWSI materials should be how easily the material can be replaced if damaged. U.K. guidance (Department for Transport 2021) recommends monitoring the height of tactile features because their detectability diminishes and eventually disappears as their height is reduced; for example, from wear caused by foot traffic. Danish guidance notes that foot traffic in busy pedestrian areas can wear down domed patterns in concrete slabs within a few years (Danish Road Directorate 2013). An accessibility audit of BART stations evaluated the condition of DWSs at stations with outdoor platforms based on their color and edge condition (HNTB and Kwan Henmi 2018).

NYCDOT noted that their city’s laws placed the responsibility for maintaining the sidewalk (and by extension any TWSI installed along the sidewalk) on the adjacent property owners. As a result, they have experienced pushback from property owners to such a degree that they are now stepping away from using guidance strips on sidewalks except in locations where the city has complete control over the space. Agencies with similar laws may need to consider taking on maintenance responsibility for the TWSIs they install, both to avoid challenges to proposed TWSI applications and to ensure tactile surfaces are replaced correctly and consistently if damaged.

Utility and Construction Work

If TWSIs will be affected by utility or construction work, it is recommended that the surfaces be removed and stored if practical (e.g., pavers, tiles) so they can be reinstalled immediately after construction work is completed. Damaged surfaces and surfaces that cannot be removed without damage (e.g., thermoplastic) will need to be replaced immediately after construction work is completed. In the United Kingdom, replacing TWSIs removed due to construction or utility work is required by statute (U.K. Department for Transport 2021). Quick-build TDIs (e.g., thermoplastic) can be used for guidance when a pedestrian access route is detoured due to construction work. The temporary markings should be removed as soon as construction is completed and the normal pedestrian access route is restored.

Case Studies

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), San Francisco Bay Area, California

BART was one of the earliest adopters of TWSIs among U.S. transit systems, installing directional tiles in the 1990s to indicate the door locations of 3-car trains (the shortest used by BART). As a pioneer, BART has experimented with a variety of TWSI designs and applications to find out which ones are useful for their passengers and which ones are not. BART has used a variety of techniques over the years to assess the effectiveness of its tactile wayfinding installations, including receiving feedback from BART’s Accessibility Task Force (BATF), holding workshops with the BATF and representatives from organizations that provide orientation and mobility training for people with visual impairments, and surveying people with visual impairments.

Feedback from a workshop in 2015 indicated that BART’s tactile guidance paths were difficult to use. Only one-quarter of stations had them and those that did used different surface widths, patterns, and materials depending on when they were installed. This variation led to inconsistent wayfinding applications and messaging between stations. The workshop feedback also indicated that some stations had too many guidance paths, making it difficult to identify the correct route from bus stops outside the station to the faregates and then to the platform. In addition, BART recognized that there were no U.S. standards for where and how guidance paths should be installed, leading to inconsistency across transit agencies. As a result, BART put its tactile guidance path program on hold, although tactile paths continued to be installed at stations on extensions that were already under construction.

In the 2 years after the workshop, BART did not receive any inquiries or complaints about the lack of tactile paths at stations, and the tactile path program remains on hold at the time of writing. BART continues to monitor tactile guidance pathway trends and research; it submitted comments on APTA’s draft Transit Universal Design Guidelines (2020) on the application of TWSIs and is exploring technological options for providing wayfinding information. BART’s Accessibility Improvement Program (HNTB and Kwan Henmi 2018) recommends installing tactile guidance paths from the concourse stairs through the accessible faregate and on to accessible bus stops and passenger drop-off areas.

Los Angeles Metro Rail, Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles Metro was planning to install a tactile path network at five stations in 2020–2021 as a proof of concept and was planning to obtain public feedback afterward that would be used to modify the installations and guide future installations. Metro also gathers more informal feedback on its use of TWSIs. For example, Metro reported that it has had “great feedback from blind persons” regarding the use of truncated domes at the tops and bottoms of stairs.

City of San Francisco, California

The city solicited feedback on the use of DWSs to mark the boundary between pedestrian and shared areas for a shared-street project. The feedback received was that DWSs should be used only to mark crossing locations, while guidance bars could be used for wayfinding. For a subsequent project, the city sponsored research (Bentzen, Scott, and Myers 2020) to develop a TWD for use in separating sidewalk-level bicycle facilities from the sidewalk; the TWD could potentially also be used in shared-street applications. When the city was interviewed in 2019, they had recently implemented a pilot installation of TDIs on the sidewalk to indicate the location of floating bus islands but had not yet received any public comment on the installations.

City of Seattle, Washington

Seattle had not performed any formal assessments of its tactile wayfinding projects when the city was interviewed in 2019. However, the city uses several other techniques to assess and evaluate these projects. One technique is to approach and talk to people with visual impairments in the field as they use wayfinding surfaces. For example, for a pilot test of a raised intersection of a shared street with another street, the city tried using grooved pavement to mark the boundary of the pedestrian and shared spaces, but received feedback that the grooves were not detectable. As a result of the feedback, the city now uses a combination of truncated domes at crossing points and TDIs between the crossings. Seattle also solicits public feedback on new installations and tracks both solicited and unsolicited comments. The city follows up with an orientation and mobility specialist to get recommendations on addressing the issues raised by the comments. Finally, the city holds quarterly meetings with its Pedestrian Access Advisory Committee and receives feedback on TWSI installations as part of the broad range of topics addressed by the committee.