Railroad Forums 

  • Color for next MARTA rail line?

  • General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.
General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.

Moderators: mtuandrew, gprimr1

 #1316779  by CHTT1
 
Wow, I'm really surprised the color designation for a subway line caused such a big problem. Chicago has Yellow, Brown, Red and Pink lines without anybody given a thought to racial/sexual orientation matters.
I think the use of colors to designate rapid transit lines is a good idea. You can follow the route on a map easily and painting the stations and/or signs in an appropriate color certainly helps novice riders and those from out of town. New York City, of course, has why too many lines for separate colors and the numbers/letters system has long been established there.
 #1316795  by ExCon90
 
Apparently they had to find out the hard way when they first went to color coding and ended up with about 2 dozen (?) colors including 3 or 4 shades of red and about the same number of blue, and that's not counting magenta and purple. I think what they have now was a sensible solution, with a separate color for each of the avenues in Manhattan, plus purple, black, light green, and brown for the others.
 #1316822  by Pink Jazz
 
CHTT1 wrote:Wow, I'm really surprised the color designation for a subway line caused such a big problem. Chicago has Yellow, Brown, Red and Pink lines without anybody given a thought to racial/sexual orientation matters.
I think the use of colors to designate rapid transit lines is a good idea. You can follow the route on a map easily and painting the stations and/or signs in an appropriate color certainly helps novice riders and those from out of town. New York City, of course, has why too many lines for separate colors and the numbers/letters system has long been established there.
Well, other than the Yellow Line serving Skokie, the other colored lines don't seem to serve areas that the choice of color would be politically incorrect. The Red Line doesn't serve a Native American reservation, the Brown Line doesn't serve a Hispanic area, and neither of Chicago's two gay neighborhoods are along the Pink Line. For Chicago the color choices other than Yellow seem to be out of pure luck for political correctness.