Round Bus Schedule Concept

In the years I’ve been playing with concepts for presenting Charlottetown public transit schedule information (map, mobile, printable, poster, phone), I’ve often wished for a way of presenting schedule information that breaks out of the columnar or tabular “here’s the times it leaves” format.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with a round bus schedule, with hopes that it ups the “at a glance” quotient. There are some significant challenges to such a design, the big one being that there are only 12 hours on a clock face and the transit system day runs for longer that 12 hours.

Here’s an early draft of what I’m thinking about. It captures on a portion of the University Avenue line, showing departure times from Confederation Centre from the first run at 6:45 a.m. and moving around until the 6:10 p.m. run, thus leaving off the last five runs of the day.

It’s by no means perfected – the tick marks on the clock face are too prominent, and I’m not sure I’ve effectively communicated the AM/PM combination (or maybe I’ve communicated it too much?). But I do like its “at a glanceness.”

I welcome suggestions for tweaks, or for completely different takes on the same design challenge.