Liam Henderson, founder of Transporting Cities, said, “I would say that the biggest challenge in providing excellent journey experience is recognizing that passengers’ assumptions on services are informed by their home systems. In the case of major airports, passengers are arriving from far flung destinations and will interpret rail services differently whereas the user experience has usually been designed by a local planner.
“Making the system accessible for these passengers will increase the overall user experience. I think there is an opportunity for some level of standardization in information provision across major airports so that a visitor to any global airport can expect to see a familiar guide through to the rail service.”
"Accessible"? Surely that should be "legible".
There seems to be an assumption here that airports are run for the benefit of arriving passengers. That is not self-evident, in transport or other respects, even when they are not just trying to make money. Trains are usually easiest to make sense of (though I remember Milan Malpensa as also being hard to use, with two services and different tickets). Buses are usually set up for locals only and don't try for clarity (not just true of airports). And as for taxis - well, they are arranged to suit the taxi drivers, aren't they?
The prize goes (or did, as this was over 30 years ago) to Pearson International at Toronto, where I was delayed for nearly 6 hours one night - duty-free shopping was confined to the departure lounge, but took Canadian cash only and the last change desk was at the one-way door going into it, so you'd have got rid of you last Loonies before then.
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