Bad Design - Reagan Parking Lot

One of the items in my long list of Books To Write Some Day is a project I'm calling The Book Of Bad Design. Maybe I'll do it as a blog instead, but the general concept is to present poorly designed objects and examine what went wrong... then propose design solutions.

In anticipation of someday creating such a thing, I've been collecting examples and thought I might share a few of them here on RPL.

The photo to the left is of a parking lot at Reagan National Airport in DC. Notice the sign reading "D9" on the street light. Notice also the long line of street lights stretching off into the distance. Although you can't tell from this photo, I can confirm that every single one of those lights has a sign which reads (wait for it...) "D9." Really? Yes, really.

Running parallel to the long line of D9 parking spots are other rows, with similarly consistent labeling. This means that even if you remember you parked in row D9, your car could be anywhere along a rather lengthy row. The simple solution of course would be to give each light its own unique label, such as D1, D2, etc (for the D-row), and C1, C2, etc for the C row.

I can't imagine why the parking lot designers decided to use this labeling convention. They got so close to a usable design, then completely whiffed it. But it was better than the shuttle bus design... more on that soon.