Transport terminal design and passenger orientation

The objective of the internal design of a transport terminal is to minimize the disorientation and confusion of a passenger as he arrives at the terminal and desires to move towards the destination without undue loss of time. The experience of India however shows that most of the rail, bus and air terminals leave much to be desired from the human orientation point of view. To measure the passenger orientation and to enable evaluation of the terminal design an easily tractable quantitative method has recently been evolved. This paper attempts to apply it to two rail terminals in Bombay and to compute some indices to serve as criteria for determining the level of service and suggest directions for improvement.