Matt’s proposal for three-letter station codes.

Matt Johnson has an interesting post up at Greater Greater Washington proposing three-letter abbreviations for Metro stations, in the tradition of airport codes. The idea is that instead of writing out “U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo”, you’d just go with “UST” and everyone would know what you meant. The post was in response to a suggestion that he and I consider such a code system, so I may as well share my thoughts too.

Matt and I talked about it a bit on Twitter and then went separate ways. He wanted to try three-letter codes and I wanted to try two-letter ones. I never got around to putting my codes onto a map, but they’re available in spreadsheet form. Like Matt, I developed some guidelines. They were:

1. If the station name is two words, use the first letter of each word.
2. If the station name is one word, use either the first and last letter, the first letters of each syllable, the first and second letter, or (in rare cases) the first letter plus a vowel or consonant that stands out for some reason.
3. Focus on the common names for the stations, not the long official names.
4. No duplication of codes. When duplicates appear, change both of them to avoid confusion (so no one wonders if CH is Court House, Columbia Heights, Congress Heights, or Capitol Heights).

Ultimately, that last ‘no duplication’ rule proved the biggest problem, and the biggest reason why I think Matt’s three-letter system is superior. It isn’t just that there are four CH stations. BR, CP, MC, and US all show up more than once, requiring more than ten stations to have non-intuitive codes. That just won’t do when there’s a perfectly good three-letter alternative available.

Having come around to Matt’s point of view on the number of letters, what about his specific proposals? I think most of them are spot on, but there are a handful I’d change, generally because I think they could be more intuitive with regards to which consonant sounds are dominant. For example: RVL for Rockville, GVR for Grosvenor, FSH for Friendship Heights, and GLN for Glenmont.

But really, nitpicks aside, I like it.