My understanding is Mexico City’s reason for using icons was because at the time it was built, a large percentage of the country was illiterate. That’s no longer the case but it has the nice side effect of helping out those who don’t speak the local language. All I need to remember is that I was at the station with a kangaroo. Wish more systems would adopt this standard.
What I really hate are systems with long station names. Atlanta is horrible about this. Dome/GWCC/CNN/Phillips Station, sometimes with Omni in the place of Phillips since that was the name of the previous sports area, is descriptive of what’s near the station but it’s simply not a name that people will use when speaking to each other. There are several other examples of long names in the system that seem to be there more for vanity of neighborhoods than for making it easy to use.
