The TTC is planning a renovation of some of its most valuable and visible real estate — its 10,000 bus and streetcar stops.

Those ubiquitous sign posts should be providing more useful information than they do, said TTC chief customer officer Chris Upfold.

In about six weeks, the TTC plans to begin testing some new designs for bus stop poles and the maps in its bus shelters.

The change is part of a broader look at customer service that has transit officials rethinking every aspect of rider contact.

This week, for example, the TTC changed the way it announces buses on LED signs located at stations such as Main, Broadview, Spadina, Bathurst and Dundas West. Instead of telling riders when the bus is to arrive on the platform, signs now say when the bus departs.

Buses frequently have layovers and sometimes arrive at a station ahead of schedule. What the rider really wants to know is when the bus is going to leave the station, Upfold said.

“That’s what makes sense. Otherwise you’re standing there making a decision: Am I going to walk or am I going to catch the bus?”

Such signs will be installed in every station within the next year, along with signs at the station entrances that will alert riders to a service disruption before they drop a token in the farebox.

It could take more than three years to test, consult, approve and implement new bus stop designs.

Currently, decals are used to cover up out-of-date information on bus stop signs, but they don’t have numbers — just advertising for programs such as the Request Stop service.

“They don’t tell anybody anything,” said Upfold. “We are using 80 to 90 per cent of our real estate to give useless information. What’s important is the route numbers, which of those routes are all-night or all-day, which are part of the Blue Night network, and is there any specific information you need to know about the routes that run.

“In the past we’ve thought about the stop as being the important thing. But actually the important thing is the route,” he said, noting that some stops are served by buses playing several routes.

The coming makeover is the reason the TTC has delayed posting numbers at its stops — even though for more than a year now, riders have been able to key in a stop number on a cellphone and get a text back telling them when the next bus or streetcar will arrive.

The streetcar stop numbers have been posted, but the bus stop information needs to be reconsidered in the context of the overall revamp, Upfold said.

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“We have to physically go out to every one of these 10,000 stops and put a decal on them. I refuse to send somebody to those 10,000 stops until I have a plan for what I want those stops to look like overall,” he said.

Meantime, bus stop numbers are available through NextBus or the TTC’s website by searching on the route number and location. There are some smartphone apps that also provide real-time bus arrivals.