How Perth Stacks Up Against the World on Duplicate Image Replacement in Public Spaces

Perth's rapid infrastructure expansion is generating a problem that urban planners rarely discuss publicly: duplicate imagery cluttering public spaces, transport hubs and government-owned buildings. As Metronet adds stations from Yanchep to Byford, project managers at the Public Transport Authority are grappling with how to standardise and retire superseded wayfinding graphics, safety notices and promotional displays without creating visual gaps that confuse commuters.

The issue matters now because Perth is not building incrementally — it is building fast. The Metronet program, which has already opened the Morley-Ellenbrook line and the Thornlie-Cockburn Link, has introduced dozens of new station environments over roughly three years. Each rollout leaves behind an earlier visual language: older PTA logo treatments, pre-2024 accessibility symbols, and duplicated route maps that contradict newer versions installed at adjacent panels on the same platform.

What Other Cities Are Doing

Singapore's Land Transport Authority adopted a centralised digital-signage management system across the MRT network in 2023, allowing real-time replacement of any display from a single operations centre at Bishan Depot. The city-state eliminated an estimated 4,200 duplicate static panels over 18 months. Amsterdam's GVB transit authority went further, embedding a mandatory 90-day review clause into all new infrastructure contracts, requiring vendors to remove predecessor imagery before final payment is released.

London's Transport for London has operated a rolling audit system under its Legibility London program since 2007, and it remains the benchmark most Australian cities reference. Melbourne's Public Transport Victoria has drawn on that model for its own station refresh across the Cranbourne and Pakenham corridor upgrades, though the pace of retirement of old materials has drawn criticism from accessibility advocates there.

Perth sits somewhere in the middle. The PTA's corporate communications guidelines, updated in 2025, include provisions for superseding outdated imagery at new and refurbished stations, but enforcement across legacy sites — including Fremantle Station and the older platforms at Perth Underground — is inconsistent. Staff at the City of Perth's place-making office, which oversees public-realm aesthetics along the William Street and Hay Street precincts, have flagged the issue internally as part of the 2026 City Centre Activation Strategy, though no dedicated budget line for duplicate-image auditing has been confirmed publicly.

The Local Pressure Points

Elizabeth Quay, now anchoring a $2.6 billion mixed-use precinct, is arguably Perth's most visible test case. Signage installed during the original 2016 opening sits alongside graphics from subsequent commercial fitouts and tourism campaigns, creating a layered visual environment that the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority has been tidying since the precinct expanded westward in 2024. Yagan Square on Wellington Street faces a similar situation, with City of Perth-managed wayfinding panels overlapping with Noongar cultural interpretation boards that were added in 2022 under a separate state government funding stream.

The practical cost of inaction is not trivial. Industry consultants working on similar projects in Brisbane have estimated that auditing and replacing duplicate static signage across a mid-sized transit network typically runs between $1,200 and $3,500 per panel location when labour, printing and installation are bundled — figures that scale quickly across a network the size of Transperth's 72-station rail system.

WA's current budget surplus — the state recorded a $3.8 billion surplus in the 2024-25 financial year — gives the Cook government more fiscal room than most of its counterparts to fund systematic auditing programs. The question is whether signage rationalisation makes it onto any minister's priority list when housing, AUKUS-related infrastructure and healthcare are consuming the bulk of discretionary capital.

For Perth to move closer to the Singapore or Amsterdam model, procurement contracts for upcoming Metronet stations — including the pending Midland line upgrades — would need to include explicit predecessor-imagery retirement obligations from day one. Planners working on the Stirling city centre redevelopment near the Stirling Station interchange have an opportunity to embed exactly that kind of clause before construction contracts are finalised later this year. Whether that opportunity is taken will say a lot about how seriously the city treats visual coherence as part of genuine infrastructure quality.