Book Review: “Transit Maps of the World”, 2015 Revised Edition by Mark Ovenden

November 2, 2015
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First published in the United Kingdom as Metro Maps of the World in 2003, this book has long been an indispensable reference book for graphic designers, train aficionados, cartographers, and geeks alike. However, its last major revision was in 2007 – and much has changed in the world of transit map design since then. More transit systems, new maps, revised maps, digital and web-based maps, the rise of the amateur map designer and more. Like its predecessors, this book remains very firmly aimed at the illustration and discussion of printed transit maps – digital mapping is only mentioned in passing – but is a more than worthwhile update. 

If you’ve never owned a previous edition, then you’re in for a visual tour de force of maps, maps and more maps. If you do own an older copy of the book (as I do: see the picture above showing the cover of the new edition and the frontispiece of the 2007 version), then this new edition is still highly recommended. Almost every map depicted in the book is new: maps that have been updated since 2007, maps of new systems that didn’t exist back then, even new examples of historical maps for major networks.

The book has also been expanded, with more maps qualifying for “Zone 1″ treatment: an in-depth, multi-page discussion of the history of transit mapping in that particular city. Barcelona, Beijing, Boston, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo and Washington, DC join Berlin, Chicago, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris and Tokyo as the heavyweights of the transit map world, and the discussion is both lively and informative. There’s quite a few maps in this section that I’ve never seen before, and that’s becoming an increasingly rare thing!

Zones 2 and 3 show hundreds of further maps in decreasing detail – some cities only get a quarter-page each, which can strain the eyeballs a bit a times – while Zone 4 provides a comprehensive listing of just about every urban railway network extant in the world at present: almost 1,000 entries all told. A few further maps are dotted throughout this section. This last section does reveal a bit of a lie to the cover’s claim of being “the world’s first collection of every urban train map on Earth” – every system is mentioned, but we certainly don’t see every map. Still, as that would require an impossibly large book, I’ll let it slide.

One addition to this version of the book that I’m overjoyed to see is the inclusion of many unofficial maps produced by talented amateur designers. The modern internet allows such works to be seen, admired and criticized by a global audience through design websites and blogs such as Transit Maps. Indeed, many of the designers featured in the book will already be familiar to readers – Maxwell Roberts, Jug Cerovic, Steve Boland, and even yours truly. Some of these maps are arguably superior to the real thing, while some have actually become official – the MBTA map based off Michael Kvrivishvili’s winning contest entry gets a full page with the dry note, “The geographical distortion of the Green lines is notable.”

Is the book awesome? Yes, it is. Is it perfect? Not quite. 

Apart from the small size of some maps mentioned above, the book could have perhaps benefited from another round of editing. There’s a few typographical and grammatical errors sprinkled throughout (Jug Cerovic’s name gets spelled three different ways, for example), and some image captions aren’t numbered correctly. The reproduction quality of some of the historical maps is a little uneven – a page showing four distinctly different versions of H.C. Beck’s famous Underground Map stands out the most in this regard – but this is perhaps understandable given the variety of sources that the maps come from. 

Overall, the print quality is very high and consistent throughout. The book is printed on quality paper, and – at 176pp plus cover – has a good heft to it. Hopefully, the perfect binding used will stand up to constant use, as I feel I’ll be coming back to this book again and again. 

Our rating: Basically, if you read this blog – even casually – then this book is essential. Some very minor errors do not detract at all from the awesomeness of having all these fantastic maps from all over the world in one superb reference volume. Complements the previous editions rather than repeating them. Four-and-a-half stars.

Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden is available now and can be purchased from Amazon here (affiliate link – buy the book from this link and support the “Transit Maps” blog!).

Official Map – Melbourne and Regional Victoria Night Network Map, Australia, 2015

October 30, 2015
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Sent my way by Nick Stylianou, here’s a map out of Melbourne, Victoria designed to support a major revamp of weekend night time transit in and around that city. For me, this piece continues a worrying recent trend of night service maps that have poor contrast and legibility, simply for the sake of pushing a dark “night” colour theme. This one even has freakin’ stars in the background, which is starting to verge on the ridiculous. 

You know what? The title of the map says “Night Network” with a big crescent moon next to it: I think we can work things out from here.

Another thing that is lacking is enough detail to actually work out travel plans based on this map alone. An equivalent daytime map would have route numbers for trams and buses and properly-defined symbols for stations and stops, rather than the “general area” labels dotted around this map (including one for the Bellarine Peninsula, which isn’t even reachable via this network). At the very least, Flinders Street station – the night system’s main hub – should be properly and definitively located on the map instead of being vaguely indicated by a weird tangle of routes that may or may not indicate its position.

The absolute worst thing about this map, however, is its lack of accessibility for colour-blind users. A quick simulation in Photoshop (the second image above) reveals that the orange bus and green tram colours end up an almost identical shade of muddy yellow. With no route numbers or other identification appearing on the map or in a legend, they are nigh-on impossible to tell apart. The train and long-distance coach route lines fare a little better, but their dull blue shades still offer very low contrast with the dark background.

Our rating: Let’s be honest – people who are catching night services home from the city at 2am on the weekend are going to need more help navigating an unfamiliar system than regular daytime commuters. This map by itself doesn’t really offer that help – although I will note that it is supplemented by more detailed bus route and CBD stop location maps which seem to be a little more helpful. This is tolerable as a general introductory map to the new network,  but it’s really not suited in any way to actual navigation. One star.

Source: Public Transport Victoria website

Unofficial Map: New York Subway by Tommi Moilanen

October 23, 2015
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Redesigning the New York Subway Map sometimes feels like a bit of a “no win” for designers, mainly because it’ll always, always be compared to the seminal Massimo Vignelli diagram. That said, I’m really liking this attempt by Tommi Moilanen, which embraces not only the Vignelli map and the design language of the subway system itself, but adds its own modern minimalist touches as well.

The first thing to note is that the map depicts weekday peak hour services using a very simple device: thick route lines equal express services, thin route lines equal local. Skip-stop stations are tinted back to a lighter shade. All this and more is explained in a wonderfully minimalist written word legend at the top right of the map. Keeping it simple really works here: the legend sets out the rules of the map very efficiently.

I also love the treatment of major interchange stations, as shown at Atlantic Avenue in the detail image above. The name of the station spans across the lines it serves, rather than sitting next to it, immediately indicating that this station is important. The typography and the black bar above the station name are deliberately reminiscent of the original Vignelli-designed subway signage, which was black type on a white background, the reverse of the current signage. The little curved joining line for transfers between lines is quite delightful, immediately and almost joyfully communicating that this part of the trip isn’t made by train.

The boroughs are only indicated by large typographical labels and thin white dividing lines between them, reminding me of Vignelli’s thought that he should have left the water off his map as it was too distracting. Tommi instead uses little icons for landmarks throughout the city and the ubiquitous Central Park as guides for readers of the map. Central Park is perhaps the weakest part of the map for me: I find its colour way too dark and rich, and at odds with the simplicity of the rest of the background. As it is, it dominates the map almost completely, despite its small size.

Tommi’s used a 30/60° grid, which immediately sets it apart from most other diagrammatic maps of New York, Vignelli’s included. He’s also included PATH within Manhattan, but doesn’t show any stations on the New Jersey side, despite there being plenty of space to do so. Perhaps even a small label indicating which PATH stations could be reached off the edge of the map would be useful.

Our rating: Pays excellent homage to New York’s transit design history, but manages to look fresh and new. Already one of my favourite alternative New York Subway maps. Head on over to Tommi’s page about the project to read more about its development. Four stars!

Prints available from Tommi’s Society6 store here!

Source: Tommi Moilanen/Medium

Submission – Official Map: Metrorail Western Cape, South Africa, 2015

October 22, 2015
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Submitted by Edward Russell, who says:

This is the Cape Town Metrorail map as posted in the Cape Town railway station. It’s a pretty straight forward map with the lines radiating out to the east of the CBD, though it has some complexity with lines of the same colour operating multiple courses to the same terminal: for example, the green and blue lines. Thoughts?

Transit Maps says:

Despite the “Metrorail” moniker, this system is really commuter rail, and not a rapid transit system. The Metrorail agency operates services like this throughout South Africa, so this map follows a similar design language to the other regions. I’ve previously covered the map for the Gauteng Metrorail system (September 2013, 1.5 stars).

Because of the similar design philosophy, this map has a lot of the same flaws as the Gauteng map: type angled in too many directions, discordant colours, etc. The use of a cyan-edged station symbol to indicate rail interchanges is particularly boneheaded when one of the Central Line is also indicated in cyan: almost every station on that line inadvertently looks like a major interchange, even when no other lines are present.

As Edward points out, the green Northern Line and cyan Central Line do operate along multiple branches, which can be a little hard to decipher on the map. From what I can work out, the Northern Line can operate to Bellville along either of the two green lines from Cape Town, then split to one of three final destinations. The lack of a joining curve at the T-junction between Eerste River and Lynedoch makes it hard to work out how that intersection operates… some trains go from Cape Town down to Strand, while others turn to go through Stellenbosch to Wellington. All I can hope is that regular commuters know these service patterns, because the map isn’t helping a lot.

The inclusion of starred places of interest is welcome, but the implementation at Cape Town station is very odd. Whereas most of the star icons are just placed near a station to indicate that the point of interest is nearby, the stars near Cape Town station – for the Castle of Good Hope and Greenpoint Stadium – have been placed in seemingly geographical locations. The stadium is in a pretty decent location, although it’s difficult to tell exactly how far away it is on a diagrammatic map like this. However, the castle is in a completely incorrect location, shown halfway between the station and the stadium. It actually nestles almost alongside the station along its southern edge, as this Google Maps location shows.

Our rating: Very similar to the Gauteng Metrorail map, sharing a lot of its faults. Overall, ever so slightly better executed but still not great. Two stars.

Infographic: WNYC’s “Live Subway Agony Index”

October 21, 2015
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Watching WNYC’s “Live Subway Agony Index” as the downtown 6X goes into meltdown is kind of awesome. So many UGGGHHHs. 

If you’ve never seen this before, it’s a service that pulls real-time MTA data for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 6x and converts it into emoji that encapsulates the current feelings of passengers at that station. Simple but effective!

Source: WNYC Data News Team

Transit Maps is Four!

October 20, 2015
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Another awesome year completed! Thanks to everyone for all your discussion, submissions, reblogs, faves and retweets – I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

– Cameron

Historical Maps: Two Futures for the Tyne & Wear Metro, England

October 16, 2015
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Here’s a pair of interesting future planning maps for the Tyne & Wear Metro, a raid transit/light rail system in the northeast of England. The first, from September 2001, shows a plan to extend the network with street-running feeder trams, as shown by the light blue route lines. Note that the map indicates the extension to Sunderland as open, even though this wasn’t actually completed until 2002. According to the plan, this was a future vision for the network in 2016.

Fast forward to 2014 and the second map. Precisely two new stations – fill-ins at Northumberland Park and Simonside – have been constructed, and no extensions of any kind have been completed, although the southeast ends of the Yellow and Green lines have swapped positions. However, the map now shows new potential Metro corridors, this time envisioned to be complete by 2030. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of this plan, or if history will repeat itself. Metro certainly seems more concerned with the modernisation and refurbishment of its aging fleet and facilities than expansion at the moment.

As a side note, it’s fun to see the changes to the map in this time span. The Futura Condensed labels from 2001 look positively anaemic compared to the bold Calvert typeface from the 2014 map, while the angle of the main spine of the network from South Gosforth to Central Station goes from vertical to leaning left (the original map from the 1980s leaned to the right, so there’s been a very definite evolution to that part of the map).

Historical Map: Numbered Routes of Street Cars, Washington, DC, 1936

October 14, 2015
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A very handsome map showing streetcar routes in the central part of Washington, DC in 1936. Beautifully drawn, especially the loops in the south-east corner of the map. The directional arrows are skillfully and thoughtfully integrated into the route lines. White House for scale!

Source: Ghosts of DC

Submission – Official Map: Commuter Rail Services of Helsinki, Finland

October 14, 2015
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Submitted by beesweet624, who says:

I visited Helsinki for a long weekend and it was really enjoyable. The public transportation was very reliable, on time, and went everywhere I needed to go. They have a simple metro system, a well-used tram system in the central part of the city, and numerous buses. However, I had a real problem with its commuter train map.

Helsinki’s commuter train map is really confusing. Essentially the stops are arranged in three lines all connecting at the two central hubs (Pasila and Helsinki) which are at the bottom of the map. However, the layout draws your eyes to the central loop. The main complaint I have, though, is the use of seemingly random letters to denote different trains types, while the only difference is at which stations they stop.

It doesn’t help that each station has two names, one in Finnish and one in Swedish (the two official languages of Finland), making it even messier, especially for foreigners who don’t speak either language. 

Can anyone think of a better way to lay out this map?

Transit Maps says:

The big advantage of this layout is that it is very compact. In reality, the line out to Karjaa heads west, while Lahti is far to the north of Helsinki. Laying the routes out spatially would require a much larger area than this schematic view. That said, I think I prefer this older version from 2012 which colour-coded the lines rather than using colours to indicate fare zones. One could argue that the shaded zones behind the lines already do this job, but there seems to be a definite trend in HSL/HRT visual communications to use colour for very specific things – orange for rapid transit (Metro and express bus), purple for commuter rail within Helsinki, green for trains that go further afield, etc. – as can be seen on this map.

As for the seemingly random letters, all I can say is that they probably make perfect sense to the commuters who use them and know the advantage of a “Z” over an “N” for getting to Kerava quickly during the afternoon commute. It’s really no different to (for example) the New York Subway using a seemingly random selection of letters and numbers to denote different services and stopping patterns. Commuter rail is generally used by residents of a distant suburb who only travel from home to work and back again. They’re very familiar with the service because they use it every day and they have learned the best train to use for their trips. An indication that the “L” and the “T” are night-time services only would be welcome, but  – again – regular commuters probably already know that.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with the bi-lingual labelling: it’s done relatively neatly, and works just fine in the context of the map. Those are the names of the stations and are what would appear on station signage. Adding an English translation of those names wouldn’t help at all. The map adds English to the legend and customer service information at the bottom of the map, where it’s actually useful to do so.

As far as the way the map looks, I really don’t like the way the lines fan out above Pasila: they all get much closer together visually and it looks pretty ugly. The P/I loop line pairing is pretty visually dominant, and I wonder if there could have been a way to combine them into a single route line with an indication that “P” runs clockwise and “I” counter-clockwise. I do suspect that they’re actually pretty proud of their new airport loop line and want to show it off, however. 

The line that joins Riihimaki and Lahti still looks like a bit of an afterthought.

Our rating: A compact, space-efficient diagram that suits its target audience (regular commuters) well, but could be a little trickier for visitors to Helsinki to parse. I miss the colours of the older map. Still three stars, but a slightly lower three stars than before.

Source: HSL/HRT website (scroll down to the bottom)

Submission – Official Map: Transportes Sul Do Tejo Bus Routes, Portugal, 2015

October 12, 2015
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Submitted by Miles Taylor, who says:

Here’s the system “diagram” of the TST bus system south of Lisbon in Portugal. It’s impossible to tell what any of the routes are since they’re all just blue lines zigzagging across the map. Not to mention the place names are in comic sans. Ugh.

Transit Maps says:

The only – and I do mean only – saving grace for this map is that it appears on the same web page as an embedded and (somewhat) searchable Google Map of the transportation area, so no one ever actually has to use this.

Judged solely on its own merits, there’s absolutely no doubt that this map is absolutely useless at anything more than indicating the size of the service area with an approximation of routes slapped on top. Which routes go where is impossible to decipher, nor can any distinction be made between suburban, urban or express routes. The map as a whole is rendered pretty poorly, and the use use of Comic Sans just adds further insult to the viewers of this terrible piece of cartography.

Our rating: Straight to the Hall of Shame! Embarrassingly bad: zero stars!

Source: Official Transportes Sul do Tejo website