Brought to my attention by Garrett Smith when he submitted the abomination that is the new official UTA map, here’s a completely different take on Salt Lake City’s rail system from Flickr user H4vok_13. This map is by no means perfect, but it’s an absolute paragon of simplicity and clean design compared to the real thing.

What we like: Streamlined, simplified route lines that expand the city centre and compress the outlying areas work wonders for the clarity of this map. Removing the street addresses from the station names helps a lot, as does the shortening of some of the longer station names.

What we don’t like: I’m not entirely convinced by the use of dashed lines for the FrontRunner routes – dashed lines on a transit map almost always signify a route under construction.

Nor am I a huge fan of the county boundary labels on the FrontRunner lines – a little big and overpowering, and not hugely important for using the system. From what I understand, county boundaries don’t correspond to fare zones on FrontRunner, so why is that information linked so heavily to those routes?

The proposed Sugarhouse Streetcar is perhaps given a little too much emphasis as well: if built, the route will only be about two miles long.

There’s also one very unfortunate error on the map – the service numbers for the Blue and Red lines have been transposed: Blue should be 701 and Red should be 703.

Our rating: Not perfect, but still streets ahead of the official map. Three-and-a-half stars.

Source: H4vok_13/Flickr – link no longer active