Submitted by tiburonvolador, who says:

An imaginary interpretation of of what a fully fledged underground rapid transit system and rail map would look like in Bogotá, Colombia.

I designed the map with heavy influence from the London Underground. The system has 9 lines named after events, places and famous people.

I designed it as an experiment in art in design for a city that needed a cathartic respite from a daily life of stress and lousy public transportation. It is not designed with any technical knowledge or with professional considerations. It is essentially a map drawn from the gut.

The black lines representing commuter and intercity rail are mostly laid out over existing but abandoned track from almost a century ago. Rehabilitating these lines for modern transport is borderline impossible. Thousands of cars cross over these lines daily and the space around them has become so tight that laying down standard-gauge double track would severely disrupt city life.

The city has been squabbling and delaying plans for rail transport since the 60’s. Almost all administrations in the last 30 years have promised to build a subway/underground system but have fallen short of their promises.

The current administration has proposed an overground system that is certain to disrupt the current cityscape in a way the majority of the population is deeply concerned about. It has been labeled a ‘immediate and pleasing’ initiative meant to calm the masses instead of committing to a long term underground solution that could mean a better quality of life in the future. An underground line would only open as early as 2026, but the current overground plans would be ready by 2021.

Transit Maps says:

A nice effort here, though I have to say I actually get more of a Madrid Metro vibe from this than a London Underground one… something to do with the shapes made by the lines interacting, perhaps?

I do think that the heavy black lines used for the commuter rail services are too dominant compared to the actual rapid transit lines, and there’s also a bit of a contrast problem when they run adjacent to the dark blue Bochica line – the lines are very similar tonally and seem to bleed into each other. Best practice these days leaves a thin gap between adjacent lines to prevent this from happening (although incidentally, London is actually one of the few maps that still butts colours right up to each other). As this map is pure fantasy, you could also look at swapping the colours on a couple of lines to achieve maximum contrast here – it looks like the only place where the commuter rail runs directly next to another line.

The icons for accessibility and bus stations don’t scale down that well, especially compared to the thick, simple, lines of the bike parking icon. Work at bringing more consistency to your icons so that they’re a cohesive and unified set.

Overall, this is a good solid effort, and is obviously a work of some importance to you. Keep refining this, trying to simplify as much as possible – less wiggles in the routes! – and this could be really nice.