Submitted by Stavros, who says:
Hello, I just discovered your website, and I want to submit a bus transit map I made last year for the city of Boulder, CO. I hope you consider reviewing it on the blog and letting me know what I can change.
In an effort to improve quality of service, the City of Boulder has taken over and invested heavily in a few select bus routes. As a result, the city has a network of lines with BRT-like frequency on top of a network that is more focused on commuters. There are also a few seasonal high frequency routes catered for university students, and for people trying to visit public amenities like parks with minimal parking.
Transit Maps says:
I quite like this, Stavros – there’s a strong European quality to it with the large rounded-edge station rectangles and generous spacing between parallel route lines. Everything’s nice and evenly spaced and the labelling is generally good, though there’s a few too many diagonal labels for my liking. The spacing between the labels and their corresponding station symbol could be made a bit more consistent throughout: sometimes the label seems to be floating by themselves (see the stops on Lehigh down the bottom left of the map).
Normally, if you’re using the visual device of a route line passing above a station marker to mean “does not stop here”, it’s a good idea to call that out specifically in the legend, as it can be a little ambiguous (as it is visually stronger than the lines that pass beneath the marker, it can seem more important on first reading).
Similarly, when a route line passes through one of the larger station rectangles, I think it’s important to always keep it in the same relative position when it emerges on the other side. It’s harder for a user to trace a route line through a station if it keeps moving around visually. This is especially important if the line changes direction at the station!
After that, it’s just some minor things: the city boundary is a bit rough here and there, especially the slight off-kilter angle it takes next to the legend box down the bottom left. The route number boxes at terminating stops should really all be slightly separated from each other to improve legibility. The legend itself could have more consistent spacing between its headers and subsequent content.
Side note: The frequent service routes are called Hop, Skip, Jump, Bound, and Dash? Now that’s taking a theme and running with it (pun totally intended).