Via: alexjago51:

Here’s another unofficial public transport map I’ve just finished.
This one is a bit more forward looking. The year is traditional, being from a previous State Government’s glossy-brochure plan – in which everything on this map would be built by 2031.

On the map is everything I could feasibly fit (rail, busway), plus a couple of things I probably shouldn’t have (ferries and every single light rail stop).

Rail and busway are a fairly established pattern now; although there are certainly some trickier bits around Park Road. Meanwhile at Roma St, with the 4×4 line crossover, I decided it was best to just put a big circle on and call it a day.

For the non-Brisbane people, I should note that the lines on this map are drawn from the perspective of 2031. In particular: we are yet to dig the tunnel from Yeerongpilly in the south, to near Bowen Hills in the north via George St.

The close observer will note that when a line passes over another in the diagram it also does so in real life. Hence, south of Park Road, the Cleveland and Kuraby lines (on the surface) pass over the busway, which in turn passes over the three lines in the yet-to-be-built tunnel. Similarly, the Ferny Grove line takes a flyover to get out of Bowen Hills.

A perhaps controversial choice is to show the tunnelled lines as passing under the river – if I didn’t show the ferries I probably wouldn’t have done this.

A couple of the line pairings (Ferny Grove to Cleveland and Doomben to Kuraby in particular) were chosen to avoid gaps or step-downs in the line ‘bundles’ in the diagram. However, almost all line pairings are entirely plausible. (The main exception is Gympie North to Coolangatta, that’s just ridiculously long and hence is not described as a pairing. Operationally, trains would start and  terminate on the far side of the city, and run interleaved through the centre). The groups of pairings are pretty much guaranteed to happen.

The ferries were a lucky consequence of transit map’s traditional inner-city distortion. It’s a pity I couldn’t get Norman Park closer to the train station of the same name (as at Milton) but it’s actually quite appropriate: Milton is an inner-city precinct with the train and ferry at opposite edges, about 600m apart; Norman Park station is 1200m away from the ferry and has only suburbia in between.

Fitting in the entire Gold Coast Light Rail was a bit of a challenge. I ended up using a partial inset, joining at the southern end. Hopefully it’s all clear enough.

Meanwhile, the Sunshine Coast is relegated to two insets, if it ever grows in relative importance this may no longer be acceptable. By then, trying to do this specific type of map may just be silly – better to produce three regional maps (which could also show all frequent buses), plus a heavy-rail-only overview.

I’ve chosen to show fare zones in the usual SEQ-system map fashion: a number adjacent to every station name. With 23 concentric zones, this is the more appropriate choice in my view.

The disability icons are of my own creation. I’ve chosen to invert the normal approach and show accessible as default, hence the little red crosses. The ‘accessible with assistance’ icons are the same purple as the official map’s icons – but the official map is a wheelchair being pushed, which is very fine detail and hard to see. My icons are distinguishable even when the station names aren’t!

The ‘future station’ x-marks-the-spot icons and hollow line theming I learnt from fellow mapper Brent Palmer – a great guy, even if he does periodically remove all trace of his work from the net. 

This was made in Inkscape, which is pretty good these days. I only wish it had better ‘draw a tangent circle’ and ‘auto-fillet’ capability like any worthwhile CAD program. Suffice to say I’m really experienced at manual Bezier approximations of circle-arcs.

Transit Maps says:

An interesting piece here by Alex. In the outer parts, the map is great: nice and clear, intelligent usage of insets to show the far-flung reaches of the system (I particularly like the partial inset for the Gold Coast light rail), and lovely “future lines” indication.

However, the middle part of the map is unfortunately a bit of a mess. Some of the problem is the network’s topology, but I feel like there has to be a clearer way to draw this map without having so many of the route lines obscured by labels and other type. Labelling is such a integral part of a transit map, but I feel it can be forgotten sometimes in the excitement of placing lines. The detail image above illustrates what i’m talking about, with the label for Boggo Road sitting right across the main trunk line, while even a hyphenated Woolloongabba still can’t sit clear of its lines. I also can’t fathom why Buranda’s label has to cut into its line at all.

Basically, I feel that the centre of the map needs to be expanded even more, especially the complicated section around South Brisbane, in order to better accommodate the labelling of the map. This could also help out with the representation of the river ferries – while I like their inclusion, they feel a little cramped and tacked-on to me at the moment.

Overall, I think Alex is headed in the right direction here. He’s taken the official map’s style and improved upon it nicely, especially in the outer areas. A little more thought and care in how the central part can be simplified and clarified will take this from “good” to “excellent”.