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.