A rather odd map of Lithuania on the wall at the Klaipeda inter-city bus terminal. Ostensibly, I guess it depicts the coach network, or even just the nation’s main highways, but it does seem odd to have a city – Alytus – marked on the map when there’s no apparent way to get there. There’s also a couple of interesting choices made for international destinations: Tallinn and Riga (the other Baltic state capitals) are fair […]
Another stunning panoramic painted rail map from the Alps of Switzerland – its very similar to this one of the Zentralbahn (Nov 2012, 4 stars), which can actually be seen on this map entering from the lower left and terminating at Interlaken. The map shows the railways around the Jungfrau mountain, operated by different companies, but marketed together as “Jungfrau – the Top of Europe”. The Jungfraujoch station sits almost three vertical kilometres higher than Interlaken, […]
Submitted by Helgi Waag, who says: The entire bus and ferry system of the Faroe Islands. The online version is interactive. Hubs are in boxes and sea routes in blue. The Faroe Islands – a remote island nation under Denmark’s sovereignty located about halfway between Norway and Iceland – isn’t necessarily somewhere you associate with a bustling and modern transportation network, but here it is! This map shows the Bygdaleiðir, or “village buses”, which connect the […]
Following on my review of Madrid’s old-is-new Metro Map (June 2013, 3.5 stars), I’ve had quite a few requests for Madrid’s commuter rail map, operated by the state-owned RENFE rail company – so here it is! The map is a very solid effort, with unusual but effective station markers: small squares that “cut through” the route lines. The overall design is very angular, with no smoothing of the route lines or the zone boundaries that […]
As we reported late last month, the new Art Lebedev Studios Moscow Metro map is now in use around the system and on trains. One thing that the studio has been fantastic at right from the start is documenting the creative process, and they’re not finished yet. Over on their website is a wealth of behind the scenes information that shows how much work has been put into these beautiful maps. The map had to […]
Over the weekend, Madrid rolled out a new map for its comprehensive Metro and light rail system. After six long and controversial years, the previous map (March 2012, 2.5 stars) – with everything reduced to severe 90-degree angles and very little spatial relationship to the real world – has been consigned to the dustbin. In its place, a new map that looks strangely familiar. The design of the map has returned in-house and Metro’s designers […]
As you may already know, Prague is currently bracing itself for its heaviest flooding in recent memory. In preparation, the city has shut down large portions of its subterranean Metro system and has added temporary tram and bus services to compensate. This map, obviously produced in a hurry, outlines those service changes with a minimum of fuss. It also shows which tram lines have been cancelled until further notice. With events like this, informing the […]
Submitted by Reed Wagner, who says: This map appears to be part of a greater “wayfinding” campaign by the SF Bay Area MTC – it appears at major Caltrain, Muni and BART stations and presumably is elsewhere (I took this picture at Caltrain 4th & King. In comparison to the maps made by Calurbanist, it seems that the official MTC map is falling short in every regard other than information overload in a messy form. Transit Maps says: It’s pretty […]
BART’s “Official Unofficial” Map now on the Wikimedia Commons For those Inkscape users, David Sindel has let me know that he’s converted BART’s Adobe Illustrator file to .svg and has uploaded the file to Wikimedia. Although the PNG preview looks kind of weird, David assures me that the actual .svg is fine.
In a move I’d like to see more often from transit agencies, San Francisco’s BART has a fully-editable “non-official” version of their system map available for download from their site. It has a Creative Commons license, meaning that you simply have to attribute the original map to BART and it’s free to use, commercially or otherwise. Mainly designed for app and third-party website developers who need a BART map, it’s also great for those learning […]
