Here’s a seriously curious photo, brought to my attention by reader Ryan Vansickle. It shows the new signage that has been put in place for the opening of the new Orange Line in Miami that we just featured. Apparently, this sign has been at the Douglas Road station since February, which is impressive pre-planning! However, the curious thing is that it doesn’t match the actual system map in any way whatsoever. True, this is a […]
Hot on the heels of Miami’s new Orange Line comes another one: this one belonging to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) system. This new line will eventually bring light rail to DFW airport, an essential transportation link in any large city, I feel. Have we been there? No. What we like: Relatively clean and simple compared to many American transit maps. The street grid is visible, but subsidiary to the main information. The downtown […]
Miami’s Metrorail just opened a new station at Miami International Airport, and decided to create an entirely new line (the Orange Line) to celebrate. Along with that, comes a new system map… which is, unfortunately, pretty terrible. Have we been there? No. What we like: The icon for overnight/long-term parking lots is actually pretty neat. What we don’t like: Poorly chosen background colours make the road grid hard to distinguish from the background. On that […]
Here’s the last entry in our short series on current transit maps in Prague, an integrated map. In my opinion, this map hits the sweet spot as far as information and presentation are concerned: it shows Metro and tram service better than the simple Metro Orientation map, but without the mind-numbing level of detail of the full service map. What we like: Retains the cute major landmark icons from the simpler map. The addition of […]
The second map in our short series of current transit maps in Prague. Whereas yesterday’s map was perhaps a little light in information, this one goes in completely the other direction and shows absolutely everything. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but this is definitely a map for detailed analysis of transit in Prague, rather than a quick reference guide. What we like: Comprehensive and detailed overview of rail transit in Prague. […]
This is the first of three posts regarding current transit maps in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. All are part of a unified set of maps (all of which use the interesting framing device of stylised buildings and trams, which I can’t decide if I think is playfully irreverent or just plain stupid) and provide interesting lessons on how much information is “just right” for a transit map to be really useful. This […]
After posting a photo of a vintage Cleveland RTA rapid transit map, I was curious as to what the current map looked like. Oh dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked. Have we been there? No. What we like: Sadly, the best thing about this map is the nicely retro-styled RTA agency logo. As for the rest… What we don’t like: Multiple angles for route lines instead of the standard 45-degrees looks messy and poorly thought […]
Here’s an interesting comparison of three different postcards of the Paris Métro system – one of which uses the official RATP artwork, and two more which definitely don’t. All three are of similar vintage (from at least 2007, as they all show the southern end of Line 14 at Olympiades station, which opened in that year). So they’re all basically showing the same thing, but take different approaches towards it. The first postcard uses the […]
Time to get away from North America and Europe and head further afield… about as far afield as you can go, actually! Here’s the system map for Auckland, New Zealand’s commuter rail system. This map, available from the MAXX website, seems to be based off the map they place above doors in the actual train carriages. This explains the horizontal format which skews the Southern Line out to the right of the map instead of […]
Apparently, these strip maps are fairly new. I’m all in favour of wayfinding elements that help people plan their journey, but there’s some parts of this that definitely make this feel like a first draft, rather than a finished piece. The overlapping terminus dots at Millbrae and Daly City look a little odd, and the giant silhouette of a BART train indicating direction of travel is almost totally unnecessary. The real problem, though, is the […]
