All posts filed under: Official Maps

Official Map: Amtrak Network Map by James Niehues for Amtrak’s “The National” Magazine

February 5, 2020
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Yes, that James Niehues. As you’d expect from the acclaimed master of ski resort maps, the mountains in this map are gorgeously rendered, and Amtrak’s routes are drawn as straight red lines — almost as if they were ski lifts across the country. I particularly like it when a route line “disappears” behind a particularly tall mountain — it’s something that really sells the implied dimensionality of the map. It is perhaps unfortunate that some […]

Official Map: Ouigo TGV “Ouigoland” Map, France, 2020

January 30, 2020
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This confection of a map appears on SNCF’s website for their low-cost, no-frills, everything-costs-extra TGV service, Ouigo (a name that makes a pun in both English and French — “we go” in the former and “yes, go” in the latter). The map is certainly bright and cheerful, and very definitely on brand for the service. It uses the bright magenta and sky blue colours from the train livery liberally and presents all of France as […]

Official Map: VTA San Jose Light Rail Map, 2020

January 20, 2020
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Along with a major service revision in December 2019 that – amongst other things –closed the Almaden Shuttle light rail line, San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) also took the opportunity to introduce a new light rail map, shown here. While it’s nothing outstanding, it’s clean, clear and easy to understand – which actually puts it ahead of quite a lot of other maps out there. I would like to see another use of the […]

New Official Map: Naples Rapid Transit Map, 2019

December 16, 2019
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Transit maps for Naples have been decidedly average and piecemeal in the past (see here and here for past reviews), so it’s lovely to see this new official map presenting a fully integrated view of rapid transit in and around the city. Designed by Andrea Spinosa of CityRailways — whose Atlas of Italian Rail Transit poster we reviewed back in 2014 — this is definitely a huge step in the right direction, being much better […]

New Official Map: Singapore MRT System Map, 2019

December 11, 2019
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A design hinted at by Jug Cerovic after last year’s Transit Mapping Symposium, and seen in a photograph earlier this year has finally been made official. Here’s the new Singapore MRT map, currently only installed at the new Thomson-East Coast Line stations (Woodlands North, Woodlands and Woodlands South) but planned to be rolled out to the entire network. Of note is that the process for this redesign began way back in 2015 with a lot […]

Advertisement: “Eldrivet Sedan 1902”, Västtrafik, Gothenburg, Sweden

October 16, 2019
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This is an advertisement produced by Gothenburg’s Västtrafik transit agency (see their press release here, in Swedish). The tag line translates to “Electrically powered since 1902”, with the image showing Gothenburg’s tram network in the form of an electrical circuit board. In their own words, the ad “reminds [us] that climate-smart electric vehicles are old news.” The map is a very close facsimile of the official tram/ferry map (August 2018, 3 stars), though with the […]

Official Map: Copenhagen Railways Map, 2019

October 4, 2019
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Having just reviewed Kristoffer Bæk and Pasha Omelekhin’s superb new rail map for Copenhagen (October 2019, 4.5 stars), let’s take a look at what the official map looks like with the addition of the new ring Metro line. It’s very obviously an evolution of the existing and distinctive DSB design style (last reviewed on Transit Maps back in 2014, 4 stars), and may even use the exact same base map underneath the route lines. Apart […]

Official Map: Addis Ababa Light Rail, Ethiopia, 2019

August 2, 2019
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A fairly bare bones effort, probably located at the Lem Hotel station as it gets called out with a “You Are Here” red dot and is also named on the map itself. Strangely, the map makes the somewhat odd decision to not show the blue Line 2 where it runs concurrently with the green Line 1, which makes it look like Line 1 has two separate unconnected parts. The “rotating arrows” transfer station markers at […]

Submission – Official Map: Bus Network of Bad Zurzach, Switzerland

May 29, 2019
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Submitted by Diego, who says: What do you think of this bus map from Bad Zurzach, Switzerland? In my opinion, Swiss transit maps are generally very readable and well designed, but this one just looks impractical. I find it to be very difficult to follow the routes of the lines (line 2 in particular, which also stops at Thermalbad three times). It also lacks a title and a legend. Still, I have to hand it […]

Submission – Official Map: Sydney Rail Network Map, 2019

May 1, 2019
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Submitted by a good number of people, who have all spotted this new map in the latest batch of Sydney Trains timetables and want to know what I might think. I’ve talked about a draft version of this map quite a bit on Twitter already, but I may as well compile my thoughts “officially” on the blog as well. Transit Maps says: The most obvious change to this revision of the map is the addition […]