Submitted by long-time correspondent, Kara, who says:

Here’s a project I’ve been working on for a while now—quite possibly one of the most difficult maps I’ve ever made. You and I hold similar opinions of Chicago’s RTA system map, namely, that it’s decent, but it could be better. So I’ve been working on optimizing a unified map of Chicago’s urban rail, showing the CTA and the inner regions of the Metra. My goal was to prioritize the CTA routes while still making the Metra routes usable. I think my favorite feature is the black arrows in the loop—I love how those turned out—and I think my least favorite feature is how crowded the labels get around Jefferson Park. I also still wish I could find a way to bring the western parts of the Green and Blue lines closer together. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, but I’d love to know what you have to think about it!

Transit Maps says:

This looks pretty good, Kara, and is a strong indicator of growing confidence in your map-making skills. Keep it up! The map utilises the same technique as the Boston MBTA rapid transit map in that it shows commuter rail within the urban core, but uses destination arrows to point towards far-off terminus stations. This allows for a more even scale throughout the map, which works quite nicely here. 

I do think that the northern part of the map seems a little more crowded and tightly spaced than the southern half: maybe a bit of judicious respacing of stations could even things out a bit. I’m especially looking at how tight the stations along the northern Red and Purple lines are compared to the Red and Green lines to the south of the city. As Kara mentions, the triangle of lines around Jefferson Park also creates some spacing problems, but I think some minor tweaks can fix a lot of that – nudge the Brown Line up a bit higher, flip some labels to the other side of their route line, and so on. The too-far-apart western Blue and Green lines are an unfortunate byproduct of the expanded Loop area: the official map’s Loop inset mitigates this problem.

Some other minor thoughts: I think that there could be a small space between the northbound and southbound lines at Union station, just to emphasise that no services are through-running. I also think that the treatment of all the LaSalle stations overcomplicates things: it would better reflect reality if it went Loop LaSalle, Blue Line LaSalle and then the Metra LaSalle Street station. Its passenger entrance lies to the south of Congress Parkway, which the Blue Line station sits beneath. Blue Line LaSalle should also sit slightly to the right of the other stations, not the left. I also wonder whether the double-headed directional arrow on the Green Line through the Loop is truly necessary, as bi-directional travel along a route line is always assumed unless shown otherwise on a transit map. Finally, Kara’s forgotten to italicise three Metra station names – Rosemont, Schiller Park and Franklin Park–Belmont Ave.

Now onto the big issue, and one that’s sure to raise the ire of true-born Chicagoans: the non-adherence of Kara’s stations to the city’s well known and incredibly regular street grid. To take but one example: there are four Pulaski stations on the CTA: on the Green, Blue, Pink and Orange lines. These are all located on the same arrow-straight, north-south running thoroughfare, the eponymous Pulaski Road. Hence, they should all line up in one neat column, but on Kara’s map, they’re not aligned at all. It’s the same for all the Kedzies, Ciceros, etc. Obviously, this is a stylistic decision that Kara has made, and it ultimately doesn’t affect navigation as the lines don’t interact with each other, but it also doesn’t fit with how Chicagoans perceive their city – and that can be a very important element for a map to consider.

Our rating: Definitely illustrates Kara’s growing confidence in map-making, but could use some tweaks and rethinking to really make it shine. Three stars.