Gabe says:

I’ve been frustrated with the Dallas rail map for a while, and decided to make a comprehensive diagram of Dallas-Fort Worth rail transit.

Transit Maps says:

Simply put, this is a beautiful diagrammatic map and is far more visually attractive than the official DART map (August 2012, 3 stars). There’s a very elegant, restrained feeling to this: from the subtle grey background and typography to some excellent, slightly unusual colour choices for the route lines that work really nicely together. The way the Green and Orange lines interact with the Red and Blue is exactly what I wanted to see in the official map, and this treatment looks so much cleaner.

One could make a case for the inclusion of a few geographical features or major highways to give a better sense of scale and location, but – purely for route finding – the map doesn’t really need them, in my opinion.

The map’s not totally perfect: I don’t see a need for the smaller type for station names on the TRE and A-Train services: the thinner route lines already differentiate them from the main DART services, and the smaller type is somewhat harder to read. By the time we get down to the Amtrak routes and the M-Line Trolley, the type is almost ridiculously small.

There’s also a typo in the legend that references the “Fort Worth Transportaion Authority”.

Our rating: Excellent work that takes a completely different approach to the official map and does it very well. Four stars.