Submitted by Jeromiah, who says:

After the post about the new Frontrunner map (August 2016, 2.5 stars), inspiration came to make one of my own.

My map has what was mentioned: TRAX connections, bus connections, and Greyhound (but not Amtrak, If you look at Salt Lake Central on my map you’ll see why) I took out the the lines and changed the north and south pointers. I made the purple line dashed between Ogden and Pleasant View to show the limited serviceThe labels for TRAX and Greyhound are based off of what the London Underground uses on their maps for transfers. I also thought It would be important to take out the legend completely, so I designed the map so it wouldn’t need it. Fonts used are Whitney Medium and Whitney Book.

I’m hoping to send this to UTA soon, but I thought I’d post it here first.

What are your thoughts? Do the bus route numbers make the map cluttered? What improvements do I need to make?

Transit Maps says:

Nice work, Jeromiah! I think your solution is well thought out and nicely executed overall. Your station name labels are perhaps a little too close to their respective dots for my liking, and I have a feeling that you’ve given yourself too much extra vertical space compared to the original map, which is a little cheaty. However, the original photo shows the map on a very curved surface, so it’s a little hard to tell for sure. I think your north and south indicators are better than the original: the grey visually separates them from the route line, and the arrows work well to define them as compass directions. 

I’m not so sure about the dashed line indicating the limited service to Pleasant View – without a legend, it could be misinterpreted as meaning “under construction”. Destination signs and announcements should let riders know where the last stop is: a map like this is for locating where you are and counting the number of stops until you get off, not explaining the minutiae of the operating schedule.

You’re on the right track with the connecting services information: located below the route line to separate it from the station name, and ordered logically. The bus numbers are perhaps a little small, and still run into each other a little bit – so they can still look like a long string of random numbers rather than distinct bus numbers.

Underneath your map is one that I independently developed almost immediately after my original post and shared on Twitter. You can see that it has a lot of similarities to yours, but I’ve explicitly placed each bus number inside a box, which is then arranged in a grid to help visually separate all those numbers from each other. Also, all my type is horizontal, because it takes up less vertical space (more room for the bus numbers!) and it reads more easily. I really should add the UTA contact information as Jeromiah has done, though – a useful touch, though perhaps the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram icons are less useful without their associated handles.