Submitted by Durfsurn, who says:
Originally I was making a map similar to my previous style of Melbourne/ Australian transport maps, but as the increasing complexity of a multi-modal map made itself clear I decided to streamline the lines, trying to balance real life corridors with more sensible and understandable map design. First I was inspired from a recent trip to Japan (amazing PT systems with manic maps to go with!) and added Line Identifiers but soon realised they would be far too cramped to fit within my station denotations. Instead I had seen others use dots within stations so inspired by that I added hollow dots for trams and solid ones for trains. I also recently added peak hour train frequencies. One major issue was combining the scales of networks in a way that had to emphasise the inner suburbs where the tram lines reside, and the extent of the suburban train network. My solution for this was to indicate small distance gaps on further reaching train lines and of course the obligatory NOT TO SCALE note in the bottom right.
Transit Maps says:
This is certainly an interesting design experiment, and it does look very striking, although I feel it’s more useful as an overview of the (future) network than as a proper wayfinding tool. The absence of any train stations/tram stops apart from interchanges and termini sees to that. However, it does work quite well in the denser downtown grid where many major interchanges get named, and I do like the bold, simple, graphic style of the map.
A few of the adjacent rail lines have pretty low contrast – the blue and purple lines in particular just seem to bleed into each other. Similarly, the large number of cased tram lines running in parallel don’t read that well as individual route lines – it just seems very busy. An alternate, if safer, solution might be thinner lines for the tram routes, but with a thin white space between each of them.
At first glance, the bullets that contain train frequency information look almost exactly like the route designation bullets, which is bound to cause confusion. It’s useful information to have on an overview map like this, but it needs to be presented in a different shape or colour to instantly visually differentiate it. In a circle? White text against a dark background? Offset from the route line with “tph” for “trains per hour” appended? There are a lot of different solutions!
Our rating: A good graphic style: chunky and bright! Needs a little work to make the information contained within more readily digestible, but a good start on a different approach.