Submitted by Mike, who says:

The construction of the new terminal at Salt Lake City International Airport necessitated constructing a new light rail station, which opened today. One interesting new thing for UTA at the station is a line map. While these have existed on board UTA’s TRAX light rail and FrontRunner commuter rail trains for a while, this is the first time they have used this kind of map at a station. I do feel that this kind of map is useful in this context. However, I feel the map is lacking somewhat. First off, it might not be obvious to riders new to the system that the icons represent transfer points to other UTA rail services, so a legend might be helpful. Another big complaint is that UTA continues to leave off any information about bus services, which would be helpful in encouraging riders to use connecting buses. On the other hand, the one really helpful thing that this line map does include is mentioning that the Green Line does go downtown, which is probably the most sought after piece of information for people arriving at the airport and looking to ride the train downtown.

Transit Maps says:

Thanks for the photo, Mike! It’s good to see that UTA is moving in the right direction when it comes to passenger information – particularly at the airport, which may be people’s first introduction to the city’s light rail system.

This strip map does the job, but still somehow feels a bit loose and incomplete compared to the best examples from around the world – Berlin’s being a prime example. Part of it is the typeface, which I believe is Hoefler&Co.’s Whitney. While it’s a fine typeface that is designed to be used for wayfinding purposes, I find its use here a bit flat and underwhelming. At first glance, it comes across looking more like Microsoft’s Calibri, which is almost never the desired result. Some quick fixes: move all the labels to the left a bit (to match the gap to the icons on the left of the route line), track all the letters out a bit for readability and increase the font size as much as possible.

I think the icons to the left of the line are generally fine and easily understood. It’s explained at the top of the map that this light rail line is the “Green Line”, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to assume that the “Blue Line” and “Red Line” – which also share a similar icon – are also light rail. The “S-Line” and “FrontRunner” are a bit more problematic as they’re not explained quite as conveniently. Adding “Commuter Rail” underneath the FrontRunner label solves that problem – maybe it needs to also be “S-Line Streetcar”? I’d try to avoid adding a legend to a simple strip map like this as it just increases the amount of information that needs to be parsed by a reader.

Our final word: Has all the elements of a fine strip map, but somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It’s still perfectly usable, but not quite as good as it could be.