Submitted by David, who says:

Attached is a redesign of the Israel Railways map – which was a mess when you reviewed it in 2013 and has only gotten decidedly worse since the system has expanded (most recent here). There are some glaring issues with the official map, such as the mix of angles and the terrible spacing of the lines and stations, but also geographically it is starting to make less and less sense, and some stations are no where near their labels in the area south of Tel Aviv. I decided to tackle a redesign as my first ever map, and even though I only have InDesign to work with I think it did the job.

For my version, I decided to rely on the coast line as the main geographical marker and anchor to the other lines head inland, and felt that the two night lines would be a nice visual cue to the coast as well (with the added benefit of showing the transfer between the two lines).  Despite the curve the map didn’t seem to work as as a radial map, so instead the coast is 1/8 of a circle and all diagonal lines on the map match the angle in the center at HaHagana (22.5*), which allowed the main bunch of lines turning inland using a nice 90* angle. I also worked to declutter some of the map by making the only line crossings be south of Tel Aviv and having the main “through lines” from Tel Aviv to Haifa be adjacent. It seems that since you reviewed the map in 2013, it seems that they moved away from bilingual maps (they have Hebrew, English, Arabic, and Russian). Still, my feeling was that they did this more out of laziness, and that it should be possible to have 3 maps, with other translations replacing the English on my version. The system is rapidly expanding – I added on the new High Speed Line that was just delayed from opening this summer to 2019, and the map is mostly future proof for new tracks being built. One final note is that while the jog up north by Haifa is not necessary, any Israeli drawing a map of Israel starts by drawing the coast and the jog for the Bay of Haifa, so it is actually a pretty defining geographical feature which was simple enough to include. The seas on the far right are really for fun, although future lines will go right up to the Kinneret up north and close to the Dead Sea down south, so eventually they would be more helpful geographic markers than they are now. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Transit Maps says:

Wait, you did this in InDesign?! That makes this map even more note-worthy than it already is, because I find drawing in InDesign to be a right royal pain in the behind and will go out of my way to avoid it as much as possible (and I spend a lot of time in InDesign!).

As for the map itself – this is phenomenal work, David, and is far more worthy as a national rail system’s map than the official version, which has definitely degenerated since my last review. Almost everything in this works well, especially the frankly inspired use of the large arc to define the Mediterranean coastline and the yellow boxes to group and denote the major urban areas. Spatially, the whole thing just makes far more sense than the scaleless official diagram.

The area just to the south of Tel Aviv is a little chaotic with the red and lime green route lines criss-crossing on top of each other and hiding the night line out to the airport in the process. If these could be staggered a little bit from each other, crossing adjacent to each other instead of on top, that might help a bit.

There’s only two things I don’t really like – the traditional “railroad” ticking on the planned high-speed line (this type of ticking always makes me think of old steam trains, which is hardly what you’re after with an HSR line!), and the leader line pointing to Hod HaSharon-Sokolov station. It’s the only one on the map, and it just stands out like a sore thumb.

However, these are very minor quibbles – I really, really like this map and it is a billion times better than the official one. Great work, David!