Submitted by Louis Alvarez, who says:

I thought you might enjoy this recent artifact of one of the weirdest transit systems in the US: the four-station, two line people mover that serves the Las Colinas suburban development near Dallas. (For me, the most eccentric thing about the system is that despite what one might expect, the cars are manned by human drivers who come to pick you up on request.) The map is such a festival of poor design decisions that it’s almost beside the point to offer a critique, but I appreciate the fact that the management felt it would be worthwhile to print these up on glossy stock for potential visitors.

Transit Maps says:

I think you’re being a little hard on the cartography here, Louis: the map itself isn’t that bad, although the “aged paper” effect is somewhat heavy-handed and the use of drop shadows/glow effects is a little… enthusiastic. The APT routes themselves are clearly shown and labelled, as is the new-ish connection to the DART Orange Line, so the map is doing everything it needs to, really. 

The huge type obscuring the top part of the map and the odd cartouche enclosing the service information to the left are pretty awful, however. Also, those are the three best photos that could be found to depict the system? The bottom one looks like it dates from the 1980s and could have definitely benefitted from some colour correction work.

As Louis mentions, the system certainly is eccentric. Construction began in 1979, but the system – already seen by some as a white elephant – didn’t begin passenger service until 1989: a full decade later. Rising costs and lack of ridership closed the system completely in 1993. When it reopened in 1996, the service only served the local office building tenants and operated exclusively at lunch-time on weekdays: basically ferrying office workers to and from the restaurants near the Bell Tower station. As Louis says, a fault in the automatic driving system means that the cars are operated on-demand by human pilots, using what are meant to be backup manual controls on a permanent basis.

The opening of the connection to the DART Orange Line has seen a surge in ridership and a revival of the system’s fortunes – there’s even talk of expanding the APT by completing half-built guideways and adding fill-in stations. However, it’s still somewhat of an oddity: a small, over-engineered, half-completed relic of the late 1970s. Read more about the system here.

Our rating: The map itself does the job, although it’s overlaid with some pretty average graphic design work. Two stars.