Submitted by Chris Bastian, who says:

In anticipation of this month’s service extension to Northgate [Opening day is October 2! – Cam], Sound Transit is rolling out new maps on the Link rail system. Now tagged as the “1 Line” (Green) in anticipation of the future East Link extension.

Transit Maps says:

I think this our first look at Sound Transit’s new design style in the out in the wild, and it’s a pretty decent effort overall. Style-wise, this is only a very slight evolution from the previous “red line” platform maps, but overall the changes are for the better.

Following best practices, the map now highlights stations in the direction of travel (here, southbound from Mount Baker station), making it very clear where a rider can go from the platform they’re standing on. Station labels are all set slightly bolder than on previous maps, which allows the new “Downtown Seattle” and “UW Campus” labels to be easily differentiated. I’m not crazy about the execution of these new labels, but they get the job done, I guess.

It’s interesting to note that the icon for the highlighted “you are here” station gets enlarged a bit, which pushes the station’s name to the right a bit, no longer aligning vertically with all the other labels. This draws your eye in because it looks subtly different, so it’s actually a very effective little bit of design – look here first!

On the subject of the icons: Seattle is stuck with them for the foreseeable future, but at least they’re looking as good as possible. They used to be constrained inside circles, but they actually look much better and more visually distinct from each other floating free like they are on this map.

The map’s legend is clear and concise, but I have a couple of minor quibbles. I like to group like things together when I make a legend, so it seems a bit jarring to have alternative transportation connections like monorail, Sounder and streetcar broken up by parking (which I’d put last on this list). “Sounder” also isn’t a very meaningful name for those unfamiliar with Seattle – “Sounder commuter rail” would be more descriptive and useful – although that longer label wouldn’t fit into the legend box as neatly!

Of course, as nice as this map is, the real test of this design style will be when East Link opens in 2023 and there’s a new line that doesn’t run neatly north-south. I look forward to seeing how that particular challenge will be tackled!

Our final word: Very solid work, though perhaps an interim solution that will need reworking once Seattle has more than one light rail line.

Source: Photo from Chris, straightened and cleaned up by Transit Maps.