Submitted by Eric, who says:

Hello! I am a graphic designer from Mexico City. For almost 4 years I worked in this project of integrating all transportation systems in a single map, which did not exist at that time (2016) as something official. Now as part of a new administration and under the guidance of Lance Wyman it was possible to carry it out.

My proposal is different from the official one in several concepts:

• Typography: I used ITC Officina Sans Serif, to create a much more obvious hierarchy between regular stations and terminals. Which allows to make smaller texts in complicated places, such as the Centro Histórico area, without losing readability.
• Layout: I take as a reference – and pay homage – the Massimo Vignelli system carried out for the 70’s NY MTA, which for New Yorkers was not functional due to the natural complexities of the system, but which, for Mexico City, works very well, since that line transfers are made in different geographical locations, never at the same station.
• Name of stations and grid: The stations of the entire system are added at the top in alphabetical order. This not only works for locals, but for people who visit the City and who are not familiar with it, whether they are from other states of the country or foreign people. The grid coordinate and the line to which the station belongs are also set.

The identity of the Metro made by Lance Wyman almost 50 years ago, works very well within the stations and I do not question that, but I think that on the map, the identity –specifically the typography – should be sacrificed in order to achieve the basic function of the map, a good read to help you navigate.

Transit Maps says:

This is lovely work from Eric, and almost seems to be a point-by-point correction of the faults I perceived in my review of the official Mexico City unified transit map (April 2019, 2.5 stars). The typography alone is a vast improvement, with the legible and clean Officina Sans replacing the distinctive but hard-to-read Tipo Metro typeface. All the labels are set horizontally, and Eric’s even managed to label many (all?) stops on the Metrobús routes – certainly more than the official map does.

More than any other map I’ve seen, Eric has managed to expand and untangle the dense central part of the map, and it looks fantastic – clean and simple, adhering to a solid grid. His clever use of the terminating line numbers as the actual interchange throughout the map is inspired, and he always gets the number to line up properly with the route it represents. Superbly done!

I do think that the Metrobús route lines could be just a little thicker, and I’m not too keen on the angled terminal bars at the southern ends of Metrobús L1 and the Tren Ligero. I can see why Eric’s done it – to line the terminal bar up with the service name box – but it’s not very attractive. Perhaps the route line itself could curve around to be horizontal before that last stop?

Maybe there could be a few more neighbourhood labels – they seem to peter out towards the edges of the map? The official map has quite a few more than what Eric’s map has.

Part of me really wants the station spacing on that southern part of the Metrobús L1 line to be even from top to bottom (just because it is on the Tren Ligero line next to it), but that’s a minor, minor personal preference.

Our final word: Yeah, I love this. Improves upon the real thing in just about every way (though it doesn’t show quite as many services, so it’s not a true apples-to-apples comparison). Superb!