Submitted by Pedro, who says:

So… long story short: By the end of 2018, I submitted to Mexico City official transport authority called SEMOVI (Secretary of Mobility) a proposal for the integrated transport map, which did not make it to the end, and here’s why:

• Time: The government wanted to introduce its “Integrated Mobility” plan within the first 100 days in office and even though my map was almost ready to go, they were already working with another designer whose work was more in line with what they wanted to do: Merge the Metro’s identity with the rest of the capital’s transport systems. (Official map reviewed in April 2019, 2.5 stars)

• Highly ambitious: Although the map was not designed by Lance Wyman, he did design the “Movilidad Integrada” image and one of the biggest changes that I proposed was to lose his original Metro typeface and create a new one using Frutiger, DIN and Parisine (Paris’ Metro font) as base, but they felt that the change was too risky as “people are used to the Metro font.” This would’ve also taken a lot of time to complete and again, time was running.

While I wasn’t expecting that much resistance in changing the font, I did have a second proposal in case money/time were an issue: adopt Fira Sans as the new typeface. A huge family of 74 fonts (between weights and styles) that exceeded what I was looking for: legibility, weight variation and condensed/compressed versions (whispering “I’d love to be used in a map” at me).

I used Fira Sans to show how much easier the map will be to read with a non-all-capital font, but Mexico’s love for Lance and all his work won this time.

The map you’ve reviewed is actually the Metro version. There’s a second version where the BRT system (Metrobús) is the star (with all the stations) but because of the font, the Metro lines are arranged differently and become a second lighter colored layer in the back.

As you can see, the only thing we agreed on was an integrated map was needed. I went with a head full of ideas (like changing Line B to one single color, for example [Fun fact: nobody there knows why 2 colors are used]) and even though they were like, “yeah you are right about almost everything here” they were not open to change anything as the clock was ticking.

Transit Maps says:

This is a fascinating “what if?” diagram, as it uses a lot of the same symbology and design framework of what became the official map, yet looks almost entirely different. There’s no doubt that Fira Sans is vastly more legible than the distinctive but hard-to-read Tipo Metro, and it’s great to see that most of the labels on this diagram are set horizontally as well. Maybe some more could be horizontal though: the west end of Metro Line 2 looks like it would work pretty easily, for example.

For such a complex network, Pedro has done a great job of getting everything looking clean and tidy, with a nicely expanded central section. Spacing feels even and harmonious throughout, which is always a good indication of how well the design is working for me.

Our final word: In an alternate reality, this is the current diagram in use in Mexico City, and everyone is happy. Nice work, and a real shame that it wasn’t implemented.

See also: Eric Léon’s unofficial map (June 2020)