Submitted by Ricky Courtney, who says:
San Francisco Muni is out with a new version of its map… now with the L&K and the T&M interlined.
Transit Maps says:
This simple little map has been prepared by Muni to illustrate necessary service changes as the Metro lines reopen after being shut down for some time due to COVID-related concerns. Whereas all the lines used to run the length of Market Street, the J now terminates at Church and Market, and the L and K lines now interline to form a single cross-town route – riders will need to change trains at West Portal to head downtown. Frequent Market Street “S” shuttle trains will supplement the N and T/M lines.
Interestingly, the L and K now share a single colour (purple) to emphasise that they now operate as a single line, but the similarly interlined T and M alternate between the two original colours along Market Street, supposedly to indicate the temporary nature of this arrangement: once the Central Subway opens, the T will be rerouted along it and the T and M will no longer be interlined. That’s a fair reason, but it still looks a little odd to use different approaches to the same information on a single map. Even more unfortunate is that the red of the T and the green of the M are almost identical for colour-blind readers (I’ve tested this in Photoshop), so they miss out on this the information entirely.
Other notes: I’ll never agree with the decision to have station labels in the same colour as the line they serve: pick one colour for every station and stick with it throughout – this approach just looks too disjointed. The reversed-out BART logo doesn’t work very well: the blue “a” disappears completely into the black background.
Our final word: Serviceable enough, but also obviously a temporary solution. Chris Smere’s unofficial version offers an interesting alternative concept.
To me, the dark green and dark blue are too similar, and my experience in publishing is that colors will print darker than they appear on a computer screen, so on a printed version of this map, those two colors might be hard to distinguish.
They look different enough on my calibrated monitor (the blue is considerably darker than the green for me), but not everyone’s screen is calibrated like mine. Everyone’s perception of colour can be quite different and it’s hard to get it right for everyone. They are at least separated by the contrasting yellow Shuttle line, so they’re relatively easy to work out, I think.
As another colour-blind reader I would like to add that the L/K and N lines are very hard to distinguish for me. Just goes to show that you really do need to put in some additional testing to ensure a map is accessible for everyone.
I realize this is supposed to be a map “only” of the Muni Metro lines, but the omission of the 2 “Historic streetcar lines” operated nt Muni jumped out at me. This is even more peculiar with the addition of BART, not run by Muni, in a completely alien format. Why not Caltrain? And certainly, why are Muni’s cable cars not shown. I realize this would make for a more complex map, but this one looks oddly incomplete. At least to me.
Hal, you’re forgetting that is is a COVID-19 recovery map. Neither the historic streetcars or the cable cars are running at the moment because of social distancing concerns, so they are omitted because of that. BART interfaces with Muni Metro at multiple locations down Market Street, so it’s shown as an alternative travel solution, but Caltrain only really connects at the 4th & King terminus, so an icon for it suffices there.