This map has actually been out for a while, but today – celebrating the full opening of the Central Subway – seemed like the appropriate day to post about it.
Design-wise, this is very much an evolution of previous efforts (see my review of the post-COVID resumption of service map here) and thus shares many of the same features and faults. I still don’t agree with the decision to have station labels set in the same colour as their route lines – it looks disjointed and some colours (especially yellow, but also light blue) have poor contrast with the white background. Pick one dark colour (black or even the N–Judah’s dark blue) and use it for all labels throughout for a consistent look.
However, the main question here is how well the Central Subway has been integrated into the map, and the answer is… probably about as well as it could have been. Muni certainly hasn’t helped itself by giving the new interchange with Powell station a really long name – “Union Square/Market St”. This necessarily has to be set on two lines, forcing a huge gap between Powell and Montgomery along Market Street. “Yerba Buena/Moscone” isn’t much better, but at least that fits fairly neatly into the space provided. But seriously, transit agencies – pick one name for your stations and just roll with it instead of trying to appease everyone. Announcements or signage can take care of the secondary information: “Alight here for the Moscone Center”.
While accurate to the real-world configuration, the representation of 4th & King station seems overly fussy for a simplified diagram like this. Would it just look a bit cleaner if the routes didn’t cross over each other? Another fussy detail is the weird curve that BART takes between Civic Center and 16th St/Mission, inserted purely out of the need to make room for the Church & Market station label on the J–Church line.
Overall, I feel like there’s a lot of random chaotic energy in this diagram. Part of that comes from the decision to only label accessible stations, which is understandable but also makes the diagram feel half-finished somehow. The placement of labels also comes across as a bit haphazard, especially along the southern leg of the T–Third St, where the labels alternate on each side of the route. I’d like to see a solution where all those labels are moved to the right of the route, which would then allow all the BART station labels to move to the right of their route line and so on… creating more consistency across the whole diagram.
I do find it odd that the diagram has giant route bullets at the bottom as a sort of legend, but then chooses not to use the bullets again at the end of each line. Use of bullets for route identification on the actual diagram is regarded as a best practice these days, seen on many maps worldwide. Personally, I’d find a way to move the big bullets to the bar at the top of the diagram, so I could push the boxed legend to the left and use the extra space to make the T-Third St line a bit longer to allow all those labels to be on the right as suggested above.
Our final word: Very much a logical evolution of the typical Muni Metro diagram style, though I do wish it was a little more orderly in the way it presents information. I do like the animation that Muni has made showing the way all the lines work, though!
Source: Muni Metro website
I’m only an occasional visitor to San Francisco, but what happened to the Historic Streetcar line, which I believe was the “F” line?
The streetcars still exist; this map only shows light rail (and BART).
I agree with all of your comments. I want to add a few things.
1) The color shades used are weird. In particular the K Ingleside, which looks like the ghost lines used to indicate “under construction” or “projected” lines. The light shade recesses it into the background and doesn’t give it equal weight w the other lines. What’s wrong w using primary colors by the way?
2) You mentioned the long names. BART also has a penchant to do this. It’s not necessary. MUNI could just name the street the line runs on and not use the compound names such as naming “Judah St” along the N line, “Taraval St” along the L line, “3rd St” along the T line, and “Church St” along the J line, and just use the cross street name for the station. The T line has a number of stations mid-block so MUNI feels like it has to name both streets. Just pick one. It won’t confuse anyone.
3) MUNI is too technical in how it denotes transfer stations that are separated. The J and N “Duboce & Church” stops are mere feet apart. They are the same stop for all intents and purposes and tick line connecting them is not necessary. The various ticks for the L line stop at West Portal, the M stop at Balboa Park, the N stop at 4th & King, just add unnecessary noise to the map.
4) The legend shows the handicapped icon for handicapped accessible stations and one w/o the icon for non-accessible stations, yet the handicapped icon appears nowhere on the map. It’s not easily discernable that the difference isn’t the icon but the bolded nature of the stop dot. The icon is used almost everywhere to indicate accessibility. The accessible stations are the named stations on the map but how would anyone know that? It doesn’t indicate that anywhere on the map. Instead, it shows the icon as denoting that and since it’s nowhere, it could easily be assumed that there are no accessible stations. It should just say that all named stations are accessible or else put the icons on the map as the legend indicates.
5) The Market St subway stations should be spread out just a little bit more to allow some visual breathing room (the bolded, unbolded, BART and non-BART icons, and boxed station names and the T line different color station name is messy) as well as room for the BART line to veer off gracefully, perhaps the BART line could be gray (since it isn’t a MUNI line) and thus can eliminate the BART icons altogether. MUNI just doesn’t do icons very well.
The color coding thing is just a sham.
Muni is attempting to emulate and mimic VTA