Here’s a simple diagram for a hypothetical Seattle where Forward Thrust (the original ’60s subway) was actually built and where we would be today. If only we really had this level of transit.
I tried to make this kind of look like a diagram you might find in a newspaper, so it’s not super detailed with a legend and stuff. Or at least that’s my excuse for being lazy!
Transit Maps says:
A nice “what if?” map here from Henry, envisioning a Seattle where construction on a light rail network began in the 1960s instead of later… much later. It’s the little touches that I like, like the latest work package being called Forward Thrust 3 (or FT3) instead of the real world Sound Transit 3/ST3. It seems that in this alternate world, Sound Transit was never formed, as Henry places the ownership of the network with King County Metro.
The diagram itself does have that “newspaper infographic” feel, so I’d say it works as Henry intended. While simplification is good for that purpose, I’d still like to see a version with the bodies of water that do so much to define Seattle – Lake Union, Lake Washington and the Puget Sound itself. The reason this network looks so similar to the planned ST3 configuration of the real world is simply because Seattle is hemmed in by water and there’s very few viable routes.
One little technical thing I’d like to see fixed is the divergence of the red and blue lines south of Jackson station: if Henry nudged the change of direction on the red line down and to the right a bit more, the lines would change direction at the same point, which always looks a bit cleaner to me.
Our final word: A simple diagram of what could have been, made with a minimum of fuss. Works for me!
Remember metro orientation map of Prague you’ve reviewed back in 2012 (August 2012, 3.5 stars)? You might be surprised how little it changed since then. The framing you were uncertain about, little bits here and there, and… that’s pretty much it. This seems like an overhaul waiting to happen, doesn’t it?
So here I am trying to address some of the issues I believe are critical in terms of usability including the one you’ve pointed out back then, and I totally agree with (no tram routing). I’ve also introduced new subway line D which is currently under way just to explore how the whole thing scales. What do you think?
There’s a short story in case you’d like to learn more about my decision making.
Transit Maps says:
A rather lovely effort to “modernise” the Prague Metro map from Kostya, and one that’s mostly successful. I do like the large, sweeping curves used; they really lend a sense of elegance to the map. I do applaud the addition of route numbers to the tram lines, though I think in general the tram lines are too thin and the numbers too small to be easily read. It’s interesting to note that Kostya has actually taped his map up in a Metro car and come to much the same conclusion himself – I love it when designers test their work in real-world conditions!
The addition of information about bus transfers to the airport are another welcome addition, though it seems a pity not to at least indicate the Czech Railways Airport Express bus from Terminal 1 to the more centrally located Hlavní Nádraží as well.
Like the official map, Kostya uses icons to indicate points of interest, which I think could benefit from an explanatory legend. While locals may understand what the icons represent, Prague is a major tourist destination and these users probably need to be catered for.
Our final word: A stylish update that mostly works and certainly isn’t as clunky as the official map. The tram line could probably use some work to make them more legible in real-world usage.
Showing an alternate future where everything in a 2014 proposal actually got built, this is without a doubt one of the best looking Chicago transit maps I have ever seen – just lovely work from Michael. Many designers have tried to integrate the Loop into the main map instead of using an inset before, but rarely as successfully as this. Michaels’ Loop fits the scale of the rest of the map really well, and just looks like it belongs.
Despite being very information-dense (“L” lines, commuter rail lines and arterial bus routes all on one map!), everything feels very clean, spacious and well-organised. Colour is used intelligently to emphasise hierarchy – bright colours for the “L”, muted pastels for commuter rail lines, and grey for the bus routes.
It’s all so good that I can even overlook a couple of my personal dislikes – labels set in the same colour as the line they represent, and stations that are labelled multiple times – once for every service that terminates there. Sometimes you just have to let these things slide because the piece as a whole just works.
As a side note, how amazing would those crosstown “L” lines be if they actually existed, especially the O’Hare to Midway airport link? We can only hope and dream!
Our final word: Just awesome. It’s only January and this may already be my favourite map of 2021.
The Sofia Metro is a not-so-big metro system in the capital of Bulgaria. Although I’m not Bulgarian, nor live in Bulgaria, I’ve been there, and it’s quite nice. The following map is the latest one, from the opening of Line 3, on the 26th of August, this year. It’s quite simple, but unlike the previous ones, it’s far more consistent (as it uses the same angles, colors, stuff like that), and much more visually appealing. Any thoughts?
Transit Maps says:
Yes, this is a vast improvement over older Sofia Metro maps! To me, it looks like an evolution in design from the quasi-official version created and promoted by the Spazi Sofia NGO back in 2015 (review here – Cam). It uses the same icons for the points of interest, which suggests a shared parentage.
Overall, I quite like it, though some of the labelling is carelessly placed. The long leader line down to Ovcha Kupel II station is unnecessary, and quite a few names cut across route lines. The long station names and bilingual labels don’t help matters, but I feel that more care could perhaps have been taken.
The other main point of contention is the grey background to indicate the boundaries of the city – I feel that this is redundant and just makes the background busier than it needs to be. However, if it was removed, I guess the question of whether to continue to include the parkland areas would have to be addressed.
Our final word: A solid evolution of the work done by Spazi Sofia, now made fully official, it seems. There’s nothing truly outstanding about it, but it’s clean, simple and pleasing to the eye. 3 stars.
I thought you might enjoy poring over a transit+points of interest map I recently drew of Center City Philadelphia.
I’ve collected bird’s eye urban panoramas since I was a child, and I particularly enjoy panoramas that have placemaking and wayfinding value, such as those drawn by Jenni Sparks and other artists.
I also find there’s no better way to learn and demystify seemingly-complex bus service than drawing it a couple times over. Taking the lead from SEPTA’s own frequency map, here I attempted to demystify bus service for visitors by employing SEPTA’s new color-coded frequency classification, and by winnowing a selection of bus routes that permit the easiest gridlike travel across Center City so visitors aren’t forced to rely only on the spartan axes of the MFL and BSL.
The map was also fueled by a longing and impatience for the points of interest to reopen so that all the attractions of Center City (and other cities) can once again be enjoyed after COVID. Here’s to a better 2021 and 2022 and to the hopeful revival of the urban flaneur!
Zoom and pan the map in the window above, or use the full-screen button to view the map in full detail. If the button doesn’t work for you or you’re on a mobile device, use this link for a full browser window version.
Transit Maps says:
It’s a sign of just how much I love this that I asked Marc whether I could share it in my new zoomable map format, just so you can all get in super close and see the wonderful detail in this map. I just adore the stylised, textured base map – an aerial image run through some artistic Photoshop filters that’s then been cleaned up manually and tinted to highlight points of interest and parkland, which sounds like a lot of painstaking, time consuming work. The end result is worth it, though – the city looks like a city, with recognisable buildings and landmarks. I particularly like the way that taller buildings obscure transit lines on streets that are further away from our viewpoint – it’s this that really sells the dimensionality of the map, like we were in a hot air balloon tethered high above the streets below. It’s very definitely evocative of those old birds-eye view maps that Marc mentions with such fondness.
Marc’s other influence, Jenni Sparks, can certainly be seen in the juxtaposition of a detailed base map and bright, thick transit route lines, though Marc’s map is less chaotic than Jenni’s more organic illustrative pieces. Despite the busy background, all the transit lines stand out well and are easy to see and follow. I particularly like the way that Marc has added texture to the route lines so that they look like they belong to the rest of the map instead of just being plopped on top of it. If all this work wasn’t enough, Marc has also added some 245 points of interest to the map, making it an invaluable tool for visitors to the city. And really, that’s what this map should be for – printed and available for tourists in every bookstore and information bureau in the city: it’s just that good.
If I had one tiny complaint, it’s that I’m personally not that fond of the playful, child-like typeface used for the map’s title at the top left – but that’s a pretty minor quibble on the whole of things. Wonderful work, Marc!
For those who are interested, Marc has made PDFs of the map that are available to download for personal, non-commercial use only.
Hamburg, Germany’s line map always strikes me as one of the most ugly maps depicting a major transit network – one can understand if the ones made for small town bus networks are not up to the design standard of the upper echelons like Moscow or the like, but a city like Hamburg having such a bad map is just strange.
The convoluted knot of lines around the main station make it really hard to properly layout the lines and it took me an immense amount of time to make it look halfway decent; the fact that it has two trunk lines does not help.
I added the actual station building with the iconic iron arches and in my opinion, it helps a bit with orientation, especially looking at the “Hbf Nord” and “Hbf Süd” Metro stops that are neither really north or south of the place in real life.
Further additions are, of course, a tiny Elbphilhaarmonie with the corresponding ferry line from Landungsbrücken, walking interchange indications with distance and approximate walking time, overall more harmonic spacing, and many more small things.
Transit Maps says:
There’s a lot of things I really like about this map: the 3D Hauptbahnhof and the way the lines run “through” it is nothing short of inspired, and everything is very neatly and evenly laid out. But there’s one big problem with it that shows what a balancing act a really great transit map really is – if one thing isn’t right, then the whole design can be thrown out of balance.
Simon has employed a distinctive white dash for each station, which in turn needs a background of sufficient darkness for these dashes to show up properly. However, that dark grey background then reduces the contrast between it and the route lines and labels, especially in the darker inner AB tariff zone. The green S1 and teal U4 lines are very recessive against the background, and the cyan label for the Elbphilhaarmonie ferry stop gets swallowed up almost completely. Most of the other colours fare somewhat better – the dark green S11 works much better than the mid-green S1, for example – so the solution could just be adjusting colours to improve the contrast to an acceptable level. It may also be possible to lighten the grey backgrounds just a tad and still use the white station markers, which I do quite like.
A couple of other notes: For me, the canals that join the Alster to the Elbe – while technically correct – are a little too busy and fussy and could perhaps be eliminated, especially as the rest of the river is so clean and stylised. The inclusion of walking distances between nearby stations and landmarks is a welcome addition, though.
Our final word: Contrast between elements is hugely important, and this otherwise excellent map needs a bit of work to improve matters in that department.
Finally! A comprehensive reworking and redrawing of one of my original projects – a diagram of the European International E-Road network. First drawn back in 2010, It’s a piece that’s always had a place in my heart, but I’ve always put off updating or reworking it over the years because I was just never quite sure how to bring anything new to the table.
However, the recent successful revision of my Interstate Highways as Subway Diagram convinced me that I could use that design language to reinvigorate this old project – and I think it’s definitely been successful! View the map in the window below – you can zoom in and out, pan around, and also go full screen. Or, you can also click here to experience the map in a full browser window.
First things first: this is unapologetically a diagram, not a map. The whole idea here was to fit as much of the network legibly into a square canvas as I could, which means that Eastern Europe and Russia get compressed horizontally – a lot. The Black Sea becomes taller than it is wide, and Turkey gets reduced to a fraction of its actual width. A comparison to the official United Nations map of the network (below) drives home just how large and empty the eastern part of the map would be without this compression (and how cramped Western Europe would be in comparison!), so I think some distortion is a fair price to pay.
A sidenote for those wondering how colours are assigned to the routes. The UNECE document that defines the network defines roads with numbers divisible by 5 (E-5, E-10, E-15, etc.) as “main roads”. These are generally the longest, and help define the shape of the overall network. These roads have been given bright, subway map-like colours in order to reflect their relative importance. All other routes are “intermediate roads”, and are given a subsidiary grey colour. Even-numbered routes (generally running east-west) are slightly darker than odd-numbered routes in order to tell them apart.
Looking back on the original map, there were definitely a few areas that I concentrated on for improvement this time around.
First, I designed the diagram to fit a specific canvas. Back in 2010, I just drew until I was done, and then added the final dimensions at the end to suit what I’d drawn. And it shows: there’s a big empty area of ocean to the left, and the whole thing just feels a bit unbalanced. This time around, I purposefully set out to make the diagram fit into a square canvas – and at the end, it fitted exactly as I had planned: no rescaling of elements or moving things around to make it fit. You can’t ask for better than that!
Secondly, I worked much harder at spacing elements more evenly across the whole map to miminise large empty areas. The same underlying 96-point grid that I used on my Interstates diagram informed a lot of my decisions here, which definitely gives more visual rhythm to the composition. Reducing Scandinavia’s overall size helped a lot, as it visually dominated the old version; as did moving Moscow further north (to somewhere approximating its spatially correct place).
Next: typography. The 2010 version used the ubiquitous and oh-so-dull Myriad Pro Condensed, simply because it was pretty much the only typeface I had at the time that was a) condensed enough to work on the map, and b) had a full range of characters to support the Eastern European and Turkish place names on the map. Now, just as my new Interstates diagram employs the official U.S. highway roadsign typeface “Interstate”, the new E-Roads diagram uses TERN – a typeface family developed by Erik Spiekermann for use on highway roadsigns in Europe. So far, it’s only been adopted in Austria and Slovakia, but it’s still a very appropriate choice for a diagram of European highways! Erik actually sent me this font family in return for a PDF of the original version of this diagram back in 2010, so I’m thrilled to be finally using it in this update! Comparatively, the labels are also set quite a bit bigger now, something I’m very happy about.
Because everything was fitting into place so well, I wanted to see if I could include secondary labels for place names if that country used a different alphabet – and that’s where I ran into some problems. While TERN supports Greek characters and has a wide range of diacritics, it doesn’t go any further east – no Cyrillic, and certainly no Georgian, Armenian, etc. In the end, I set most of these secondary labels in Fira Sans Compressed – it’s not an identical match, but as it’s also a Spiekermann-designed typeface, it bears many of the same design hallmarks and does the job pretty well. Some hunting around on the Internet revealed some appropriate fonts for the few labels that had to be set in more esoteric character sets. All these secondary place names have all just been pasted in from the relevant Wikipedia entries, so I hope there’s no errors (please tell me if there are!). Secondary names are also included in Gaelic for Ireland and Scotland, and in Welsh for Wales – just for fun. I did toy with the idea of showing the “alternate” names for cities in Belgium – the French names in Flanders, and the Dutch names in Wallonia – but that just seemed too fussy in the end.
Other improvements: I massively simplified the coastline this time around to be more in-keeping with the idea that this is a simplified diagram. There were definitely parts with way too much detail before! With one exception*, islands only appear if they have cities connected to the network on them – so no Balearic Islands or Cyprus or Isle of Man or random islands in the fjords of Norway. I’ve also made the visual distinction between routes across water that are actually served by a ferry line (a thicker line), and those that are just hypothetical joining lines between two otherwise disconnected points along a given route (thinner lines). I imagine that some of these could change in the future: until fairly recently, you could catch a ferry from Odesa, Ukraine to Samsun, Turkey across the Black Sea, but not at this moment in time.
One thing I wasn’t expecting at first was new extensions to some of the routes! E-16 used to run from Londonderry/Doire to Oslo, but now it runs all the the way across the Scandinavian peninsula to end at Gävle in Sweden. E-45 has been extended north from Karesuando in Sweden to pass through Finland and end at Alta, Norway. And finally, E-66 now completes something of a bypass of Budapest, running east and north of its old terminus at Székesfehérvár to now end at Szolnok. I was able to incorporate all of these amendments with a minimum of fuss, and I also double-checked and refined the intermediate routing of some roads for better accuracy than the previous version. I noticed that Google and Bing Maps have decided to extend E-86 into Albania from Greece, but I can’t find any official documentation of this change – its western terminus remains as Krystallopigi for now.
As always, your thoughts, comments and corrections are welcome! What do you think of the new interactive presentation of the diagram? Let me know in the comments below!
Note: * The one exception is the Isle of Wight, because the dent in the south coast of England up to Southampton (the Solent) just looked silly without it.
Ever since I first created it in 2009, my Interstates as Subway Map diagram has been one of my most popular and enduring designs. It’s consistently the best selling print in the Transit Maps store, and is something I’m incredibly proud of. However, the last major redesign of it was way back in 2011, and it’s definitely starting to show its age.
At the time, I really didn’t think I’d still be maintaining and updating it nine years down the road, so little thought was put into future-proofing the diagram – it simply reflected the network as it appeared in 2011. This meant that any addition to the Interstate system over the years has had to be shoehorned into a design that wasn’t really ever meant to accommodate it. I think I’ve done a pretty good job to keep the diagram up-to-date and looking good over the years, but I’ve decided that it’s time to completely re-evaluate and redraw the diagram from the top down.
So, without further ado, here’s the revised 2020 version of the diagram as a pannable, zoomable map (or click on this link to view it in a full browser window).
I’ve definitely done my research this time around. Within reason, all known future expansions of the network have been taken into account and shown on the diagram as cased lines. For the first time, I-69 and all its branches in Texas (I-69C, I-69-E and I-69W) are shown in their entirety. All the little gaps in I-49 are accounted for, as is the future extension from Lafayette to New Orleans. Future I-11 is shown from Las Vegas down to Nogales, but the proposed section from Las Vegas up to I-80 is not – there are still too many alternatives on the table for it to be shown with any certainty. Other routes that are barely more than rumour (I-3, for example) are also omitted, though I’m confident that this new design can handle them if and when they become reality.
Make the design my own
The previous iterations of this diagram leaned heavily on the design language of the London Underground’s famous Tube Map – colours, station symbols, line thickness, corner curve radius and more. I’m far more confident in my own ability as a designer now, and feel that this is the time to leave that comfortable, easy solution behind and create something that’s unique and truly mine.
While the colours remain similar to visually link the different versions of the diagram, almost everything else has changed completely. Most notably, the diagram now uses Interstate – a typeface based on that used on road signs across the United States – as its primary font, a far more distinctive and appropriate choice than the previous and somewhat generic Myriad Pro Condensed. The large interchange circles and dumbbells have gone, replaced by a more elegant “one dot per route” marker at each station. This carries across to intermediate cities, which use a similar dot instead of a Tube Map-style “tick”.
Be more rigorous in my design approach
Let’s just say I’ve learned a lot about transit map design since 2011. My approach to this reworking was a lot more methodical, and my design rules were stricter and applied with far less exceptions to make things work. The diagram sits on a 96-point grid, which informs much of the spacing and alignment of the routes, as shown below.
Using this grid helped me to ensure that major highways never get too close to each other, and allows for a nice even rhythm across the entire diagram. Some areas that seemed too cramped in previous versions, like the southeastern states, definitely have more room to breathe now even with some additional future routes added to the mix. Using this grid also helped me work out some fun little design features, like the way that I-4 and I-16 form similar shapes reflected symmetrically along the axis of I-10 between them.
A lot of care was given to labelling this time around (so often an after-thought!) with route numbers always being placed as close as possible to the the relevant terminus dot for easy identification and cross referencing. While having some labels cut across route lines on a complex diagram like this is unavoidable, I’ve really tried to keep it to a minimum and I think there’s less than ten examples of it on the entire piece.
Finally, I think that the simplified outline of the United States on this version makes a more elegant and proportionately “correct” shape than before, which this animation of all three major versions of the map shows rather nicely.
I found this map of the regional rail system in Philly from this 1989 SEPTA map to be interesting. I don’t know of any other map to use octagons. This map is notable for having “temporary” shuttle buses to Newtown and West Chester (service never returned), and for noting that service to Ivy Ridge on the R6 was “temporarily discontinued.” Service also never returned here. Note proposed stations at Claymont (which opened in 1991) and Baldwin (which never reopened) on the R2. This is one of the more aesthetically pleasing regional rail maps I have seen. You can see this and other SEPTA maps and timetables on my Flickr.
The first thing to notice here is just how much more understandable SEPTA Regional Rail service is on a diagram which doesn’t also have to show the subway and street-to-surface lines. This is a clean and simple diagram that uses some nice colour-coding to show the through-running of lines passing through the city center in the Center City Commuter Connection tunnel, which had only opened five years previously in 1984. The three stations highlighted by the unusual octagonal shapes were major components of this project.
The colour-coding is made slightly less effective by that fact that the trunk line from 30th Street all the way around to Glenside that is shared by many of the routes is represented a single grey line – it can sometimes be a little difficult to follow a route along its entire length because of this (the R2 is a good example). However, it’s a fairly simple network, so this isn’t an insurmountable problem.
The map is generally drawn well, though the R8 has to take a pretty unconvincing path from North Philadelphia up towards Chestnut Hill West, and the massively expanded central section means that the labelling gets perhaps a little too cramped towards the outer edges.
Finally, the scourge of “temporarily discontinued” rail services that never returned have rarely been laid out quite so clearly on a single map!
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I came across this lovely piece this morning on Twitter, so here’s a review. This is Andy’s second stab at Edinburgh (see also this map showing an “idealised” 1940s network), and I think it’s clear to see that Andy has come along in leaps and bounds as a map designer since then.
One thing I always appreciate about Andy’s maps is how tactile they seem: they really do look like old printed maps and that’s rather lovely. It’s not just the added “folded paper” texture, but also his colour and design choices that all add up to make his pieces seem so convincingly real. This map has already fooled a few people on Twitter into thinking it’s a real 1920s relic, which is a testament to his work!
Design-wise, I love the rings of route numbers at major stops – an effective device that Andy has borrowed from a real 1924 Edinburgh tram map, but also made very much his own. Overall, the layout is nicely handled and Andy’s even made all-caps labels work well, especially considering the amount of information displayed on the map – trams, buses, main line railways, etc. And it’s not just these lines as they appeared in 1924, either: Andy’s turned this map into a full historical document and also added lines that opened after 1924 (in a nicely-recessive yellow), and lines that were planned but never actually constructed. It does require a fair bit of consulting the legend to work out exactly what some of the lines mean, as different colours and line types combine to show information, but it’s all worthwhile in the end, I think.
Our final word: Stylish and very convincing, this is a great little historical diagram that documents a period in history when tramways dominated Edinburgh’s transportation. Great work, Andy!
