Unofficial Map: Transit of Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

September 3, 2013
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Submitted by Halid Karpović, who says:

Dear Cameron, I heard you also feature the worst transit maps on your blog – and by “worst”, I mean “worst of the worst”. If that’s right, I’d like to hear your opinion of this map by Emir Haračić. It shows the transit network of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and appears in Sarajevo Navigator, quite a popular tourist guide.

Basically, I say that such a beautiful city as Sarajevo and the first electric streetcar on the Balkans really don’t deserve such an ugly map. We’ve got amateurly drawn route lines, “mega-stations” with tons of linked circles (just look at the “Park” station), and text flying all around the canvas.

But wait! If you think that’s already bad, you might want to look at the official – yes, official – map given out by Sarajevo’s transit company (link no longer active). I think you might even consider a negative rating here…

Transit Maps says:

Judging by the official map (which is a next-to-useless abomination and would certainly deserve the lowest possible rating), this one seems to have been born out of desperation for something better. And while I can’t fault that desire, this map really does make navigation of Sarajevo’s transit system much harder than it should be.

If there was ever a map that needed route lines to collapse down or overlay each other when they share the same track or road, it’s this one. As this diagram from Wikipedia shows, the Sarajevo Tramway is basically one route with different service patterns running on it, and could be simplified a lot more that it is shown here. As it is, the central loop part of the map is almost incomprehensible.

My biggest problem with the depiction of the tram routes is the way they “step down” along the route instead of following the same path along their entire length. For an example, follow the “4” from right to left across the map. It goes for a few stops, and then drops down to the next line, because one of the routes underneath it in the “stack” of lines has ended. This makes following a particular route from one end to the other across the map incredibly difficult and could have been easily avoided with some careful planning.

The other really big problem with the map is the typography. All-capitals, condensed sans serif type set at multiple angles is not easy to read: all the letter forms look very similar, and it can be hard to work out which label belongs to which stop in crowded parts of the map. The resolution of the image as found online also does the type no favours: the image is only 1024px wide, so smaller type like the route numbers contained within each line becomes very indistinct.

Finally, there’s a fifth colour on the map (magenta) that’s not explained in the legend. It’s only used for the “31E” bus route, so there’s something different about it that that we’re not being told about…

Our rating: Trying to fill a void created by the lack of an viable official alternative, this map means well, but is gravely hampered by myriad problems. Really can’t give this one more than half a star.

What Fresh Hell is This?

August 30, 2013
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Possibly one of the worst uses of the “subway map” design metaphor I’ve ever seen. I can’t even bring myself to comment any further.

Source: wtf-viz/Tumblr – link no longer active

Submission – Aerial Transit Map of Salt Lake City, Utah

August 30, 2013
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Submitted by Aaron Sebright, who says:

After seeing the aerial maps of the New York City Subway system and Portland’s Rail system, I decided to try it out on my home city of Salt Lake City! Granted that at the end of the year, it will have three light rail lines, one street car line and one commuter rail line it is even simpler than Portland’s at this scale. (Not pictured in this photo is the Sugarhouse Streetcar line). But seeing as when I move to SLC two years ago, the green line in the lower left corner and the purple line (Frontrunner commuter rail) from downtown to the right side of the picture didn’t even exist yet, this system is making a lot of progress in a very short time.

Transit Maps says:

Not a lot to add to this, except to agree about the rapid progress that SLC has made with its rail transit. Now, if only they’d fix their darn maps…

Photo credit: Ron Reiring/Flickr (Creative Commons attribution license)

Future Map: FutureNYCSubway by Andrew Lynch

August 29, 2013
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An updated look at my futureNYCSubway proposal using an expanded Vignelli map.

More excellent work from Andrew Lynch (aka vanshnookenraggen) – this time, an astoundingly well-considered analysis of future plans for the New York Subway. The resultant map is quite beautiful as well, based as it is off Massimo Vignelli’s 2008/Weekender revision of his classic 1970s map.

I strongly encourage you to click through to Andrew’s website and read the full rationale behind this map: this isn’t just “fantasy”, it’s a well-balanced view of the potential future of the subway in New York. You can also download a PDF of the map for personal use (sweet!).

Source: hyperrealcartography

Unofficial Map: Circular Sydney Suburban Railways by Maxwell Roberts

August 28, 2013
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I have to admit: I’m still not entirely convinced by either the usability or the aesthetics the new “circular transit maps” design trend. However, I think I’ll make an exception for this diagram of my hometown of Sydney, Australia, which is… just beautiful.

Designed by the man at the vanguard of this design movement, Maxwell Roberts, this map actually has a lot of visible advantages over the current official Sydney rail map (Sept. 2012, 3.5 stars), not the least of which is consistent, evenly spaced station labels (all of which are set horizontally).

Wisely, Roberts has confined his map to Greater Sydney alone (i.e., the standard suburban services only, rather than including interurban services to far-distant places like Newcastle, Nowra and Goulburn), something I actually advocate for the official map as well. This is what gives the map far more room to breathe than the official one.

The “hub” of the map is obvious: the aptly-named “City Circle” that loops through Sydney’s CBD, and everything radiates out from there. The visual highlight for me is the treatment of the Cumberland Line, which is one of the few lines that doesn’t route through the city itself – running instead from Blacktown to Campbelltown in Sydney’s far western suburbs. It’s shown as one lovely, giant, sweeping arc for most of its route, which suits its orbital role in the system perfectly.

However, the radial treatment does mean that some destinations are in a slightly unexpected place: Bondi Junction appears far further north than it should be, while in reality Epping and Carlingford stations are just a few kilometres apart, not the vast distance they appear to be here.

The treatment of the inner west light rail line (curiously called the “Lilyfield Tram” here) is also a little problematic, as it appears to extend almost all the way to Meadowbank. In reality, Lilyfield is pretty much due north of Stanmore, much closer to the city’s core. However, station labelling requirements pretty much demand that the route line extends this far on the map, and it’s no worse than the official map in its execution. Some mode differentiation between this route and the main line trains would have been nice, as well as a note that the two systems currently use different fare systems with limited transfers between them.

Minor quibble: “Saint James”, “Saint Marys”, “Saint Peters” and “Saint Leonards” should be written as “St. James”, “St. Marys”, “St. Peters”, “St. Leonards”. No signage in the Sydney system spells out the “Saint”.

Finally, the map is missing the informational icons that are present on the official map – disabled access, parking, etc. – which makes for a much cleaner look, but at the expense of important information.

Our rating: Probably the most aesthetically pleasing circular map I’ve seen yet, quite lovely in its execution. Missing a lot of information that’s present on the official map, so it’s hard to do an “apples-to-apples” comparison. Let’s call it a draw. Three-and-a-half-stars.

Source: Crikey.com.au – The Urbanist

Historical Map: MBTA Keychain, c. 1978-1979

August 26, 2013
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Submitted by dinnerkettle, who says:

Inherited this MBTA keychain from my aunt recently. There’s no exact date on it, but it was definitely made before the red line got extended past Harvard and before some other stops got renamed.

Transit Maps says:

What a great piece of transit map-related ephemera! The best I can date it is after 1980 (when Braintree opened; an arrow points to it at the bottom right of the map), but before 1984 (when the Red Line extended past Harvard to Porter). Also of interest is the extension of the “E” branch of the Green Line all the way to Arborway: this was cut back to Heath Street in 1985.

While obviously based on the classic Cambridge Seven Associates “spider map” that first appeared in 1968, there’s a very curious misspelling of Northampton station as Northhampton (note the extra “h”), which makes me believe that this was produced by a third party vendor under license from the MBTA.

It also looks like the artwork was screen printed in five separate colours: red, green, blue and yellow/orange for the route lines and black for the stations and type. The Blue Line is registered terribly, almost completely missing the station markers along it.

UPDATE: A little more sleuthing and help from David Sindel leads me to revise the date to c. 1978-1979. “Columbia” instead of “JFK/UMass” definitely dates it prior to 1982, and his reasoning about the alternate Harvard stations in the early 1980s is sound.

But the kicker is actually in the map itself, which uses black dots for the stations. By 1980, all stations except the four main interchange stations in the middle of the map were shown using white dots, and the western end of the Red Line had been flipped up at a 45 degree angle.

Unofficial Map: Montreal Metro in the style of the London Tube Map by Corey Landels

August 26, 2013
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Here’s a fun little piece sent my way by Montreal-based designer Corey Landels: the Métro de Montréal redesigned in the style of the iconic London Underground map.

While it’s definitely a fun little homage, I do feel that Corey could have pushed a little harder to match the designs more closely and demonstrate a better understanding of the “Beckian” principles at play behind the design of the Tube map (in short, absolute simplification of route lines, even spacing of stations and eradication of any angles other than multiples of 45).

Because, if you’re going to create something “in the style of”, why not go the whole way?

A few thoughts, based on the concept that the idea is to get this map as close to the style of the Underground Map as possible:

Gill Sans as used here is an acceptable alternative to Johnston Sans, but there are also pretty decent free versions of Johnston to be found on the Internet. Worth it for the distinctive diamond-shaped tittles alone.

The zig-zagging route at each end of the Green Line on Corey’s map would never be present on the Underground Map. The jog between Verdun and Joilcoeur would be eliminated, while the whole eastern end would follow one straight path, with perhaps one change in direction to a vertical line for the last few stations if space restraints demanded it (as it looks like it might here).

On a similar note, the non-standard angles on the Yellow Line would also be verboten on the Underground Map. There’s really no reason why it just can’t be a straight horizontal line, except to conform to the underlying geography. Which brings me to my next point…

Treatment of rivers: On the Tube Map, the Thames is treated diagrammatically, the same as the route lines. The approach on Corey’s map pretty much mirrors that of the official Montreal map, with stylised/simplified geography underlying a diagrammatic representation of the lines.

The suburban trains shown on this map are analogous to the London Overground, so perhaps they could be treated in a similar way. However, this does create a colour clash with the Orange Line that doesn’t exist on the Tube map. A compromise could be to use the white-stroked line from the Underground map, but a different colour, like the lovely purple the official STM map used to have before the recent redesign.

Other general aesthetic differences include the lack of curves in the route lines as they change direction, the look of the standard station tick (there’s no curved cap on the Tube Map’s symbol) and the thickness of the black keyline around the interchange station symbols.

Source: Corey’s website – link no longer active

Historical Map: Berlin U-Bahn Connections, late 1930s

August 22, 2013
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Staying with Berlin for another day, here’s a neat, compact little connections map from the late 1930s. The presence of the “Reichsportsfeld” U-Bahn station means this map must be from no earlier than 1936, while “Adolf-Hitler-Platz” stands as a stark reminder of the dark days that Europe was about to face.

The map is very simple (but not crude; the draftsmanship is excellent), and is embellished with some understated but gorgeous hand-lettering – there’s absolutely no typesetting here that I can see. The little arrows that point to the connection information from each station are also quite lovely.

Source: sludgegulper/Flickr

Historical Concept Map: Circular Berlin U- and S-Bahn Map, c.1990

August 21, 2013
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Circular transit diagrams are certainly all the rage at the moment. I’ve reviewed two different takes on London here and here, and Maxwell Roberts’ circular New York diagram is generating a lot of internet buzz at the moment.

That’s not to say that it’s a completely new and original concept, however. Harry Beck tried his hand at a circular Underground diagram in 1964, and Berlin’s Ringbahn was abstracted into a perfect circle as far back as 1931.

Also from Berlin, here’s another addition to the pantheon of circular diagrams, one that I haven’t seen before and I’m pretty excited by. Designed by the famed German typographer/designer Erik Spiekermann, these photos were taken at an exhibition of his work at the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin in 2011.

Judging by the stations shown, the concept seems to be roughly contemporaneous with the work he did in the early 1990s to design the first post-reunification diagram for the BVG. At first glance, the concentric circles, arcs and spokes make a compelling visual image, but many of the routes have to jump around all over the place to accommodate this visual metaphor, weaving in and out to retain their correct relative position to other lines. Station spacing – a prime consideration in the design of a diagram – becomes very uneven as a result, especially along the outer edges of the map, where huge virtual gaps open up between stations.

The Spiekermann-designed diagram that was eventually used by the BVG was far more traditional than this, and still governs the visual language used by Berlin’s diagrams today, 20 years after its completion. What we see here is almost certainly a concept that was explored and then abandoned as unworkable or too radical a departure for public acceptance (I note that the second mock up has angled type for just one station label – something that Erik has always held as a mortal sin in transit diagram design). 

However, as an insight into the design process and thinking that goes into making transit diagrams, I find pieces like this absolutely fascinating.

Update (2/7/2017): Erik Spiekermann has filled in a lot of the details about this concept map in a comment made on the original Tumblr version of this post, reproduced below:

That first sketch was done by Brigitte Hartwig, the designer in our team at MetaDesign at the time (1990-1994) who did all the research into ways to visualize transit networks. Brigitte also made the artwork for the final diagram, using one layer each for 23 lines, which Freehand’s latest version had just enabled us to do. We tried all sorts of diagrams, but in the end it was important not to shock people too much. Berlin had only just been re-united after almost 40 years with two separate transit systems, so at least partial familiarity was an important factor. We cannot design against history and habits if we want to communicate to everybody.

Source: Top photo/Bottom photo – Glyphobet/Flickr

Historical Map: 1896 German Map of the London Underground

August 21, 2013
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This map of the nascent London Underground and “other railways” appears in the 14th edition of Brockhaus’ Konversations-Lexikon, a respected German encylopedia that is still in business today. Now known simply as the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, the 21st edition was published in 2006 and runs to over 24,000 pages in 30 volumes.

The map itself is pretty simple and traditional, notable for being printed in three colours (black, red and a rather lovely teal blue). Production-wise, this means the map was almost certainly printed separately to the main body of the encyclopedia (which was printed with black ink only), and tipped-in by hand as the main volume was bound and assembled.

Also interesting is the map’s use of both German and English labels: while the Underground bears labels like “City u. Südlondonbahn” and the river proudly wears the name “Themse”, many of the main railway lines and localities are named in their native tongue. I’m not sure why this is: perhaps the map was altered or copied from an original English source?

Our rating: With an 1896 date, this is one of the earlier Underground maps I’ve seen, and is interesting just for that reason alone. It’s not the greatest cartography, but it’s not really meant for navigation of the system, but for giving a broad overview in the context of an encyclopedia. Three stars.

P.S. Google Books has a 1908 update of this map available as part of their digitized collection – click here to view it.

Source: homingmissileglow/Tumblr – site no longer active