A stunning visualisation of the London Underground by visual developer Bruno Imbrizi. There’s certainly a lot of fun to be had zooming, rotating and panning the view around and turning each line on and off.
It’s another great example of what can be done with publicly-available data: in this case, train arrival times, the location of each station and its depth below the surface.
Read Bruno’s explanation of the project here and view the visualisation here.
A few people have requested this recently-introduced “simplified” Metro map from Spain’s capital, so here goes…
Introduced with much fanfare earlier this month, this new version of the Madrid Metro map is aimed solely at visiting tourists, showing where all the main zones and points of interest are in relation to the comprehensive subway system.
This kind of map is hardly unique — London has had a central city bus map showing points of interest for years now (Feb 2012, 3.5 stars) — and this is not one of the more successful efforts in my eye. The Metro lines themselves are laid out clearly enough, in nice smooth, friendly, looping lines and the stations and main interchanges are easy to enough find. But the rest of the map just seems to be trying way too hard to be casual and inviting, with a weird clash of visual styles and typography.
There are some nice touches here and there — the scratchily-illustrated waves in the lakes are quite lovely — but there’s a lot that just looks slapdash as well. The illustrations for the points of interest look like run-of-the-mill clip art, with no real unique style (compare to the buildings on the London map, which are beautifully and uniformly drawn). The eight “zones of interest” could really use some colour-coding to differentiate them from each other, and the default Adobe Illustrator “scribble” effect used to shade them just looks weak.
The typography veers from trying too hard (the hipster hand-drawn block heading typfeace) to the downright ugly (is that condensed Comic Sans that’s being used to label the points of interest?).
Our rating: It does the job, I guess, but could have been so much more with a little more attention to detail and craftsmanship. Two stars.
Source: Redtransporte.com
Another weirdly squashed map of Denver’s light rail system: this time compressed horizontally. Would it have killed them to make the sign a little wider?
Photo taken by me at the 18th & California station.
When Taylor sent through his aerial photo map of Portland the other day, he also submitted this very interesting isometric map of the city’s rail network (MAX, WES and streetcar). Tyler is a self-proclaimed “total newbie at making transit maps”, but this is definitely a pretty solid effort.
Highly reminiscent of this isometric map of Stuttgart (Oct 2011, 5 stars), the 30-degree-angled route lines allow station labels to be set horizontally without clashing with each other, even in the congested downtown area. The only real problem area is the almost unavoidable mess created by the four separate “Pioneer Square” stations right in the middle of the map. I’ve noticed that these have been consolidated into one “mega-station” on TriMet’s new in-car maps, and that’s definitely a cleaner, more sensible approach to the problem in my eyes.
I also see a little influence from my own map of Portland’s rail system: both in the layout of the legend, and the fact that Taylor has decided to show the new MAX line to Milwaulkie as an extension of the Yellow Line, rather than the commonly expected “Orange Line”.
I do have a few minor criticisms: text in general is a little small and hard to read, although I can see how larger text would cause layout problems (perhaps a condensed typeface could solve this), and there are a couple of confusing label clashes: the parking symbol for Gateway TC is right on top of the station marker for Parkrose/Sumner TC, for example. It’s also a little sad to see the streetcar relegated to thin unlabelled lines, but the space limitations of the map almost demand this treatment.
Still, for a “newbie”, this is pretty darn awesome. Great work, Taylor!
Submitted to the Transit Maps Facebook page by Taylor Gibson. While nowhere near as complex as the New York system featured previously, it’s still an interesting look at a successful rail transit system.
For those unfamiliar with Portland, the thicker lines (Yellow, Green, Blue and Red – shown here as pink for visual clarity, I think) are the MAX light rail, while the thinner aqua and lime green lines are the Portland Streetcar, which has recently expanded to the eastern side of the Willamette River (the top half of this photo).
Eventually, the aqua “Loop” streetcar line will cross back over to the western side of the Willamette at the extreme right of this photo via the new transit-only bridge that is currently being constructed. The bridge will also carry buses, pedestrians, cyclists and the new Orange MAX line.
Photo Source: DubbaG/Wikipedia – Creative Commons License
Rather lovely subway map-styled infographic/illustration showing “six of the world’s most extreme roads and the places they connect”. Commissioned for Mazda’s Zoom Zoom e-magazine.
Source: Christian Tate’s website
Submitted by Kyril Negoda.
Milan boasts an comprehensive transportation system, consisting of a Metro, trams and buses. This map shows the ATM system in 1982, when the Metro was only 18 years old and consisted of just two lines. Not shown are the suburban rail services, which are operated by a separate company, although stations with transfers to it and mainline trains are indicated.
The first thing that really jumps out are the rings of tram and bus routes that go around the ancient core of the city, rather than through it — narrow, winding medieval streets preclude much transit from entering that part of the city. It certainly creates a strong visual look for the map, cleverly underpinned by also showing the main parks of the city, giving a strong sense of scale and geography to this otherwise very stylised map.
Have we been there? Yes, but I mainly walked the compact historical core without need for transportation.
What we like: Visually pleasing and oh-so-Italian in its design sensibilities. Takes a lot of information and displays it effectively and with some considerable style.
What we don’t like: Differentiating stop/station ticks from the actual routes themselves can be tricky in some of the denser areas of the system. The black lines for intermodal stations can similarly be a little difficult to decipher, especially when they cross many route lines or are close together.
Our rating: A fine example of early 1980s transit map design. It still blows my mind that complex network maps like this were designed and executed without the aid of computers. Three-and-a-half stars.
Source: Stagniweb – Italian Railways site
Fantastic work from Transit Maps reader Arnorian showing the New York Subway, PATH and NJ Transit Lines on top of an aerial photograph of central New York City. When you view a transit system like New York’s through the limitations of a small printed or on-line map (be it the official map, the Vignelli diagram or even the hybrid Kick Map), it’s easy to forget just how big and complex it is. A representation like this shows that complexity and scale to full effect, and also looks quite breathtakingly gorgeous.
Update: I’ve replaced the image with a newer version that has been amended to take into account some comments that readers have made. I’d also like to properly attribute the photographer who took the photo that the map is overlaid on: Dennis Dimick – go and check out his Flickr stream!
Source: Skyscrapercity forum thread
Greetings from beautiful, sunny Sydney, where I’m currently visiting family — my first time back home for six years. Of course, I can’t help but look around and see transit maps wherever I go, and here’s the one that shows the Harbour City’s extensive and under-rated ferry network.
Most notably, the map shows which wharf each ferry leaves from at Circular Quay, the main hub of the system. The importance of knowing this cannot be understated, so it’s nice to see it shown so clearly.
A little strangely, zone information is shown for the river services (west of Circular Quay), but not for the Harbour. A trip to Manly requires a MyFerry2 ticket, but that is not indicated here.
Aesthetically, the map follows pretty standard transit map rules, although there’s some weird angles on the Manly and Watsons Bay routes that detract from the look somewhat.
Our rating: competent-looking effort missing some important information. Two-and-a-half stars.
Submitted by Sam Huddy, who says:
This is a strip map of the Santa Monica Air Line that appears on several station platforms along the Expo Line in Los Angeles. As far as I know, this idea is original to the Metro era. As a work of art, the stops are unlabeled, and typical of the PE, it’s unclear what makes some stops “major” or “minor.”
Transit Maps says:
This is actually a lovely little homage from the LA Metro: acknowledging what came before them (the Expo Line utilises much of the Air Line’s original right of way) and giving it due credit. Love it!
Historical note: the Santa Monica Airline was a Pacific Electric streetcar service that ran from downtown LA to Santa Monica from 1909 to 1953.
Source: Photographed by Sam
