Official Future Map: Los Angeles Metro Rail

June 14, 2013
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The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Agency released a “under construction”  map yesterday, showing all the lines that are planned for the near future: Expo Line Phase 2, Gold Line Foothill Extension, the Crenshaw/LAX Line, Purple Line Extension and the ambitious downtown Regional Connector.

Overall, the map fits quite well into the existing LA Metro design aesthetic, although the crowded downtown area is now starting to make the station labelling look a little cramped and messy. It also presents a much larger problem in that its depiction of the Regional Connector is seriously flawed.

As seen in the second picture above, the Connector will cross the Red and Purple Lines after the 7th Street/Metro Center station and have a stop at 2nd Place/Hope – on the west side of the existing Red/Purple tracks. However, the new map chooses to place the 2nd Place/Hope station on the east side of those tracks, and has the entire Connector parallel to them, instead of showing the crossings.

A lot of this comes down to the limited space available in this part of the map, and the Silver Line is already taking up the available space on the west side of the Red/Purple Lines. However, while this is a diagrammatic map, it’s still hugely important that stations are placed in the correct positions relative to each other. Really, the central part of the map should have been completely redesigned to accommodate the Connector in its correct position, rather than simply tacking it on to the existing map.

Once the Connector is completed, it seems likely that service patterns on Metro rail will change, with the Gold, Blue and Expo lines drastically reconfigured – so there’s a chance this somewhat lazy error will get fixed then.

Source: LA Metro website

Photo: Bus Map of Northern Sichuan, China

June 13, 2013
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Just in case you forgot you were looking at a bus map, we’ve helpfully added sixteen – yes, sixteen! – clip art images of buses to remind you.

Pair with a similarly ridiculous train map from Poland.

Source: Philou.cn/Flickr

Historical Map: National Railways of Zimbabwe, c. 1985

June 13, 2013
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A pretty basic two-colour map of the (then newly-independent) Zimbabwe’s rail network produced by the government’s Land Survey Office. Once you look past the eye-searing red ink and “transportation” clip art, there’s a couple of interesting things on the map.

Firstly, the map actually does a pretty good job of showing how Zimbabwe’s rail network fits in with other connecting rail services in southern Africa. Secondly, it shows an interesting colonial oddity: the Zimbabwe National Railway actually runs all the way through Botswana to Mafeking, South Africa (the bottom left quarter of the map). This dates back to 1911, when Rhodesia Railways was granted a special agreement to preserve its rights of access under the Tati Concessions Land Act – basically a huge mineral rights land grab by a private company.

Much of the network shown here is still in use today, but due to the high price of imported diesel fuel in the impoverished nation, Zimbabwe has been forced to utilise old steam trains: coal is plentiful and much cheaper.

Source: mikeyashworth/Flickr

Official Map: RENFE Cercanías Madrid Commuter Rail, 2013

June 12, 2013
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Following on my review of Madrid’s old-is-new Metro Map (June 2013, 3.5 stars), I’ve had quite a few requests for Madrid’s commuter rail map, operated by the state-owned RENFE rail company – so here it is!

The map is a very solid effort, with unusual but effective station markers: small squares that “cut through” the route lines. The overall design is very angular, with no smoothing of the route lines or the zone boundaries that sit behind the map. It certainly helps give the map its own unique look, although I find it a little too harsh.

One negative is the ugly route designations – the bold “C” (perhaps trying to look somewhat like the Cercanías logo) next to a condensed numeral just looks odd and the placement of some of them seems arbitrary and/or cramped.

Finally, the depiction of zones on a transit map is almost always problematic: here, the harshly-angled and oddly-shaped grey areas dominate the map far too much, giving it a zebra-like appearance. The zones also require far too many labels, liberally sprinkled just about everywhere.

Our rating: Informational, with a look all of its own, but let down by a few jarring elements. Solid overall. Three stars.

Source: Official RENFE website

File Under Awesome: London Tube Map Recreated With Lego Bricks

June 12, 2013
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Sent my way by just about everyone this morning, this Lego map is one of five located at Tube stations across London as another part of the Tube’s 150th birthday celebrations. Each map shows the Tube at a different stage of development from the 1920s right through to the version shown here: a near-future map for 2020.

Painstakingly assembled from thousands of Lego bricks, the map looks great, although Neil Bennett from Digital Arts notes that its actual usefulness is pretty limited:

“… in the few moments we were there, tourists and travellers attempted to use the map to navigate their way across London and soon wandered off in search of a real map looking confused. Others were more impressed, and joined us in snapping photos of the map.”

Seeing as the maps are more art than information design, I don’t really see this as a huge problem, myself. The maps will remain on display at King’s Cross (this map), South Kensington, Piccadilly Circus, Green Park, and Stratford stations over the summer, and then will be transferred to the London Transport Museum.

Sources: Design Arts, BuzzFeed UK – with more pictures of the map

Historical Map: Indicateur d’Itinéraires, Paris, c. 2003

June 11, 2013
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An old-school interactive Metro map in Paris. Simply press one of the 360 or so buttons underneath the map, and a path lights up from your current location to your chosen destination. Who needs a fancy touch screen kiosk? I particularly like the way that the furtherest reaches of the RER lines are compressed into diagrammatic form to allow the centre of Paris to be shown as large as possible.

This particular example is still in use, despite it being around ten years out of date: the extension of Ligne 14 from Madeleine to St. Lazare (which opened in December 2003) is shown as being under construction.

Source: Hervé Platteaux/Flickr

Photo: Detail of a Province of Milan Transit Map, Italy

June 6, 2013
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Looks like a visually interesting and abstract map, but I haven’t been able to track down a full version on the Internet. Looks like it might show bus service (green and thin black lines) and regional rail (thick grey line at the bottom of the picture). Does anyone know where I can find the whole map?

Source: mikek/Flickr

Update: More Process Work Behind the New Moscow Metro Map

June 6, 2013
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As we reported late last month, the new Art Lebedev Studios Moscow Metro map is now in use around the system and on trains.

One thing that the studio has been fantastic at right from the start is documenting the creative process, and they’re not finished yet. Over on their website is a wealth of behind the scenes information that shows how much work has been put into these beautiful maps.

The map had to be adapted to fit six types of train carriages, each with different requirements, so the design team made field trips armed with printouts to ensure that everything fitted perfectly. Multiple iterations of the wheelchair-accessible symbol were created, to ensure that it had the same visual weight as the parking symbol that often appears next to it. Allowances for prescribed advertising space was made. The “Rules of the Ride”, prescribed by law, were made attractive and easier to read and separated from the map itself to make the usable space for the actual map larger. Icons were tweaked, revised, and discarded. Even once the design was finalised, there was still multiple rounds of proofing and corrections before the map went live.

Seriously, if you’re at all interested in the design and production of transit maps, you must read this case study. It’s currently in Russian, but Google Chrome/Translate does a pretty good job of at least giving you a good idea of what the plentiful pictures are showing.

Description Page  |  Process  |  In Use

First bonus: the map is available as a vector Adobe Illustrator file for download (EPS, 9.8MB) — free for use by individuals or businesses as long as Lebedev Studios are credited.

Second bonus: At the bottom of the process page is a scrubbable 41-image version of the map that animates the entire history of the Moscow Metro from 1935, all drawn in the style of the new map. Beautiful work!

FIVE STARS!

Historical Map: Mornington Peninsula Road and Bus Lines Map, c. 1940s

June 5, 2013
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Here’s a beautifully drawn old map created for the Peninsula Bus Lines in Victoria, Australia by Robert J. Amor. There’s no date, but the general aesthetics and the presence of “Military Camps” near Mount Martha leads me to believe the map is from around 1940-1947, after which Balcombe Camp became the Army Apprentice School.

Elements to really look out for: the beautiful ornate compass rose, the olde-time scrolls enclosing town names, and the cameo pictures of David Collins, the lieutenant governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) who founded the first colony in modern-day Victoria on the peninsula in 1803; Matthew Flinders, the great naval explorer; and the “wild man” William Buckley. There’s even a nubile mermaid combing her hair at the bottom left!

Source: Frankston City Libraries/Flickr

Official Map: Everything Old is New Again for the Madrid Metro

June 3, 2013
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Over the weekend, Madrid rolled out a new map for its comprehensive Metro and light rail system. After six long and controversial years, the previous map (March 2012, 2.5 stars) – with everything reduced to severe 90-degree angles and very little spatial relationship to the real world – has been consigned to the dustbin.

In its place, a new map that looks strangely familiar. The design of the map has returned in-house and Metro’s designers have obviously looked to the more traditional maps of the past for inspiration: the layout in the central part of Madrid is almost identical to the 1981 map, even taking into account new route lines.

The map also features the Metro’s new controversy: the renaming of Sol station as “Vodafone Sol”, with the telephone company’s logo and distinctive red featured prominently on the map at that location (right in the middle!). Apparently, the cost of producing new maps and brochures is funded by this measure, so we can’t really complain too much, I guess…

Personally, I like this map much better than the previous one, although it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The treatment of terminus stations is clumsy and inconsistent, and the banded fare zones are too hard on the eye – much as they are on the current London Underground map. One thing I do miss from the previous map is the indication of how long (in minutes) transfers between platforms at the bigger interchange stations could take.

Our rating: A (welcome) blast from the past! Three-and-a-half stars.

Source: Metro de Madrid website