Photo: BART System Map

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Lovely minimalist photo of the platform at North Berkeley BART station. But where is everbody?

Source: myelectricsheep/Flickr

Unofficial Map: Crosscut’s Seattle Link Light Rail Strip Map

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Crosscut, a non-profit news website centered on Washington State’s Puget Sound Region, has been talking about Link light rail’s signage for a while now. Their point about the minimal directional signage at SeaTac Airport to guide you to the train is valid, but their problem with Link’s own in-car strip map is less well founded.

They recently called for new designs as part of a competition, but unfortunately didn’t receive any. So they took it upon themselves to design one, and came up with the map at the bottom of the image above. They seem to think it successful, but I have to disagree in just about every respect.

The main problem with their redesign is that it doesn’t take into account where the map is to be used. It’s meant to sit above the door of a light rail carriage, which means it’s around six-and-a-half feet off the ground. Unless you’re very tall, you’re never going to get closer than about a foot to it. The train will often be crowded, and that means you may have to read it from even further away than that, while the train is moving. Simplicity, large type and ease of use are paramount.

I chose the image above because it simulates those typical viewing conditions. The top image shows the current strip map, the bottom one is a hastily composited version of the Crosscut map onto the same picture. At the same viewing distance, almost all of the extra information Crosscut has included is absolutely impossible to read, and even the station names are smaller. The huge lists of every bus route that connects with Link are useless, as are the points of interest listed at each station. If bus routes had to be included on a map like this, I would advocate that only frequent or rapid routes be shown.

The twists and turns in the route line on the Crosscut map make the one really vital piece of information that a traveller needs to know  – how many stops until I get off? – that much harder to find. It’s much easier to visually scan along a straight line than a bent one. A straight line also acts as a subtle guarantee of directness and speed, while a bent one implies a circuitous and longer trip. Yes, it’s propaganda (and sometimes close to a lie), but that’s one of the reasons that route lines are straightened out.

Crosscut also mention (but don’t show) the possibility of adding QR codes to the map for further information, but really – who’s going to hold their smart phone up to a map mounted above the door to scan a QR code?

The one part of the Crosscut map that I agree with – the deletion of the awful “Constellation” icons – may not even be possible. I seem to recall being told that their inclusion was mandatory as a visual aid for illiterate transit users.

Packing an in-car strip map with all this extraneous information is poor information design, and would be much better left to a unified system of system maps, locality maps, and wayfinding signage — which already exists at most Link stations.

Source for original “before” photo: Alex Abboud/Flickr

The Almost Official Map: Ilya Birman’s Moscow Metro Map

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I’ve seen a lot of tweets recently linking to the design process page for Art Lebedev’s new official Moscow Metro map (Transit Maps wrote about this page way back on February 4th).

However, I haven’t seen as much attention being paid to the second-place winning map, designed by Ilya Birman. He also has a design process page for his map, and it’s just as fascinating as the Lebedev one.

He discusses the difficulty of having to label the map in Cyrillic and Latin scripts, as well as the problems posed by stations having multiple names, depending which line they are on.

The map also employs an unusual station-finding technique that relates all stations to the Circle Line, rather than the more usual grid look-up. It seems a little quirky at first, but it’s actually surprisingly intuitive after a while.

The page also addresses important issues like colour-blindness (the map holds up fairly well) and what to do when a station named Aeroport no longer has an airport anywhere near it.

Well worth a look, if only to see the sheer amount of thought and effort that goes into making a transit map of this quality. For me, there’s very little between this map and the Lebedev map, and both would have been very worthy of being the public face of this venerable Metro system.

Submission – Official Map: Josephine County Transit Bus Map, Oregon

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Submitted by Matthew Harris, who says:

This is the official transit map for Grants Pass, Oregon (Josephine County) and it will supersede your German map (February 2013, 0 stars) as the worst transit map.

Transit Maps says:

I knew it!!!

I knew as soon as I gave a score of zero, something else would appear that was even worse. A blurry, muddy, incomprehensible mess without any useful labeling at all. The inclusion of property boundaries on the background layer makes the main part of the map (the city of Grants Pass, Oregon) so dark that it’s impossible to tell where the black “transfer points” actually are.

Our rating: The only thing saving this map from a rating lower than zero is the fact that there’s a Google Maps transit planner link on the County website, which actually works rather well. It really should just act as the official map, because this is terrible.

Source: Official Josephine County website

Photo: Los Angeles Rail Maps

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Great photo showing how the LA Metro maps are part of a larger, unified, wayfinding system. Consistency of typography and brand are key – note how the titles of each map are in the same location and typeface every time, as is the Metro logo: colour is the main differentiator of information.

Source: yreese/Flickr

London Underground Abstract: Barbican by Nick Saltmarsh

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I’m totally loving this series of work by Nick Saltmarsh on Flickr. By zooming right in on details of the Tube Map, he makes us take another look at something that’s so familiar and ubiquitous.

Check out the full set here. Some are more successful than others, but all are interesting… and some make awesome abstract art pieces.

Official Map: Bus System of Meiningen, Germany

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Submitted by Heikki Salko, who says:

You keep mentioning how “there must be something worse out there.” Personally I like to think it will always hold true, but I’d still like to see your opinion on this official map from a small German town. Someone linked to it in a discussion about line numbering/naming systems, but I have to admit I didn’t quite have the courage to try figuring out that much detail…

As a related question, do you ever get the urge to just scribble a new map together in an hour and mail it to a transit agency since it’d still be better than their existing one? I know I do, and I’m hardly a professional.

Transit Maps says:

I think Heikki may have done it, folks. If any map deserves a rating of zero, it’s this one. Technically deficient, confusing to use and hideous to behold: this one’s got it all. And I can see why the route naming conventions were being discussed: here we have the A/B, the B/A, the B1, the C and the C1… clear as mud. Most of these names don’t even fit properly into their little label boxes on the map, making them almost impossible to read as well.

And if you foolishly assumed north was at the top of this map, you’d be wrong. That’s east. Well, kind of. The map is so hopelessly distorted – even for a diagrammatic map – that direction and the relative location of stops is almost totally random.

We also have white bus stops, blue stops and yellow stops, but no explanation of what that means, here or on the website. Some sort of zoning, maybe? Anyone’s guess!

Stop names regularly run into the stop marker, sometimes so badly that you can’t see the entire last letter of the name! The two zones – one for the city of Meiningen, the other for the area around the smaller village of  Herpf – are badly drawn: a rough ellipse that clashes with stop labels, and a shonky polygon that’s drawn that way in order to avoid the text and logo at the top left of the map.

Our rating: Absolutely appalling and so at odds with the normal efficient German transit map style. The Deutsche Bahn logo (a German design classic) must be embarrassed to be on a map this bad. I’m going to do it, everyone – for the first time, a map gets a ZERO. 

As to Heikki’s second question: All the time! However, it’s a matter of finding the time and prioritising projects for me. I have a full-time job and a two-year old son: “free time” seems to be a dwindling resource for me these days! 

Source: Official MBB website

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Official Maps: In-Car Strip Maps for Loop or Circle Lines

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An anonymous follower asks: “Do you have any examples of a line map for a loop/circle line? I’m curious as to how those are implemented.”

Transit Maps says:

Generally, a strip map for a loop or circle line follows much the same principles as a usual one, although the available space may have to be used a little more creatively in order to fit things in. Above are a few interesting examples.

London’s Circle Line: With recent additions, this line is no longer a true loop – for which the travelling public is sincerely thankful, as any problems on the Circle used to impact the District and Hammersmith & City lines terribly, throwing much of the Underground into chaos. From the picture above, it can be seen that the Circle Line’s strip map utilises a much deeper space above the doors than many Underground strip maps do. Often, they run in a single, shallow line above the windows of the carriage. The other lines that share track with the Circle Line are also shown, but not lines that cross it: these are shown as standard interchanges instead.

Chicago’s Orange Line: This line runs around Chicago’s central Loop and returns back the way it came. The map handles things in a pretty straightforward way, although, interestingly, the thickness of the route line halves while it’s going around the loop. The direction of travel around the loop is clearly indicated with arrows.

Tokyo’s Yamanote Line: Of course, the Japanese use technology to display information about their famous circle line! Each car on the Yamanote Line has LCD displays that indicate the current station (the red box), as well as the estimated time to the next few stations. The display alternates between Japanese and English information.

Glasgow Subway: Well, the whole subway is a loop – earning the system the nickname “The Clockwork Orange” – so all their maps look like this. Despite the inner and outer loops travelling in opposite directions, this map neglects to point out which one goes where!

Image Sources:
Circle Line (stavioni/Flickr)
Chicago Orange Line (Tape/Flickr)
Tokyo Yamanote Line (All in Japan)
Glasgow Subway (Martin Deutsch/Flickr)

Historical Map: 1970 NYMTA Graphics Standards Manual “Inside Line Map”

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Yummy excerpt from the Massimo Vignelli/Unimark 1970 style guide, showing style and dimensions for in-car strip maps, using the “E” line as an example. Look at how everything is defined precisely and consistently: there’s absolutely no room for misinterpretation here.

Want to see more from the manual? Check out this great Flickr photoset.

Source: Blue Pencil

Unofficial Map: “Barcelona Tourist Guide” Metro Map

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As you should know, official transit maps are copyrighted materials. Commercial reproduction of the map by third parties normally requires permission and payment of a licence fee – often a hefty one.

A lot of people don’t want to pay that fee, so they design their own version of the map instead. This can result in maps that are eerily similar to the official one, nicely designed but different maps, or horrendous monstrosities. Guess which category this map falls into?

June 2023: Image removed at the request of the rights holder, but you can view it on their website here.

Have we been there? Yes. And with the official map (October 2011, 4.5 stars), the Metro is super easy to use.

What we like: At least the lines are the right colours.

What we don’t like: Sooooo ugly. Call-out boxes for every station waste space and look terrible. The worst example is Trinitat Nova station, which has two call-out boxes, one for Lines 3 and 11 and a separate one for Line 4, because the designer couldn’t work out how to have the three different line colours in the background of one call-out box.

Which way is north? Barcelona is actually oriented about halfway between the cardinal points, so giving some sort of directional indication on the Metro map is very important. The official map includes major roads, the coastline and a north pointer to help out: this map gives you nothing at all. What appears to be north here is actually north-east.

The integrated tram system is missing entirely, as there’s simply no room for it to fit. There’s actually a second map on the website for this system, where the main Metro map is tinted back without labels and the tram system is slapped on over the top.

Our rating: Hideous and confusing. I thought long and hard about giving this a zero, but surely there’s still something worse than this out there.

Source: Barcelona Tourist Guide