Project: Denver Rail Network 2044 Spiral Map

October 4, 2020
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I originally posted this map on Twitter, but I’m also putting it on the blog for posterity, as well as to fully detail the design decisions that went into it.

I’ve long thought that there’s been a design opportunity with Denver rail maps for a large circular arc for the light rail stations running south around the edge of the downtown area out of Union Station. I’ve doodled with ideas over the years, but I’ve never found them particularly satisfying or aesthetically pleasing. There was always a disconnect between the curved sections and the regular orthogonal lines which stopped the map acting as a cohesive whole. Until finally, I thought: what if I did away with straight lines all together?

It was certainly a concept well outside my comfort zone, as I’m very much used to working with straight lines and 45-degree angles. The relationship between elements is fairly easy for me to define when working within these “regular” design rules, but curved lines are another whole world to me! I had to draw an intentionally loose working diagram with a Sharpie before I even started work on the computer to convince myself that this could even be done. The fat tip of the Sharpie prevented me from getting overly concerned with detail, allowing me to concentrate on the general form and flow of the map. One thing it showed me was that such a diagram was still basically topologically correct: all the lines ended up in the pretty much the right place relative to each other. Encouraged, I began!

Even with the sketch, it look me a few different versions before I finally hit upon a workable solution to my problem: spirals! Concentric circles were almost there, but created an ugly “peanut” shape in the middle of the map (which you can see in the working sketch), where I really wanted a smooth curve from Union Station all the way around to Peoria. Some trial-and-error gave me the right spiral decay required to achieve this and still leave room for station labelling, and then I set up a set of nested spirals for all the lines out of Union Station to act as master curves. From there, it was really just a matter of cutting the spirals at the right points and rotating/reflecting them to join back together correctly. In a way, I basically “unrolled” the spirals to go where I needed them to – along with a couple of shorter connecting curves where the lines change direction sharply (see the “G” and “W” lines). Spacing stations evenly along the curves provided a new challenge, but I was able to work out a system that gave pleasing results: there’s a lot more eyeballing and manual adjustment of labels to get things looking optically “right” than there is with standard 45-degree maps!

The downtown loop was probably the most challenging part of the map, and I almost chickened out and made those lines straight. However, I persevered and came up with a solution that allowed me to keep everything curvy while still staying somewhat true to the real-world alignment of things. I’m especially pleased with the way that the “L” line swoops gracefully up to join the “A” line at 38th & Blake: it made this troublesome part worth the effort!

While I’m extremely happy with the finished product, there are still a few things that I can improve – not the least of which is learning to manipulate Bezier curves so that the end result looks more organic and a little less mathematical. It’s a real skill, and I’m not quite there yet. Some have commented that the map is incomplete without the downtown/mall shuttle buses and the Flatiron Flyer bus services to Boulder, and these concerns are completely valid. I’m not sure I’ll ever address them, as I feel I’ve done what I wanted to with this proof-of-concept map, but I hear you!

However, the map has generally been received quite well, which is pretty darn gratifying when you take a left-field design approach. Some comments from Twitter are featured below: let me know what you think in the comments!

Submission – Unofficial Maps: Sydney and Melbourne “Body Swap” Maps by Thomas Soo

September 21, 2020
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Submitted by Thomas, who says:

I felt like Melbourne was so far away because of the Covid-Curtain and desperately wanted to do anything but study for uni this weekend so I made this!

It’s amazing how different the approaches to passenger commute information, up-front legibility and overall design cues differ between the rival cities.

Transit Maps says:

What a fun little project!

What I particularly like is just how far Thomas has taken the “body swap”: the real Melbourne map shows V-Line services out into regional Victoria, so the “Melbourne-ised” Sydney map does the same… whereas the official Sydney map stops at the edges of Greater Sydney, so the “Sydney-fied” Melbourne map follows suit. City Circle becomes City Loop, and vice versa. Line nomenclature gets swapped, and so on. Even service names become more like their adopted homes: V-Line becomes VicLink to mimic NSW’s TrainLink. It’s all rather wonderfully done.

Overall, Thomas has done a great job of recreating each style, although the type for the Melbourne map isn’t quite the right font and should be black instead of dark gray. The big terminus lettering for Cranbourne and Frankston seems unnecessarily cramped, and I really would have liked to see the Stony Point Shuttle line use the exact shade of teal that the Sydney Metro uses – most of the work has already been done by using the same cased line and the superfluous “S” for each station marker… the right colour just would have made everything perfect. The Sydney map is pretty much spot-on, however – even down to the way that lines outside the “zone boundary” get compressed into very tight and unrealistic spaces.

The other main takeaway is just how much this version of Sydney map looks like the pre-2013 CityRail map (September 2012, 3.5 stars), which probably says something about the slightly more generic design language that the current Melbourne map uses: ticks for stations, rounded corner rectangles for interchanges, etc.

Head over to Thomas’ Behance page for more detail on the project.

Source: Thomas Soo/Behance

Historical Map: Proposed Personal Rapid Transit Demonstration Site, Denver, 1972

September 18, 2020
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Long before the current idea of putting Teslas in tunnels and calling it rapid transit, there was PRT, or Personal Rapid Transit. The idea was that many small carriages on guideways could take people directly to their intended destination anywhere along the route – described as a “horizontal elevator” by John Volpe, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation at the time.

In the early 1970s, Denver beat out 29 other cities around the U.S. and was given an $11 million grant to explore this new technology. This map was produced by the Rocky Mountain News to accompany an article about the project in October 1972. This looks like the original camera-ready artwork, complete with white paint touch-ups. The reproduction in the newspaper would have been much cleaner than this. The obvious hand-lettering for some of the road labels strikes me as a bit slap-dash, and I actually wonder whether the lighter parts of the map were meant to reproduce at all or are just there as a guide for the graphic artist to draw the final map on top of. PMT cameras generally just exposed either pure black or white unless a halftone screen was employed, so I could well believe that the lighter parts would just drop out during exposure. Yes, I operated one of these cameras for the first three or four years of my graphic design career…

Spoiler: the Denver PRT never got built, as public opinion rapidly turned against it once everyone realised there’d be elevated PRT guideways all over town (the plan was for over 100 miles of PRT track!) and the whole thing was going to be extraordinarily expensive. The initial 5.5-mile demonstration track shown here was originally estimated at $40 million, or around $248.7 million in today’s money.

More information on this weird chapter in Denver’s transportation history can be found in this article at the Denver Public Library.

Source: Denver Public Library

Submission – Official Map: Île-de-France Compact Network Map, 2020

September 14, 2020
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Submitted by Hélio, who says:

I saw your already covered the Paris regional public transport map before, and I was wondering whether you had seen the very cute compact version you can see on the Vianavigo site when you zoom out. What do you think?

Transit Maps says:

Tiny and adorable, this diagram really only exists to say, “Hey, you’ve zoomed out too far!” Impressively though, it retains the same structure as the more detailed maps of the other zoom levels, which gives a seamless effect when zooming in and out. Each level of zoom on the site introduces more detail – it’s only when you zoom all the way in that all the Métro stations are labelled, for example – which is a nice use of the interactive map technology. Viewing maps online in small viewports is not my favourite way of doing things, but at least this map has considered its content at each view level: regional overview drilling down to a detailed station-by-station view.

This tiny diagram might only be a placeholder but all the terminus stations are labelled, so it still has some use. And with its thick lines and white station dots, there’s just a hint of the old Rudi Meyer RER diagrams in it as well. Perhaps some parts are overly detailed (the logos for the Orlybus and CDGVAL services; the under-construction part of Line “L”), but it still holds together fairly well. I like it as a tiny little “rough sketch” of the regional lines, inviting you to zoom further in.

Source: Vianavigo site

Historical Map: West Yorkshire ElectroBus Informational Leaflet, 1985

September 9, 2020
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On from the “what could have been?” files – a proposed double-decker trolleybus service covering 76 kilometres (just under 50 miles) of routes in West Yorkshire.

Between 1980 and 1990, the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive repeatedly attempted to gain government funding for this project: this leaflet looks like one of those efforts, extolling the benefits of such a network. Eventually, a private bus operator announced a plan to operate a diesel bus service along the proposed route and the initiative was shelved. Of interest is the concept that the trolleybus could eventually be replaced by a “new Rapid Transit System” called ElectroLine – very similar to the idea often presented today that BRT can be replaced with light rail when ridership reaches a certain level.

The map itself is simple and high-level, with the three phases of the project simply denoted by colour. There’s no detailed route or stop information, but it serves the purpose of supporting the text on the page. The real winner here is the little illustration of a proposed double-decker trolleybus vehicle… lovely!

Source: PaulWestYorks/Flickr

Submission – Unofficial Map: Tel Aviv Metro 2040 by Alan Tanaman

September 8, 2020
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Submitted by Alan, who says:

Still love reading your blog after all these years. The NTA has just released a new map for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area mass transit system. There are currently three light rail lines under construction (red, green, and purple), partly running underground, and due to be completed by 2026. A metro is planned for launch around 2040.

I felt that while the official map is not bad, it does not have a clear hierarchy between the two modes. It also lacked coherence with strange and inconsistent angles. On the plus side, the official map respects geography more than mine, and shows all the station names.

So I decided to knock together something of my own in Visio (yes, I know). The remit was to create a metro-focused map with 60 degree angles to create a triangular theme. The light rail lines are inserted around the metro layout. The theme comes at the expense of geographical fidelity.

Apologies that it is only in Hebrew at this point in time. The solid blobs are metro and underground light rail stations. The large hollow blobs are light rail stations that interchange with metro or rail. I decided not to label all the other light rail stations.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Transit Maps says:

Alan’s done a pretty good job of self-analysing his own diagram above, and I agree on most of his points. I find his diagram superior to the official map in most respects: it may be more geographically correct, but it lacks visual punch and clarity. The lines just sort of wander across the canvas, and there’s no real differentiation between the light rail lines and the Metro itself.

Alan’s 30/60 degree lines give coherence to the network and have a pleasing angularity to them that suits the Hebrew script used for the labels. The triangular shape made by the circumferential M3 is a particularly nice design element. Breaking the M1 and M3 up into separate lines to show their service patterns works well: it’s especially good at showing that the service to the airport will operate as two-station branch line. Perhaps an airport icon like the official map employs could be useful?

Alan highlights what he sees as a major flaw of his own diagram: that the light rail lines only have labels for a few stations. However, as the focus of the diagram is to be “Metro-centric” (in Alan’s own words), I think this is forgivable. There’s enough information to work out how the two networks interchange with each other, and the Metro is given good emphasis over the light rail.

Our final word: A lovely diagram, with some great compositional work and simplification. Nice work, Alan!

Historical Map: Market-Frankford Line Map, Philadelphia, June 1968

September 7, 2020
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A great photograph of what looks like a wall-mounted map showing subway service in Philadelphia dated June 1968, with particular emphasis on the Market-Frankford Line.

The map is interesting for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is that it would be one of the last maps of the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) era, as the PTC would be acquired by its successor, SEPTA, in September 1968, just a few months later. The handsome winged PTC logo can be seen at the top right of the map.

Also seen just before its transformation into the modern line we know today is the Bridge Line over the Delaware River to Camden, the precursor to today’s PATCO Speedline to Lindenwold. The conversion of the line to the Speedline would commence in August 1968, truncating the Broad Street Line spur at a new station at 8th and Market. As seen on this map, the spur used to run concurrently with Bridge Line services all the way through to 15th-16th & Locust.

The map is also notable for its depiction of the rush hour A/B stopping pattern on the Market-Frankford line, with squares representing stations that all trains call at, and lettered circles showing the A- or B-only stations.

Stylistically, I really like the elegant way that the two rivers fade out almost wave-by-wave, and there’s some pretty solid mid-century American typography as well.

Our final word: A good-looking map with some great historical context as well. What’s not to love?

Source: David Pirmann/Flickr

Submission – Melbourne Suburban Rail in the Style of Vignelli by Philip Mallis

August 21, 2020
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Originally submitted by Philip himself, with further submissions reminding me of it recently. Of the map, Philip says:

This is my interpretation of what Melbourne’s rail network could look like in the style of the 1972 Vignelli New York Subway map.

I have depicted the current Melbourne metropolitan passenger rail network as it stands in 2020, plus one tram route. Given this is a map of Melbourne with the largest tram network in the world, I wanted to include at least one tram route. Why the route 96 specifically? It’s the closest thing that we have to light rail, being separated from vehicle traffic for most of its route, and it now has 100% accessible stops.

I have also taken some small liberties of rebranding the network to reflect the original work more closely.

For example, creating a new ‘Metropolitan Transport Authority’ (similar to ‘The Met’ and its various iterations) and designating a colour and letter for each line.

Transit Maps says:

Yes, there are way too many Vignelli-esque reimaginings of transit maps these days – see these maps of Los Angeles and Portland that I’ve previously featured – but this is a fun little diversion for a Friday afternoon.

Generally, Philip has nailed the look and feel of the Vignelli diagram well – the reimagined logo for the Melbourne “MTA” is a particularly nice touch – though I think that Vignelli’s insistence on each service having a full route line on the map would mean that the Alamein, Belgrave and Lilydale lines would get separated out instead of appearing as branches of the one trunk line. This strict interpretation of the Vignelli style would make the City Loop completely unworkable, however, so I can see why Philip has taken this approach.

Less forgivable is the repetition of letters for line designations: only “SS” shuttle lines repeat on the Vignelli map, so I don’t think having three “S” lines (Sunbury, Sandringham, and Stony Point) is really permissible. Taking further inspiration from the source, maybe one of the “divisions” of this fantasy MTA could use numerical designations?

The map does have one masterstroke, however – the legend of services at the top clearly and plainly explains service patterns for each line, including when each one goes clockwise or counter-clockwise around the Loop, long an arcane mystery. As this information is impossible to convey on a static map, this explanatory text is the best solution I’ve yet seen, and perfectly in line with the similar legend on the Vignelli diagram.

Our final word: A great bit of fun that looks the part, and also manages to convey some really useful rider information.

Source: Philip’s blog

Historical Map: Boston and Maine Railroad and Connections, 1915

August 20, 2020
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I’m loving this totally bonkers diagram of lines owned, leased or controlled by the Boston & Maine RR in 1915. An increasingly complex system of line colours combined with dashes, dots and zig-zags attempts to record all the various agreements in place for line leases and trackage rights. The B&M itself is the yellow lines to the right of the map – all the other coloured lines are lines that they have some level of control over, and the thin black lines are competitor railroads.

Production-wise, it looks like the black parts of the map have been printed onto cloth, and all the colours have been hand-painted over the top – you can see some smudges and smears in certain locations. The map also may have been amended by hand at some point: a red hatched line from Manchester to Concord has been painted over the printed matter.

Stylistically, the piece is more diagram than map with everything straightened out as much as possible, but it’s fairly primitive work. Still, the resemblance to modern colour-coded transit maps is impossible to ignore!

Source: Harvard Library Archives

Unofficial Map: Future Sydney Rail Network by u/Toweringhorizons

August 19, 2020
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I just stumbled across this unofficial vision of Sydney’s rail transit around the year 2030 or so (mainly because the discussion about it on Reddit was linking to old Sydney maps on my blog), and I have to say that I really quite like it.

The 30/60 angles actually suit the network really well, and set up some nice axes and patterns throughout the diagram. I especially like the way the Cumberland Line heads straight up to Richmond from Parramatta, and the way the Northern Line angles back up to rejoin the North Shore Line at Hornsby. It’s a pity that the M1 Metro line has to take that little realignment jog at Cherrybrook, because all the other Metro lines are so straight – the Marrickville to Bankstown section is very impressively handled. The City Circle as an actual circle works surprisingly well considering the angularity of the rest of the diagram.

The light rail lines are handled about as well as they can be at this scale: an indication that they exist and where they interchange with the suburban lines. It’s unfortunate that the walking distance interchange at Lewisham isn’t indicated, but I can see how that would cause difficulties. It’d be nice if the legend for the light rail could be incorporated with the rest of the map information down the right hand side of the diagram: it always looks a little disjointed when there are legends scattered around the map, filling up empty space.

Some slight reconfiguring and realignment could improve the map even more: I’d like to see even spacing for the station labels from Harris Park all the way down to Glenfield, instead of the way the labels tighten up from Canley Vale. There’s the opportunity for a nice horizontal axis across the map by aligning the centres of the Aerotropolis station marker with the horizontal section of the T3 through Carramar and Villawood with the Bankstown to Marrickville section of the M1 line (or perhaps the horizontal part of the T8 Airport line instead?).

Some of the labelling is a bit cramped: the Waterloo label is ambiguously placed, and the line service bullets are jammed up right underneath Lidcombe’s label with no breathing room at all, for example. Overall, the North Shore and Illawarra lines seem more cramped than the rest of the map, though this may be unavoidable on the canvas used.

The codes for regional trains (BMT, CCN, etc.) don’t mean much by themselves: I’d prefer it if full names – Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Newcastle, etc. – were used along with some key destinations listed.

Finally, care needs to be taken when designing a diagram with a dark background: the dark blue Illawarra Line has very little contrast with the background and probably needs to be lightened – possibly adjusting the T2’s cyan colour accordingly.

Our final word: A confident and accomplished diagram, that really only needs some minor tweaking and quality control to be truly excellent. It definitely caught my attention! Three-and-a-half-stars!

Source: Reddit/r/Sydney