Boston MBTA Green Line Average Weekday Traffic (2010) by Barrett Lane

January 4, 2013
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Wednesday’s post, Subterranean Veins of Europe, and its discussion of design choices distorting data reminded me of this map/graph sent to me by Barrett Lane last year. At first glance, this is a really neat and cleverly devised concept: the ridership numbers for each station on Boston’s Green Line are presented in the form of a stylised map of the lines, with vertical bars representing those numbers. It looks great, there’s some solid data behind the graphic, and the visual conceit is very appropriate.

However, there’s one major flaw that – for me – stops this graphic from being a total success. Barrett has used three different vertical scales for his graphs, which prevents rapid visual comparison between numbers (which one might say is the whole point of graphical presentation of data).

The same height represents 5,000 riders on the “B” and “C” branches, 4,000 riders on the “D” and “E” branches, and 20,000 on the main trunk line. The graphic would be far more effective if the bars for the trunk line stations towered above those of the branch lines, don’t you think?

Source: Barrett Lane

Photo: Direction in a Blur of Confusion

January 4, 2013
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Great motion blur photo from the Washington, DC Metro.

Source: itsmaddness/Flickr

Unofficial Map: Metro-North Railroad, New York by Robert O’Connell

January 3, 2013
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Transit maps on Wikipedia can be a bit of a mixed bag. Anyone can contribute, so the quality can range from mediocre to awesome. However, Robert McConnell –also known as “the Port of Authority” – consistently produces some fantastic work. We’ve previously featured his Boston MBTA Commuter Rail map (October 2011, 5 stars), and here’s another fantastic piece.

We’ve also featured unofficial maps that show all commuter and regional rail out of New York before (Carter Green, Oct. 2012, 4.5 stars and Jake Berman, Oct. 2012, 4 stars), so it’s nice to see a map that concentrates solely on one “brand” of commuter rail, and does such a good job of it.

The map definitely wears its influences on its sleeve – the beige background, tightly-spaced Helvetica, and the severe angular diagrammatic form of the map itself are all highly reminiscent of Massimo Vignelli’s 1970s New York Subway map – but it’s still excellently executed. The addition of curves instead of sharp angles where the tracks change direction help to soften the angularity and provide a nice flow to the routes.

(Later Note: Of course, it’s even more reminiscent of the New York commuter rail map designed in 1974 by Joan Charysyn.)

Some nice lateral thought has gone into this as well: almost uniquely, Robert has angled Manhattan Island at 45 degrees to the right of vertical, which works very nicely in simplifying the routes to the north and east.

He also neatly shows Harlem and New Haven line game day services to Yankee Stadium, and the (NJ Transit) Meadowlands shuttle, but curiously omits the New Haven Line “Train to the Game” Meadowlands game day service which runs from New Haven to Seacaucus Junction via Penn Station.

Overall, quite beautifully done. 4.5 stars.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Photo: The Tiniest Underground Map

January 3, 2013
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Illustrating a problem with strip maps that only show stations in the direction of travel: the second-last stop on the line has a stupid-looking map.

Source: jbbartram/Instagram

Infographic: Subterranean Veins of Europe

January 2, 2013
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Here’s an interesting “map” of Europe’s subway systems that was originally featured in a weekly cultural supplement to Milan’s Corriere Della Sera newspaper. The map looks fantastic, and allows all sorts of comparisons between the underground rail systems of Europe, from cost of tickets (cleverly shown as a blue ring of differing thicknesses: the thicker the ring, the more expensive a ticket is), users per day, total length of each system and even a simple chronological ordering of each line opening for the larger systems. I especially like the length comparisons to other long things in Europe at the bottom right.

The English translations are somewhat imperfect (I’m presuming it read a lot better in the original Italian), but everything is pretty understandable, as a good infographic should be!

However, there is one major flaw with this graphic: the large circles around each city are labelled as “radius”, which leads me to expect that the circle shows the relative geographic size of each system. However, it actually uses the entire system length as the radius, which is almost entirely pointless and greatly exaggerates the relative size of the systems. For example, London’s “radius” is shown as a massive 402km (250 miles), when the actual maximum geographical radius is closer to 30km (18.5 miles). Paris’ incredibly dense Metro network (almost all contained within the Boulevard Périphérique) suddenly becomes a huge circle that gives little idea of the system’s tight spacing. It’s a strange design decision that distorts the data underlying the graphic badly, in my opinion.

Source: accurat.it/Flickr

London Underground Map Tin in the Doctor Who Christmas Special, “The Snowmen”

December 29, 2012
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It’s not very often I get to combine two of my absolute favourite things in one post: Doctor Who and transit maps! Without giving too much away (spoilers, sweetie!), the tin is presented in-story as being from 1967, and it looks like the BBC props department did a pretty decent job. The map shown on the tin is indeed Paul Garbutt’s 1964 map, which can be differentiated from the very similar 1970 map – even on-screen like this – because of the enlarged “U” and “D” in the “UNDERGROUND” roundel. By 1970, all letters in the logo were the same height.

There is actually a very clever point to the exact dating of the tin to 1967, but again… spoilers!

Photo: Santa Consulting Map in Subway

December 20, 2012
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Santa: “Excuse me, but which stop should I use for Macy’s?”

Her: “Why did I sit under the subway map?!”

Photo credit: Erich Hartmann

“Storylines”: the Literary London Tube Map by Anna Burles

December 20, 2012
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Storylines

London’s iconic tube map is transformed into a pit-stop journey through classic styles of storytelling, with the individual tube lines turned into genres and sub genres of literature. The depths of the Northern Line are made over into the aptly named Horror Line. The Bakerloo Line coursing past Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street becomes, of course, the Crime & Mystery Line. And the pink trajectory of the Hammersmith & City is converted to the Romance Line. Each Storyline features a range of illustrations bringing to life both classics and mavericks from that theme, with a genre-defining work lurking at each journey’s end. Stations falling on intersecting Storylines get a sub-genre cross over. Many many days and weeks were spent researching and crafting this piece.

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of the whole “let’s use a well known transit map and replace the station names with something else” thing, but I’m going to make an exception for this stunning poster by artist Anna Burles. This is beautifully done, and – for once – the interchanges between the genre/route lines have actually been thought about properly.

Photo: Barcelona Wayfinding

December 20, 2012
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Not only is this an awesome picture, but it really shows off how the Barcelona Metro map is part of a greater, unified, wayfinding scheme. Here, on one panel, we’ve got a nice big map, information about the Metro, a complete cross-referenced list of stations, and a local area map showing the transportation options around the current station. Wonderful stuff.

Source: albertmiralles/Flickr – link no longer active

Official Map: Brussels Metro, Tram and Rail Network, 2012

December 19, 2012
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Having touched briefly on the Brussels map with this previous post, I thought it was time to take a proper look at the current official map.

Have we been there? Yes, back in 2003, but I walked pretty much everywhere and didn’t use the Metro/tram system. I did catch trains from Brussels to other cities in Belgium, however.

What we like: The treatment of the Metro part of the system is excellent, with a nice solid 90-degree angle design really accentuating the orbital nature of lines 2 and 6. Strong, yet interesting, choices for the route lines seem to be aimed at maximising contrast between adjacent lines: the lines are paired in colours that are opposite each other on a colour wheel (blue/orange and purple/yellow).

The map still looks nice and clean despite the bilingual French/Dutch labelling required for many stations.

What we don’t like: The map is less impressive when it comes to some of the design choices made for the tram network – the yellow used for line 7 is so pale that it needs to be outlined in grey, which then makes that line look visually too strong. Line 7’s treatment at terminus stations is also inconsistent with all the other lines: its terminus dot sits above the station marker like the others, but its route line lies underneath the station.

An inconsistent approach to naming stations for the tram routes: most of the stations that don’t interact with the Metro system remain nameless, except for a few on the eastern part of Line 7… why are these stations different to the others?

The pastel striped main rail lines take quite a bit of  getting used to: the effect does reduce their importance in the information hierarchy, but it all just looks a little 1980s after a while. 

Our rating: If it was stripped back to show just the Metro, this would be a wonderfully strong map. As it is, each subsequent mode reduces the visual focus of the map and ends up as a slightly unsatisfying final product. Stilll very competently done, however. Three stars.

Source: Official STIB website