A superb cutaway map of the spectacular spiral tunnels on the Albula Railway in Switzerland, drawn for The Eagle magazine in 1952 by prolific artist Leslie Ashwell Wood.
Compare to similar spiral tunnels on the Gotthardbahn.
Source: ausdew/Flickr
Submitted by Jan Kolarik, who says:
Hi Cameron! I was just browsing through your review archives and saw that the last time you covered Prague was in 2012 [A variety of maps were reviewed back then: full service, overview and “just right” Metro and tram – Cam]. Recently the transit authority PID (Pražská integrovaná doprava, Prague integrated transportation) released a map of a never before seen scale that I thought you might be interested in checking out. It’s displayed at information stands near metro station entrances and passengers can pick up free prints from the main railroad station. What’s unique about this map is that it includes absolutely all transit routes managed by PID (universal branding and a united fare system applies) within the limits of Prague: metro, trams, buses as well as commuter trains — and the main focus is on service frequency rather than vehicle type, which I find extremely useful. It also demonstrates the nature of a truly integrated transit system, which, for a transit advocate like me, is quite amazing! I was really wondering what your opinion on this map would be as I was personally super impressed by the author’s attention to detail (train tunnels are particularly lovely). Greetings from the Czech Republic… and keep up the amazing work! I always enjoy reading your reviews.
Transit Maps says:
Detailed maps like these are often hard to review, because I’m looking at a PDF on a screen instead of on a large printed sheet as intended by the designer – this map is meant to be on an A1 sheet (841 x 594mm or about 33.1 x 23.4 inches), so it’s big.
That said, my overall impression is that this is a comprehensive and detailed map of services in and around Prague, a commendable effort indeed. The three Metro lines are thick and bright and underpin the rest of the map – I like the use of the Metro’s distinctive “M-arrow” logo as station markers: it really helps further differentiate these lines from everything else. The other city services – tram, trolleybus, bus, ferry and funicular – are only differentiated by frequency, with thicker lines meaning “more often”. There’s no definition of actual frequency given in the legend, so the concept can only be taken as a general indication of how often things run. A secondary legend down the bottom right indicates what numbers each service type uses (1–26 for trams, 50–68 for trolleybuses, and three-digit numbers for buses), which is very handy to know. I also like the icons for the different transit modes!
While the map is intentionally and necessarily detailed, I do feel it can become overly fussy in a few places. For example, the map shows all the curves in the road that the tram lines take north of Malostranská Metro station – a particularly hilly part of town just below Prague Castle – but all it does is obscure the Metro line beneath it. Given a choice between showing the actual routing of lines and simplifying the design so that paths can be followed more easily, I’d prefer the latter in most cases. I’m undecided about the white areas in the background of the map to denote populated areas: I can see why it’s been done, but it makes the whole map look a bit patchy. I’d be interested to see a version where the inner PID zone is an all white background with the outer zone light grey – I think it would help to make the map look a bit less busy and draw attention to that central area bit more.
On a similar note, I think that raster effects are a bit overused throughout the map: water, parks, zone boundaries, bridges and more all use some kind of inner glow or drop shadow and it can get distracting, especially where two different glows interact with each other. I personally think the glow edges on the parks could be done away with to make the whole map a bit flatter and more graphical.
Our final word: An impressive attempt at a unified transit map for greater Prague. Perhaps a little too busy and fussy in parts, but could be great if it was simplified and streamlined a bit. Three-and-a-half stars!
Source: PID website
A charmingly simple two-colour map of streetcar and interurban lines operated by the British Columbia Electric Railway Co. in 1923. Almost everything is hand-drawn and lettered apart from the map’s title, some explanatory text and some line numbers along the streets with more services (13-14-15-16 along Broadway West, for example). This last makes me wonder if this information was added to this edition of the map, either having been previously omitted or the lines servicing the street having changed.
Of interest is the way that the cartographer has made the map simpler (and easier to draw!) by only including streets within a few blocks of each line – in effect illustrating the walksheds or catchment area for this form of transit. Also, that’s a splendid north pointer at the bottom left!
Our final word: Rough around the edges, but simple and effective.
Source: City of Vancouver Archives
A simple little diagram of the tram lines of the Société des Tramways de Constantinople, sometime in the 1920s (probably between 1923 and 1928, when trams began running on the Asian side of the city). While it’s a little hard to see because of the clumsy shading applied, the map is actually a decent trackage diagram – showing where the network is double-tracked or has terminus loops.
The colour combinations for each line shown in the legend were also used on the headboards of the trams themselves, and generally indicated which termini the trams ran between – an aid to illiterate riders.
See also: this roughly contemporaneous diagram of the lines on a ticket (July 2013, 5 stars).
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Submitted by Felix Taaff, who says:
Attached is a map of available bus routes from a single stop near Sydney’s Central Station. Apologies for the image quality [Don’t worry – I straightened the image in Photoshop – Cam].
I was intrigued by the map with my first impression being that it would be very useful to tourists and visitors near Central station, with a network of routes shown but focussing on the CBD area.
But after testing a couple of hypothetical queries I noticed some design issues, including, it’s not clear which stops Town Hall is next to, finding a route number for the closer stops is confusing and suggests they should’ve used more colours instead of repeating blue, some street names are not shown (e.g. King Street and Pitt Street) likely due to an abundance of other text such as bus stop numbers (not sure of the purpose of these), and most importantly, there are no suburb names on the map. Also why is the 374 line separated from the others, as if it goes through Hyde Park, and what happens at the + of the 430/311 lines near Town Hall? Overall I found it quite useful as a Sydney resident with some background knowledge, but I fear most visitors would stumble on using this map.
Transit Maps says:
This is a very peculiar map, Felix. It’s a form of spider map, showing routes in a particular direction from particular bus stop, but it’s far more geographically oriented than most, which tend to be more diagrammatic in nature. This, I think, is where its problems begin.
From what I can work out, this map shows northbound routes only from the bus stop on Elizabeth Street at Hay Street. So every route shown (and there are nine of them!) are all travelling north on Elizabeth Street, even though the route lines span an area much, much wider than that street. The empty gap between the grey 343 and the dark blue 374 doesn’t help much, as it makes it look like the rightmost group of routes must be travelling on a different street. The only reason I can see for the gap is to get the 339 and 374 badges to line up next to each other… which is silly, as they could just be offset vertically to fit properly. Adding another badge for the 343 as part of this group would help immensely as well.
Another note on the bus number badges: in my opinion, the group heading north over the Harbour Bridge are labelled in the wrong order. From left to right, the lines as shown are the mid-blue 430, the dark blue 320, and the grey 343… but from top to bottom they’re labelled as the 320, 343 and 430. You could argue that this is in ascending numerical order, but I feel it’s always more important for the lines and numbers to correspond visually for easy reference. As it stands, the 430’s badge barely touches its corresponding route line.
The 311 took me a while to work out, but then I realised that it has a janky little route that starts at the Elizabeth Street/Hay Street stop before going out along Oxford Street and Darlinghurst Road to Elizabeth Bay and Potts Point (off the right edge of the map), before returning to the city (crossing Elizabeth Street again at Park Street) and heading up to its northern terminus in The Rocks. Weird!
It’s definitely unfortunate that three mid-blue lines run adjacent to each other along Park Street (the M50, 311 and 430), as there’s very little contrast between them. An expanded colour palette could be the solution, but Sydney wayfinding is pretty rigid in having the different transit modes distinguished by a limited set of colours – red for light rail, green for ferries, blue for buses (and everything else for trains).
The labelling for the Town Hall Station (Park Street, Stand K) and Sheraton on the Park (Elizabeth Street) stops are definitely problematic, mainly because of that gap between the Elizabeth Street routes. It really does makes it look like the two leftmost dots on Elizabeth Street belong to the Town Hall label, which is ambiguously placed. Strangely, the Martin Place and Chifley Square stops have a little joining line to “bridge the gap” on Elizabeth Street, but it seems to have been omitted here.
I’m not too concerned about the lack of suburb names on the map (which is basically just the CBD with a tiny bit of Pyrmont and Darlinghurst at the edges), but I would like to see final destinations for each of the routes that leaves the map. “Continues beyond CBD” is almost willfully unhelpful.
Our final word: In the end, I’m just puzzled as to exactly who this map is trying to help. Felix mentions tourists, but I really hope they’re not standing forlornly on Elizabeth Street trying to catch a bus into town! Regular commuters will have “their” bus route committed to memory, and don’t need all the fussy information about intermediate city stops – they just want to get on a bus and go home! And casual users are probably going to be more interested in the final destinations of the buses, and that’s not indicated here. Overall, it just seems like a map without a clear purpose or vision. Two stars.
Submitted by Ricky Courtney, who says:
San Francisco Muni is out with a new version of its map… now with the L&K and the T&M interlined.
Transit Maps says:
This simple little map has been prepared by Muni to illustrate necessary service changes as the Metro lines reopen after being shut down for some time due to COVID-related concerns. Whereas all the lines used to run the length of Market Street, the J now terminates at Church and Market, and the L and K lines now interline to form a single cross-town route – riders will need to change trains at West Portal to head downtown. Frequent Market Street “S” shuttle trains will supplement the N and T/M lines.
Interestingly, the L and K now share a single colour (purple) to emphasise that they now operate as a single line, but the similarly interlined T and M alternate between the two original colours along Market Street, supposedly to indicate the temporary nature of this arrangement: once the Central Subway opens, the T will be rerouted along it and the T and M will no longer be interlined. That’s a fair reason, but it still looks a little odd to use different approaches to the same information on a single map. Even more unfortunate is that the red of the T and the green of the M are almost identical for colour-blind readers (I’ve tested this in Photoshop), so they miss out on this the information entirely.
Other notes: I’ll never agree with the decision to have station labels in the same colour as the line they serve: pick one colour for every station and stick with it throughout – this approach just looks too disjointed. The reversed-out BART logo doesn’t work very well: the blue “a” disappears completely into the black background.
Our final word: Serviceable enough, but also obviously a temporary solution. Chris Smere’s unofficial version offers an interesting alternative concept.
Submitted by Patrick, who says:
This is Vienna’s Rapid Transit Diagram (Schnellverbindungsplan – literally “Quick Connections Map”) from September 1981. I found it hanging in a museum train a few years ago and decided to recreate/digitalize it in March of this year.
The diagram should be one of the first renditions in this style, as the U2 was only opened in 1980 which made the previous style obsolete – it is in fact likely the second or third iteration and even has the failed combined U2/U4 line on it which only ran for a few weeks in September of 1981. The line mainly caused problems with the ATC, as the system couldn’t cope with a U-Bahn train going from one line onto another, hence it’s discontinuation.
I think the inclusion of travel times between stations and connecting bus and tram lines was a good idea back then and well done in most places (looking at the gruesome butchering of the Danube, or Floridsdorf, where the list of connections reaches into the S-Bahn line). I am wondering however, why they almost everywhere chose to put a space before the A, B or S suffix for bus routes, as even then the convention already has been to not put a space in a route name on other signage.
Long story short: What do you think of the diagram?
Transit Maps says:
As I haven’t seen the original version of this map before, we’ll have to assume that Patrick’s recreation is accurate (which it almost certainly is – though in my experience, digital recreations are almost always just a little crisper and cleaner than the originals).
Overall, the map is a clean, functional piece of early 1980s artwork, showing the young U-Bahn network in a state of flux – the “G” and “GD” lines here are the last remnants of the Wiener Stadtbahn, an urban railway that commenced operations way back in 1898. These lines would be fully integrated into the U-Bahn network by 1989 as the U6 – though still with overhead power instead of third rail.
The time in minutes between stations is a nice little usability touch, and the labelling is good overall – the oversized cutouts behind the labels at Praterstern would seem to be the result of a sloppy paste-up job: the original map is pre-digital, after all. Perhaps there were once more connecting services filling up that space properly?
A real oddity for me is that none of the services leaving the map – be they blue S-Bahn or black Wiener Lokalbahnen (WLB) – have any further destinations indicated near their arrows. Where do these lines go? Wouldn’t it be nice to know?
I pondered the square station marker at Südbahnhof for a while – it’s unique, appearing nowhere else on the map. I presume that it’s meant to indicate that at least one of the S-Bahn services terminates at the station?
Our final word: An interesting historical map that shows some limitations of the paste-up production techniques of the time, nicely recreated by Patrick.
A fascinating map and diagram of the Singapore MRT from the period c. 2000 (after the opening of the Bukit Panjang LRT in 1999, but before the change to a different mapping style in 2001).
Both show the original method of using paired colours for each direction of travel along a route – an unconventional but memorable method of wayfinding. Take the Green line to head towards Pasir Ris, but the Blue Line to go the opposite direction towards Boon Lay, for example. This worked in the early days of the network, but as the system became more complex it was quickly realised that things was going to become unwieldy and the current system of line colours and station codes was introduced in 2001.
There’s nothing too outstanding about either design – both use the SMRT logo as a station marker, and the map has a pretty average (and very late-90s) gradient fill for Singapore itself. It would seem that the diagrammatic version was used as the in-car maps on trainsets, and it is quite efficient in its use of space. There’s perhaps even an attempt to show how cross-platform transfers work at Raffles Place and City Hall, as all the lines criss-cross each other to end up in specific pairs at both stations: Green/Yellow and Blue/Red at Raffles Place, and Yellow/Blue and Red/Green at City Hall. A nice usability touch if that is indeed the intent!
Our final word: An interesting look at an unconventional approach to line wayfinding in the less complicated days of the SMRT, though it definitely wouldn’t work with today’s comprehensive network!
Source: Reddit – r/MapPorn
Here’s a delightful hand drawn and lettered map showing the burgeoning network of motor coach routes in Washington state in 1923. It would seem to have been produced as an accompaniment to an application for an additional route crossing the Cascades – shown as a yellow dashed line on the map – joining two previously unconnected segments of service.
Of note is the extensive service into the Olympic Peninsula by means of a joint thru-service ferry across the Puget Sound from Seattle, and the fact that there is no service at all on the north-south route from Vancouver, BC—Seattle—Portland (on what would become US 99 just three years later, and I-5 much later again).
The lettering is generally quite lovely, though there’s a few later additions of lesser quality in black ink instead of blue (see Soap Lake near Ephrata, for example). Interestingly, the red and yellow route lines seem to have been painstakingly painted over the top of the blue linework, as a number of labels are partially obscured by the paint. You can also see where some has rubbed off just east of Ellensburg.
Our final word: Charmingly naive, and an interesting look at the early days of regional motor coach transit in the Pacific Northwest.
Source: Washington State Archives
Submitted by Eric, who says:
Hello! I am a graphic designer from Mexico City. For almost 4 years I worked in this project of integrating all transportation systems in a single map, which did not exist at that time (2016) as something official. Now as part of a new administration and under the guidance of Lance Wyman it was possible to carry it out.
My proposal is different from the official one in several concepts:
The identity of the Metro made by Lance Wyman almost 50 years ago, works very well within the stations and I do not question that, but I think that on the map, the identity –specifically the typography – should be sacrificed in order to achieve the basic function of the map, a good read to help you navigate.
Transit Maps says:
This is lovely work from Eric, and almost seems to be a point-by-point correction of the faults I perceived in my review of the official Mexico City unified transit map (April 2019, 2.5 stars). The typography alone is a vast improvement, with the legible and clean Officina Sans replacing the distinctive but hard-to-read Tipo Metro typeface. All the labels are set horizontally, and Eric’s even managed to label many (all?) stops on the Metrobús routes – certainly more than the official map does.
More than any other map I’ve seen, Eric has managed to expand and untangle the dense central part of the map, and it looks fantastic – clean and simple, adhering to a solid grid. His clever use of the terminating line numbers as the actual interchange throughout the map is inspired, and he always gets the number to line up properly with the route it represents. Superbly done!
I do think that the Metrobús route lines could be just a little thicker, and I’m not too keen on the angled terminal bars at the southern ends of Metrobús L1 and the Tren Ligero. I can see why Eric’s done it – to line the terminal bar up with the service name box – but it’s not very attractive. Perhaps the route line itself could curve around to be horizontal before that last stop?
Maybe there could be a few more neighbourhood labels – they seem to peter out towards the edges of the map? The official map has quite a few more than what Eric’s map has.
Part of me really wants the station spacing on that southern part of the Metrobús L1 line to be even from top to bottom (just because it is on the Tren Ligero line next to it), but that’s a minor, minor personal preference.
Our final word: Yeah, I love this. Improves upon the real thing in just about every way (though it doesn’t show quite as many services, so it’s not a true apples-to-apples comparison). Superb!
