Official Map: Miami-Dade Metrorail System, Florida, 2012

August 4, 2012
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Miami’s Metrorail just opened a new station at Miami International Airport, and decided to create an entirely new line (the Orange Line) to celebrate. Along with that, comes a new system map… which is, unfortunately, pretty terrible.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: The icon for overnight/long-term parking lots is actually pretty neat.

What we don’t like: Poorly chosen background colours make the road grid hard to distinguish from the background. On that note, why include the road grid at all if none of the roads are labelled? And do we really need to see all the runways and taxiways at MIA?

The two route lines are incredibly poorly drawn, with very sloppy curves – especially into the MIA station and between the Civic Center and Culmer stations. There’s a slight gap between the lines between South Miami and University stations, so it looks like the lines were drawn separately next to each other, rather than using tools in the software to duplicate or offset one line to create the other. Shonky.

Huge and ugly station name labels.

Our rating: This map is uninspiring, bland and poorly executed. 1 star.

Source: Official Miami-Dade County website

Historical Map: PATH Map, New York and New Jersey, 1979

August 3, 2012
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After all the diagrammatic maps we’ve featured so far, it’s nice to showcase something completely different – check out this awesome painted birds-eye view of PATH services between New Jersey and Manhattan from 1979. It also shows other rail services in New Jersey snaking off into the far distance, and even Lady Liberty standing guard over New York and the cutest little Staten Island ferry you ever did see.

Have we been there? Yes, but I haven’t caught a PATH train.

What we like: Just about everything! Attractive, historical, useful… this one’s got it all in spades.

What we don’t like: Not a lot!

Our rating: Fantastic! Five stars!

Source: wavz13/Flickr

Official Map: Prague Integrated Transport, 2012

August 3, 2012
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Here’s the last entry in our short series on current transit maps in Prague, an integrated map. In my opinion, this map hits the sweet spot as far as information and presentation are concerned: it shows Metro and tram service better than the simple Metro Orientation map, but without the mind-numbing level of detail of the full service map.

What we like: Retains the cute major landmark icons from the simpler map. The addition of route numbers to the tram lines makes a huge difference in usability – routes can now be traced from beginning to end. While individual stops aren’t shown, this is not a huge issue as tram service normally has tightly-spaced, regularly placed stops. Much better English on this map!

What we don’t like: Strangely muted colours on the Metro lines compared to the other maps, which looks worst on the Red Line (red never tints down very well). The heavy red/brown border is quite overpowering, especially compared to the soothing beige of the other two maps.

Our rating: Just right. Information is easily parsed without having to pore over a detailed full system map. Four stars.

Source: Official DPP website

Fantasy Map: National Parks Transit Authority Map

August 2, 2012
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Produced for the Sierra Club and very nicely done indeed. Having Yosemite and Yellowstone as the main “hubs” seems very appropriate. Sadly, I’ve only been to three of these parks – Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Crater Lake – something I’ll have to remedy.

Finally, I love the disclaimer: *So incredibly not to scale and also fictional.

Source: @BRFoo/Twitter

Official Map: Full Service Metro and Tram Map, Prague, 2012

August 2, 2012
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The second map in our short series of current transit maps in Prague. Whereas yesterday’s map was perhaps a little light in information, this one goes in completely the other direction and shows absolutely everything. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but this is definitely a map for detailed analysis of transit in Prague, rather than a quick reference guide.

What we like: Comprehensive and detailed overview of rail transit in Prague. Good mode differentiation between Metro and trams by use of stroke thickness.

What we don’t like: The multicoloured names at the interchange stations on the Metro! For example, the Red and Yellow lines meet at Florenc station, so the “Flo” is red, and the “enc” is yellow… it looks hideous.

Not sure about the use of a dashed stroke in the centre of tram routes to denote frequent “backbone” service – a dashed line normally indicates less, not more. On that note, the 50 percent dashed stroke for rush hour services on the 4 and 16 tram lines isn’t particularly visible.

The map’s legend is a bit disjointed, being placed in four different places around the map to fit between gaps in the route lines.

Some absolutely terrible English translation… “In this parts of lines is tram line 4 operated only at workdays morning rush hours…” Say what?

Our rating: Comprehensive, if a little visually cluttered. Suffers a bit from information overload. Stay tuned tomorrow for the Goldilocks “just right!” map. Two-and-a-half stars.

Source: Official DPP website

Official Map: Prague Metro Orientation Map, 2012

August 1, 2012
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This is the first of three posts regarding current transit maps in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. All are part of a unified set of maps (all of which use the interesting framing device of stylised buildings and trams, which I can’t decide if I think is playfully irreverent or just plain stupid) and provide interesting lessons on how much information is “just right” for a transit map to be really useful.

This map is a simplified overview or orientation map of the Metro, and seems to serve a similar purpose to the Key Bus Routes of London Map that we’ve already featured – to provide a quick guide to public transport for visitors to the city. However, it’s slightly less successful than that map, as we’ll see below.

Have we been there? Yes, in 2004. After one initial trip on the Metro from the railway station to the hostel, I used trams exclusively.

What we like: Breezy and simple, bright and bold with a unique look. The little icons for major landmarks are quite charming. The Metro lines stand out really nicely, and interchanges are handled well.

What we don’t like: By comparison with the Metro lines, the tram lines come off very badly indeed. Without route numbers or anything other than final destinations shown, they’re really not very useful in this version of the map other than an indication that tram service exists. After that, you’re on your own…

Our rating: A nice looking map with its own very distinct look – this map belongs to Prague. I’m still not sure about the cartoon-like framing device, but it is carried across all elements of the corporate identity (other maps, website, etc,), so at least they’re consistent! Tram service information is a little light. Three-and-a-half stars.

Source: Official DPP website

Historical Map: Boston MBTA Red Line Strip Map, pre-1980

July 31, 2012
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This map has to be from before 1980, as that’s the year that Braintree station opened. Certainly has a nice 1970s feel to it. I love how someone has added in the more recent stations with a pen, even (somewhat) attempting to maintain the aesthetics of the map.

Source: @acosmos/Twitter

Official Map: Rapid Transit of Cleveland, Ohio, 2012

July 30, 2012
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After posting a photo of a vintage Cleveland RTA rapid transit map, I was curious as to what the current map looked like. Oh dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: Sadly, the best thing about this map is the nicely retro-styled RTA agency logo. As for the rest…

What we don’t like: Multiple angles for route lines instead of the standard 45-degrees looks messy and poorly thought out. Strange spacing of stations on the eastern part of the Green Line.

Multicoloured concentric rings for interchange stations gives a strange rainbow vibe to the whole map that becomes quite jarring when four colours -green, red, blue and silver – are used at the Tower City station. Strangely and inconsistently, this concentric ring device is not used on the Waterfront Line, with two half rings being used instead.

The Waterfront Line is also drawn with thinner lines than the rest of the map, which confused me greatly at first: isn’t it just an extension of the Green and Blue Lines? I had to do some research to find out that the Waterfront Line only operates on weekends – an incredibly vital piece of operating information that isn’t indicated on the map at all. A simple addition to the legend would have worked nicely here.

Embarrassingly desultory addition of the HealthLine BRT route.

Our rating: Ugh. An ugly, confusing, inconsistent mess. One star.

Source: Official RTA website

Historical Map: Old Cleveland RTA Route Map

July 30, 2012
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This looks like it may be affixed to a door or wall of an old train carriage (see the window just above the placard), which means the type on the rail map is incredibly small. The naming of the main railway station as “Public Square” rather than “Tower City” means this map is pre-1991 (when the station changed names), although the general aesthetics and typography would lead me to suspect that this map is from the late 1970s.

Source: unit2345/Flickr

Postcards from Paris – Métro Edition

July 26, 2012
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Here’s an interesting comparison of three different postcards of the Paris Métro system – one of which uses the official RATP artwork, and two more which definitely don’t. All three are of similar vintage (from at least 2007, as they all show the southern end of Line 14 at Olympiades station, which opened in that year). So they’re all basically showing the same thing, but take different approaches towards it.

The first postcard uses the official RATP map, modified slightly to fit the awkward dimensions of the postcard. The 45-degree angles of the real map are now more like 30, but the diagram still holds together remarkably well. The clarity of design also allows this card to show the RER commuter rail lines, something the other two postcards don’t even contemplate.

The other two cards seem to use a more geographical approach to the system layout, the white card even going so far as to place the route lines over a street grid that is more decorative than informative. However, there’s still some serious distortion of routes, especially towards the edges of the card. The white map gives up on accuracy altogether with the ends of Line 7, just drawing dead straight lines along the border of the card to fit things in.

The black card looks dramatic, but there somehow seem to be more station labels on this version than the other two, resulting in what looks like a white cloud of station names covering the entire card.

You’ll also notice that the two unofficial maps don’t use the official colours for any of the lines – probably to steer clear of any legal issues. However, this isn’t really a problem in Paris as lines are referred to by number and terminus station in the direction of travel, not by route colour. It would get confusing really fast, anyway: “Take the Light Green Line… no, not that Light Green, this Light Green…”

For me, the official map is clearly the best of the three, bringing clarity to the system even in a small, condensed space. The others would make fun souvenirs, but are not top quality cartography by any stretch of the imagination.