transportationnation:
From Oaklandish: an ambitious 1956 BART prototype map.
Some might say a little overly ambitious!
Historical Map: Prototype BART Map, 1956
Official Map: MAXX Commuter Rail, Auckland, New Zealand, 2012
Time to get away from North America and Europe and head further afield… about as far afield as you can go, actually! Here’s the system map for Auckland, New Zealand’s commuter rail system. This map, available from the MAXX website, seems to be based off the map they place above doors in the actual train carriages. This explains the horizontal format which skews the Southern Line out to the right of the map instead of towards the bottom, where it heads in real life.
Have we been there? Yes, way back in 1993… I didn’t catch any trains.
What we like: Clear, simple and easy to understand. Nice differentiation between normal stations and interchanges.
What we don’t like: The labels angled to 30 degrees seems almost entirely unnecessary, as they could fit horizontally with minimal effort. It looks particularly odd at Manukau station, where a 45-degree curve meets the 30-degree type.
Strangely, station names are set in two different sizes: all stations on the Western Line are 18-point, but stations past Penrose on the Eastern, Southern and Onehunga Line are set in 16-point. I can’t see any reason why this is necessary at all, and seems like an error made by the designer to me.
Finally, and this is no actual fault of the map itself… I know it’s an historical name (being named after the British Navy ship that surveyed Auckland Harbour in the 1840s), but “Britomart” just makes it sound like Auckland’s main railway station is located under a cheap convenience store.
Our rating: Competent, but not exactly exciting. Average in just about every way, including my score: two-and-a-half-stars.
Source: Official MAXX website – link no longer active
Photo: BART Strip Map in the Millbrae/SFO Direction
Apparently, these strip maps are fairly new. I’m all in favour of wayfinding elements that help people plan their journey, but there’s some parts of this that definitely make this feel like a first draft, rather than a finished piece. The overlapping terminus dots at Millbrae and Daly City look a little odd, and the giant silhouette of a BART train indicating direction of travel is almost totally unnecessary.
The real problem, though, is the use of dotted lines to indicate occasional or irregular service without having any sort of key explaining when those services actually run.
When can I get to Milbrae on the Red Line? Eh, sometimes.
This map may be fine for commuters who understand the service patterns well, but must be totally bewildering for others.
Source: Eric Fischer/Flickr
Historical Map: Chicago Plan Commission – Rapid Transit Facilities, 1945
Here’s a gorgeous pre-CTA planning map from Chicago in 1945, outlining all sorts of grandiose ideas for expansion of the subway system, almost none of which have actually come to pass. There appears to be a proposed second Loop, which would have run more east-west than the existing one. There’s also a planned subway line heading out to the northwest, but this doesn’t follow the same alignment as the Blue Line, and a subway line running along Belmont Avenue.
Have we been there? Yes.
What we like: Awesome old-school cartography at its finest. The shading to show the city limits is quite beautiful. The map looks gorgeous at larger sizes (click through to take a look!)
What we don’t like: Limited use of colour (possibly due to wartime austerity measures) does make some detail hard to make out. The blobs on the “L” lines don’t represent stations; it’s just the type of linework used to differentiate it from other lines, such as roads.
Our rating: A glimpse at what might have been, but never was. Fantastic! Four-and-a-half-stars.
Source: Eric Fischer/Flickr
Historical Map: Tokyo Railway Map (English), 1959
This is not a map of Tokyo’s subway system, but main line trains. The subway lines are the blue crossed lines contained mostly within the circle of routes at the center right of the map. Just 14 years after World War II’s conclusion, the sheer amount of tracks in just the Tokyo/Yokohama area is astounding. Not the greatest cartography ever, however: the map is a bit of a mess.
Source: Rob Ketcherside/Flickr
Unofficial Map: A Series of Twin Tubes – A Track Diagram of London
After my previous post about this old track layout diagram from Berlin, reader Rolando Peñate brought this awesome project to my attention – a beautiful track layout diagram of the London Underground, DLR and Overground, complete with platform layouts, disused platforms, yards and sidings. What’s really amazing about this diagram, however, is that its creator, Andrew Godwin, has essentially automated its production. He explains on his website:
The map is created with an automated tool which takes a textual description of the lines and platforms (as a series of points), and which then automatically draws the lines, station names and labels, saving the tedious process of moving lots of lines around and ensuring all the angles and curves match. Placement of the stations and waypoints is done with a custom GUI tool which draws the map in realtime, as we found that it took too long to edit coordinates in the text file, create the image, and then look for problems.
As a graphic designer who spends way too long tweaking maps to get them looking just right, I’m both astounded and dismayed by this. Amazed that such tools can be written to produce a map this aesthetically appealing, and dismayed in that I may soon be redundant to the process!
Have we been there? Yes, and looking at the track layout around Earls Court brings back memories of waiting there for District Line trains to East Putney.
What we like: Beautiful-looking map full of intricate details and information. Here, in all its glory is the Northern Line junctions between Euston and Camden Town that frustrated Harry Beck so much (take a look at how many different ways that section of track has been rendered over the years), and countless other details.
What we don’t like: Nothing… this map is incredible, and I love it to bits! You might quibble that there are some omissions on the Overground lines, but that would be churlish.
Our rating: Mind-blowing. Five stars!
Source: Andrew Godwin’s Aeracode website
Photo: Map of Line 5
Unofficial Map: Circular Map of Oslo’s T-Bane System by Francisco Dans
We’ve already covered the official Oslo T-Bane map, so it’s interesting to have a look at a completely different take on it; one that takes the “Circle Line” concept to its logical extreme. This piece is the work of Francisco Dans, a design student in London.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: Interesting experiment using arcs and circles, while still maintaining some level of relative placement.
What we don’t like: Adobe Illustrator is pretty unforgiving when it comes to tangential lines, and there’s a few wonky curves and joins in this map, mainly on the pink “5” line. The widening of the interchange stations in the city centre to accommodate the visual conceit of the arcs makes it look like a heck of a walk from one line to another. The line work and type size is probably a little too spindly for use in a real world application.
Our rating: An interesting experiment that looks fun and breezy. Two-and-a-half-stars.
Source: Francisco’s Minefield Junction website
Photo: Track Diagram, Berliner U-Bahn Museum
Not a transit diagram for public use, but a track layout of the system for operational planning. The original post on Flickr dates it between 1929-1934, based on visible names.
Source: Forest Pines/Flickr
Official Map: Bus Routes of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2012
Time for another entry in the Worst Map Contest, and this one, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, is right up there with the very worst.
Have we been there? No, and on the evidence of this map, I’m not sure I want to.
What we like: I will say that the labelling of the street grid along the edges is actually a very clever idea that frees up the centre of the map for the routes.
What we don’t like: First off, the quality of the map is simply terrible: JPG artefacts from over-compression, resulting in blurry type and route lines. The typography, both of the map title and the transit agency logo, is appalling and seems to have escaped from 1984 or thereabouts.
Poorly conceived, generic icons, some of which scale terribly down to the size used on the map. Look at the icon for Universities/Colleges: what is that? A palm tree?* The bus station icon fills in so badly that it’s almost impossible to work out what it actually represents.
The downtown area is terribly cramped and poorly drawn. There are dotted lines for some routes with no explanation of what that means in the key.
There’s a freakin’ rainbow gradient in the north pointer.
Our rating: Embarrassing. One star, and that’s only because I’m reserving half a star for something truly heinous. Already, after just two blog posts, Michael Champlin’s alternative map looks far more promising and definitely a project worth following as it unfolds.
*PS: Yes, I know it’s a mortarboard cap and tassel, but it shouldn’t be such hard work to see that. At the size it’s used on the map, it becomes a blobby mess and could be just about anything.
Source: Official Tulsa Transit website