Unofficial Map: Amtrak Passenger Rail Routes, 2010

July 11, 2012
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Related to the last post about the Amtrak Super High-Speed Northeast Corridor, here’s a personal project of mine from 2010 showing all of Amtrak’s train routes in the style of a subway map. Amtrak’s own map doesn’t break out the actual routes in any way, nor does it show all stations due to geographic limitations, which makes journey planning quite difficult in my opinion.

The two things my map really highlight are the incredible dominance of the Northeast Corridor in terms of service, and just how much of a hub Chicago is: 16 Amtrak routes terminate there! It also shows the paucity of high-speed rail in America. Just one route – the Acela along the Northeast corridor – even somewhat approaches that definition.

One day, I’d like to rework this map with all the Amtrak Thruways (connecting bus and rail services) shown as well. One day…

View the map and read more about it on my personal website.

Future Map: Amtrak’s Vision for Super High Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor

July 10, 2012
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Leaving aside the politics and cost for a minute, this is actually a pretty darn nice map. Attractive and informational. Drawing the “Super Express” and “Express” routes as dead straight lines definitely emphasises the idea of speed and direct connections between points. Long Island looks a little weird, though…

Source: carfreemaine/Tumblr – link no longer active

Official Map: Rail and Tram Network, Budapest, Hungary

July 9, 2012
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Budapest boasts the second oldest underground metro line in the world: its Line 1 (Yellow Line) dates from 1896 and was added the the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2002. Only the London Underground predates it. Wikipedia also claims (without attribution, unfortunately) that Budapest’s comprehensive tram service has the busiest “traditional city tram line” in the world where tram lines 4 and 6 combine, with the world’s longest passenger trams (54-metre long Siemens Combino units) running at 60 to 90 second intervals at peak time. Impressive stuff, but does the system map measure up? Yes and no.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: Comprehensive overview of services provided. The “interchange zone” boxes around complex modal interchanges work really well. Budapest’s Metro logo is a favourite of mine.

What we don’t like: Strangely muted and pastel-heavy colour palette reduces contrast between the multitude of lines. I feel like there’s a definite Paris Metro map vibe to this map, but the colour choices aren’t as appropriate.

Mode differentiation is poor – the Metro, suburban rail and passenger rail all use the same line weight for their route lines, as do trams and “selected bus routes”. Yet tram line 60, a cog-wheel tram (cool!), gets its own distinct route line style, with boxes for stations instead of dots. I feel this style could have been better used to differentiate between buses and trams.

Our rating: Comprehensive, but hard work to actually use. 2.5 stars.

Source: Official BKV website

Photo: Irish Intercity Train In-Car Map

July 6, 2012
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Oooh, pretty LED lights – so futuristic! I like that the orange lights show the “expected route”, as if the train could suddenly leave the tracks and go a completely different direction.

Source: Ravenous Pigeon/Flickr

Ever met Mark Ovenden?

July 6, 2012
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I haven’t met Mark, but we have chatted a few times about my work – he had some very kind words about my French TGV Map (see the third comment on this page). Super nice guy, and definitely knows his stuff. His books are a huge part of my interest in transit maps.

Photo: Let The Game Begin!

July 5, 2012
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Today I learned that there’s another game based on the London Underground apart from (the somewhat ridiculous) “Mornington Crescent” – “The London Game”. Where can I get a copy?

Source: Zed.Cat/Flickr – link no longer active

The Incredible Shape-Changing Island of Manhattan

July 3, 2012
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The distortion of Manhattan on NYC subway maps over the years, expressed as a height-to-width ratio. Fascinating stuff from a New York Times article in 2010 enumerating the changes in the latest version of the map.

Official and Future Maps: EmX BRT System, Eugene, Oregon

July 3, 2012
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One of the best things about this blog is finding people out there who — like me — aren’t always satisfied with the status quo and want to improve on the transit maps that are out there.

Take these maps of the EmX* bus rapid transit system in Eugene/Springfield, Oregon. The first one is the current system map issued by the Lane Transit District. While it’s functional enough, it’s certainly not very exciting. I always believe that a good transit map should be enticing and attractive to draw people towards it as a transportation option. In effect, the map is an advertisement for the service — if it looks modern and well-designed, the system benefits by association.

The second map is of a potential EmX system in 50 years’ time, made by Dave Amos, based off information found on LTD’s website. Leaving the accuracy of the map aside, as I can’t really comment on that without a lot of further research (and Dave himself admits the map is somewhat speculative), let’s concentrate on the aesthetics.

Dave’s map seems to draw a lot of design cues from the London Underground map, which is good in that it instantly takes on a clean, well-designed look… and a little bad in that it drains the map of its own unique identity a bit. It would be nice to see a map that channels a bit of the character of the city it represents, but this is still a very attractive piece of design. HF&J’s Whitney is a nicely understated, yet modern sans serif font and works well here. The main hubs of Eugene and Springfield are emphasised well, and the inclusion of the important University of Oregon and Lane Community College campuses is welcome.

That’s not to say the map is perfect: the need to show the eastern extent of Springfield’s city boundary creates a lot of empty space, which in turn reduces the size of the routes themselves. I think the names of the streets that the routes follow could be rotated to follow the direction of the streets, like in a street directory, rather than remaining horizontal all the time. The 18th & Willamette station label could be split into two lines to prevent it being confused with the nearby Jefferson station.

There’s also a couple of operational concepts that aren’t shown on the map which might be worth considering. Some sections of the routes operate along one-way couplets, which might be worth showing for clarity and ease of use (For example, an eastbound stop might be one block over from the westbound stop – a handy thing for a traveller to know!). I also know that, currently, buses operate both clockwise and counter-clockwise around the Gateway loop. This is indicated on the current map, but not on Dave’s.

* Side Note: “EmX” is meant to be pronounced as “Em-Ex”, short for “Emerald Express”. But try as I might, I still just keep saying “E-Em-Ex”…

Official Map: TRAX and FrontRunner Rail Map, Salt Lake City, 2012

July 2, 2012
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By all accounts, the Utah Transit Authority’s rail system is a modern and successful one. However, this is something you’d never guess from their system map, which is one of the most cobbled-together, unprofessionally done maps I’ve ever seen.

Have we been there? Yes, but I’ve never caught the train there.

What we like: The required information is there to be found if you can bear to look at the map long enough.

What we don’t like: Put simply, this is terrible, terrible work.

The downtown area is ridiculously cramped (the Planetarium and Arena station dots actually overlap slightly!), leading to some ugly and difficult to follow labelling of stations, especially between the Gallivan Plaza and 900 East stations. Things could be improved somewhat by setting the station addresses in a smaller, lighter font to at least alleviate some confusion.

The lines that point from the labels to the stations have no consistency at all: some are longer than the station name, others are shorter, leading to a very messy look.

The map also seems to think that its users are utterly incapable of understanding what a “transfer station” is, as it includes giant, redundant call out boxes that point at five separate stations explaining the concept.

The call out boxes for the stations that allow transfers to different modes are large and intrusive and could be much better handled with icons that represent each mode.

The inset map of the track layout at Fashion Place West station is somewhat useful (although I think signage at the station itself would suffice, as it’s not a particularly complex arrangement), but looks like a generic piece of clip art.

The presence of ESRI fonts in the PDF of this map leads me to believe that this map is based off GIS data, which has only been slightly tweaked to create the final map. Both for aesthetics and information hierarchy, I think the map could have greatly benefited from being redrawn from scratch to allow better spacing of elements. Other parts of the map, especially the call out boxes, need to be rethought completely.

Our rating: Awful. 1 star (and that’s probably being generous).

Source: Official UTA website