Opened in 1979, the Hong Kong MTR (Mass Transit Railway) has a very clean, easy to understand map that visually owes a debt to its previous colonial owners – the UK – via the London Tube map.
Have we been there? No (the airport by itself doesn’t count).
What we like: Clean and elegant, even with the bilingual requirements of the map. Some unusual but lovely colours for some of the routes, especially the teal used for the Airport Express line.
What we don’t like: The light rail network, which comprises some 69 stations, is relegated to a few random-looking lines with only stations that interchange with the MTR shown. I’m not sure what the meaning of the coloured marks inside interchange stations is: some are straight, others are curved, others cross over each other. An indication of platform layout, perhaps… but it all seems a bit unfathomable to me without any indication in the map’s legend.
Our rating: Simple, clean, effective. An excellent map. Four stars.
The simplified rectilinear grid is such a familiar form for transit maps that when we see something that breaks that mould, the results can be visually stunning. That’s certainly the case with this beautiful map from designer Erik Hammink, who uses the natural circular shape of Amsterdam’s canals to great effect.
Have we been there? Yes, although I’ve only used the tram network rather than the Metro service.
What we like: Lovely, minimalist European design, with echoes of 1930s Art Deco transit posters in its stylised, circular rendering of the IJ and the Amsterdam Metro type to the top right of the map. Beautifully clear and easy to read. I especially like the rendering of Amsterdam’s ring of canals, which orients the user perfectly.
What we don’t like: The need to adhere to the radial spoke design form means that some of the curves where routes change direction look a little uneven. The icon for Schiphol airport looks very large and out of character compared to the smaller, more elegant icons for the Metro and rail termini stations. The gradients behind the legends at the top of the map look a little modern and iOS-like compared to the beautiful retro feel the rest of the map has.
Our rating: Stunning work, especially when you also know that Eric has also produced a map of Amsterdam’s dense tram network that appears to fit onto the same radial grid. A true labour of love, and it shows. Four stars.
Here’s a large-format multi-modal map from the Maryland Transit Authority, centered on Baltimore. Contrast it against this previously reviewed map of similar scope from the Los Angeles Metro, and it can be seen that the MTA map has got a far better balance of design and usability, and is actually a quite superb and comprehensive map.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: Incredibly legible for such a dense map. It shows light rail, Metro, commuter rail (MARC services) and varying levels of bus service from multiple transit agencies, all overlaid on a nicely stylised street grid. Unlike the LA map, colors are used effectively to differentiate bus routes, meaning the routes themselves are much easier to follow. Bus route termini are also clearly marked, which helps immensely.
What we don’t like: CMRT Transit seems to get short-changed, with all nine of its routes sharing the same magenta colour, making the south-west corner of the map very pink, and those routes harder to make sense of.
Our rating: Shows how important the use of colour is to help people differentate between different routes of a similar service, especially in densely served areas. The palette used is fairly limited, but is used judiciously. Not a map for casual use, but provides a comprehensive and visually appealing guide to services in and around Baltimore. Four-and-a-half stars.
Milan’s Metropolitana subway system is Italy’s largest, and is supported by a comprehensive network of suburban and regional trains. It’s also linked by an amazing tram system, but no indication of those services, or connections to it, are presented on this map.
Have we been there? Yes, although I didn’t use the Metro, preferring to walk around Milan’s dense historic core.
What we like: Use of blue for the thinner suburban rail lines gives them their own distinct look while still being subordinate to the more important Metro lines. Comprehensive set of informational icons, although this does lead to some “icon overload” at Centrale and Cadorna stations. Important information is in Italian and English. Good accessibility information.
What we don’t like: A total absence of curved corners on routes gives a very severe, almost formal look to the map, as does the all-caps typeface used (which, despite being a bespoke typeface created for this map, ends up looking very similar to Franklin or News Gothic). The tinted colours behind the terminus station names, while effective at differentiating those stations from normal stations, looks a little old-fashioned.
Our rating: While this map looks quite sterile, it presents information quite clearly. I also feel that this look is totally intentional, as the streets of Milan’s historic medieval core are twisty and narrow. The contrast between those streets and the more direct routing of the modern subway is effectively highlighted in this map. Three-and-a-half stars.
Another map that asks the question: how much abstraction and geographical simplification is too much? From what I understand, this map of the Madrid Metro system has proved somewhat controversial since its introduction in 2007. Unlike most other diagrammatic maps, this one completely eschews even 45-degree angles: reducing the map to its most basic form – and one even further removed from the city’s underlying geography.
Have we been there? No, but would love to!
What we like:Clean, light and airy look. Definitely a map for a city that wants to place itself at the forefront of modern design and technology.
I absolutely love the way that interchange stations that have long walking distances between platforms are shown, and the estimated time is even indicated on the map (nine minutes to walk between the 4 and 6 lines at Diego de León station, for example). There are other systems – like New York and Barcelona – that could really use this on their map!
Limiting the colours denoting fare zones to the immediate area around the affected lines helps to keep the map clean and airy instead of having a big rainbow of concentric zones filling up the entire background of the map.
Symbology used on the map is very clear and distinctive. Available in separate Spanish and English (seen here) versions.
What we don’t like: Generally, the idea behind a diagrammatic presentation of a transit map is to smooth out the lines and evenly space the stations (wherever possible) so that a journey can be quickly and easily plotted by a user. Here, we have a strictly enforced 90-degree design and very unevenly spaced station names (the map is very empty in the centre, and extremely crowded out in the suburbs), both of which create a very stop-start, staccato feeling to the map. Any sense of relation to the actual geography city is lost – only the river and parks give any indication of that, and they aren’t particularly accurate either.
No accessibility information on the map, even though many of the older stations in the network are inaccessible due to their age.
Our rating: Visually bold and exciting, with some very nice ideas, but a lot of hard work to actually use. Two-and-a-half stars.
It’s just occurred to me that I haven’t posted a single map yet from my native land, Terra Australis… so let’s rectify that now with this map of Brisbane’s Translink commuter rail service, supporting Railbus service that complements that service, and busways – dedicated roadways for commuter bus service (BRT). The first thing to notice about this map is the vast area it covers: over 260km (160 miles) from north to south, and around 50km (30 miles) from east to west with a staggering 23 fare zones!
Have we been there? Been there? I was born there! That said, my family moved to Sydney when I was very young, so I’ve never actually caught any public transit there, despite visiting many times over the years.
What we like: Good definition of the different modes shown, with solid lines for rail services, white lines with coloured edges for the supporting Railbus services, and thinner coloured lines between black “road edge” lines for the busways. This allows future service to be shown as traditional dotted lines that still look sufficiently different to all the other modes shown. Also nice to see a matching diagrammatic style between the routes and the underlying “geography”.
What we don’t like: The need to show the entire system from Gympie on the Sunshine Coast all the way down to the Gold Coast means that central Brisbane – the busiest part of the map – becomes comparatively cramped for room. For the most part, it’s actually handled pretty well, but the curve on the Ferny Grove (Red) line out of Bowen Hills to Windsor is poorly executed, and the coloured call out lines to the UQ Lakes, PA Hospital and Wolloongabba stations aren’t the ideal solution. The purple “Assisted Wheelchair Access” icons don’t resolve very well at the small size as seen online, but may be better on the printed version.
Our rating: Nothing outstanding, but does a good job of differentiating between modes. Gets a little cramped in the centre. Three stars.
Even though I’ve never been there, I have a history with the Washington, D.C. Metro system. My redesign of it has proved very popular, winning the Peoples’ choice award in last year’s Greater Greater Washington “Redesign the Metro Map” competition. My general dislike of the venerable official map is fairly well known, but it’s still exciting to see this new version, the first stepping stone on the way to the map that will be needed once Silver Line service begins.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: Definite improvements over the last Metro map. The huge, intrusive callout boxes that dominated that map have gone, resulting in a much cleaner look. The downside of this is that the reduced peak (or is that “Reduced Peak+” now?) services on the Yellow Line are not indicated in any way.
The new subtitles for longer station names (an excellent result out of GGW’s competition) are easily the best thing on the map, and I will just quietly note that two things on this map made their first appearance on my own version: letters at the end of routes to signify their colors (although I only used one letter; R, G, B, Y, etc.), and the jog in the south-eastern part of the Green Line to place the Southern Avenue and Naylor Road stations in more geographically-correct locations.
What we don’t like: Let’s leave the overall look of the map out of this argument. While I’m not – and never will be – a fan of the overly thick, almost child-like route lines, they are here to stay. The map is a symbol of D.C., ( but I’m not going to call the map “iconic”) and too much has been invested in it for that to ever change.
So what really bugs me about this map is a total and utter lack of craftsmanship. I’ve attached a couple of example pictures above to illustrate what I mean.
In the first picture (from the legend of the map), you can see that even though the type in the colored route legend circles is the same size as the text that comes after it, they do not share a common baseline. There’s absolutely no reason why the circles can’t be moved up to align properly.
The second picture shows just a small area of the Red Line, but this type of problem is rife across the entire map. There is simply no standard set for how elements align to other elements. I’ve drawn some guides onto the picture to illustrate: the parking symbols align differently to each of the four stations shown, and the MARC symbol at Silver Spring does not align with the station name’s baseline.
Other examples of slipshod work: the hospital symbol at Foggy Bottom aligning to nothing, clashing type between the main name and subtitle at Dunn Loring-Merrifield, the District Diamond still not forming a perfect square (everything else is at 45-degree angles, why isn’t it?)… I could go on and on!
Our rating: Informationally, a competent update of the previous map, but I can’t look past the glaring technical errors. Two-and-a-half stars.
Source: WMATA Rush+ information page – link no longer active
Another fine example of a multimodal map, this time from Lyon, France. This map shows Métro, tram, bus and funicular service, as well as indications of connections to SNCF mainline train services in a map that wears its London Underground influences on its sleeve.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: Lovely clear layout, with almost all lines reduced to horizontals or verticals – only a few 45-degree route lines are to be seen. The typeface used is quite lovely, and may be custom: the PDF names it as “Confluence”, which is certainly apt for the city that sits at the confluence of the Saone and Rhone rivers. Excellent informational hierarchy, with terminus stations clearly shown via a black box with reversed text, and route lines at their thickest for the Métro and thinnest for bus routes.
What we don’t like: The letters that denote each transportation mode (“M”, “T”, “F” and “C”) end up looking too similar because of the consistent red background. Perhaps different colours or even different shapes could have been used to differentiate them a little more. The combined letters ad route numbers also take up quite a lot of space on the map, and can be a little hard to decipher at stations where many routes converge. Not sure of the utility of the unnamed station markers on the bus routes: are you meant to count stops to find where you want to get off?
Our rating: Clean, easy to read and quite charming. Four stars.
Source: Official TCL website – link no longer active
Back in January, I posted a review of the current Boston MBTA transit map on the blog – and I had some harsh words for it (I believe the phrase “hot mess” occurs in the text). Always one to back my words up with actions, I’ve been quietly working on my own revised version that I feel improves the map in quite a few areas. I’ve also created a few different versions to illustrate some points about the design, so hang in there: this could be a long post!
The image at the top of the post shows the same information as the current official MBTA map, with the addition of all stations on the Green Line branches, not just the accessible ones, and all stations on the Silver Line BRT. This does mean that my map is not the same square format as the current map, and I fully admit that to achieve that square format, you must omit stations on the Green Line. However, I wanted to see what the map looked like with all stations named – so my maps are unapologetically in a wider format.
Other changes from the official map: a tweaking of all the subway line colours to slightly deeper, richer hues that seem to suit Boston better than plain old red, blue, green and orange. I felt it was especially important for the Red Line, which is red because it goes to Harvard, which has crimson as its colour.
Depiction of the Silver Line routes as thinner, separate routes that make their routing easier to follow, especially for the SL4 and SL5 lines around Chinatown and Boylston. Despite attempts to convince people otherwise, the Silver Line is not part of the subway system, it’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and needs to be visually differentiated from the actual subway lines.
The underlying geography is now show in a stylised, rectlinear form that matches the depiction of the routes themselves. One of my pet peeves is angular transit maps that insist on putting these routes on “real” geography. The geography always ends up totally distorted to fit the routes anyway, and I find the clash of styles very jarring.
A firm hierarchy of routes: The subway routes and the Silver Line (the most important information on the map) sit at the top, then commuter rail, then bus routes, then (least importantly), ferry routes at the bottom. If lines do not interact with each other when they cross, they are separated by a thin white keyline. The routes lines also become correspondingly thinner the lower down the information hierarchy they fall.
A complete reworking of the Green Line branches to better match their real-life layout (although in a perfect world, the “C” branch would be straight along its entire length). This also allowed me to introduce a thin dotted black line between Chestnut Hill Ave, Cleveland Circle and Reservoir stations to indicate that they are within walking distance of each other (in effect, an out-of-system transfer), which I’ve also used between Boylston and Chinatown stations.
A visual indication that the Blue Line between Government Center and Bowdoin is only open for the working week, rather than the easy to miss asterisk on the current map.
Station labels are limited to horizontal and angled 45 degrees up to the right. I normally strive to get all station names horizontal, but the Green Line branches make that impossible in this situation. It’s still an improvement on the current map, which uses more variants of angled text.
Station markers have been made as linear as possible, which I think is a great improvement over the knobbly, multi-armed markers used currently.
I’ve also fixed a few errors that I found on the official map, mainly to do with bus routes (especially the 66, and the 15, 22 and 23 which should all go through Roxbury Crossing on their way to Ruggles).
This variation shows all current routes like the first map, but omits the key bus routes. Of note is how much cleaner the map looks instantly – almost nothing else has changed at all. The other main improvement in this variant is that the labelling of the stations on the S4 and S5 lines near Dudley Square gets a lot neater because we don’t have to deal with the #1 bus route!
One thing you may have noticed with the two maps above is the new way I’ve treated the Lowell commuter rail line: running at a 45-degree angle instead of straight up like on the current map. Why have I done this? Because the map has had the future built into it – as all well-designed transit maps should. The currently-planned Green Line Extension will run along much of the same right-of-way as the Lowell Line, so I’ve moved it to a position where this can be achieved easily.
Here’s a map with the future routes added. Nothing has had to be moved; everything just slots into place perfectly.
Even better is this future map without the key bus routes, which allows the new stations (Newmarket, Four Corners/Geneva, Talbot Ave and Blue Hill Ave) on the Fairmount commuter rail line to be respaced a little more evenly and aesthetically.
