Official Map: Boston MBTA Rapid Transit/Key Bus Routes Map, 2012

January 23, 2012
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I haven’t really looked at the Boston MBTA map since I was there for a few days in the middle of 2008, but I certainly don’t remember it looking as bad as this. I’ve always been mildly annoyed by the fact that not all the stations on the surface street sections of the Green Line are labelled, but my overall impression back then was of a solid, well-designed map.

Just a few short years later, well-meaning but poorly thought-out additions have reduced the map to the horrible mess we see here. And the word “addition” reveals the real cause of this map’s problems: new services have simply been slapped on top of the earlier map when it actually needed a full redesign to solve the problems that these additions created.

If you strip the map down, you can see how these problems multiply with the addition of each new service. The subway lines by themselves actually make a nice, well-designed diagram. Then the commuter rail routes were added: these still fit within the framework fairly well. Then the Silver Line – by now, the designer is struggling to make things fit, resulting in an incomprehensible maze of directional arrows to the west of South Station. Finally, the “key bus routes” have to be shoehorned into a map that was never originally designed to show them, resulting in the routes weaving uncertainly all over the map. Oh, and did I mention the ferry routes and the airport shuttle buses?

Have we been there? Yes, although I only used the “T” a couple of times, and only in the downtown area.

What we like: Ambitious scope to show different transit modes. Unfortunately, looks very amateur compared to some of the maps currently coming out of Europe. I don’t have a problem with the commuter rail lines not being shown along their entire length – they head a long way out and this is a map of Boston, not Massachusetts or New England!

What we don’t like: This is going to be a long list…

I really dislike the knobby, multi-armed Transfer Stations – South Station and Forest Hills look incredibly messy, while Haymarket’s angled bus stop circle clearly shows that the designer simply ran out of room and cheated to fit the station name in. Even worse are the transfer stations rotated to a random, non-45-degree angle (also cheating) to allow them to connect to a bus service (see Hynes, Coolidge Corner and Harvard Ave on the Green Line for examples).

The Silver Line is one hot mess. It’s not a subway line (it’s actually BRT), but is shown as one. It’s made up of four separate routes (SL 1 and 2 run to the east of South Station, SL 4 and 5 run to the west – with no direct interchange between the two sets of routes), but it’s almost impossible to decipher this on the map. As noted before, the directional arrows on the SL4/5 routes don’t really help at all. Lots of stops on SL1 and SL2 simply aren’t shown at all – not even a dot! But the bit I hate the most is where SL1 loops around the Logan Airport Terminals – the connecting line joins on against the directional flow of the arrows: hideously counterintuitive and ugly.

The less said about the presentation of the bus routes, the better. Cramped and ugly. The way the curve of the 32 doesn’t nestle into the curve of the commuter rail line to the south-west of Forest Hills catches my eye (in a bad way) every time.

My final major complaint is the representation of Boston’s geography – on a diagrammatic map like this, I’m almost never in favour of “realistic” representations of shorelines and rivers, seeing as they have to be seriously distorted to fit around the diagram anyway! I believe they should also be represented in a simplified form to add to the clarity of the map. Here, we have the seemingly farcical image of the F2 ferry passing over what looks like a spit of land to reach its destination in Quincy (it’s actually going under a bridge, but this map doesn’t draw that distinction at all).

Our rating: Well meaning, but seriously flawed. Needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. With the addition of the Silver Line, the centre of the city needs far more space given to it, while the edges can afford to be compressed a bit to compensate (look how much room the Braintree leg of the Red Line has, for example). One-and-a-half stars.

Source: Official MBTA website

Fantasy Map: Chicago “L” Overlaid On New York City

January 21, 2012
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A bit of whimsy for you today from Reddit, brought to my attention by Twitter user @GordonWerner. The “L” has been flipped both horizontally and vertically, then rotated to fit Manhattan’s street grid, but the scaling is accurate. It looks like The Loop is placed in the area directly below Central Park. A few things from this: it’s actually kind of scary how well this fits; and it’s astounding just how dense the New York subway’s lines really are (shown here in white).

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Source: r/transit on Reddit

Official Map: LVB, Leipzig, Germany, 2012

January 17, 2012
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In a way, this map of Leipzig reminds me quite a bit of Viteks Bariševs’ recently featured map of Riga: both feature an extensive tram/streetcar/bus network shown in a highly diagrammatic form. However, this highly detailed map goes one step further in that it also shows frequency of services. The thicker the route line, the more often it arrives, regardless of travel mode. This solution is so devastatingly simple, it’s a wonder it isn’t used more often on maps – frequency is definitely a huge factor in deciding whether or not to use transit.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: Even though the map is very complex and dense, there’s still a good hierarchy in the information: the tram lines are given brighter colours to allow them to stand out from the less colourful purple and grey bus lines. Regional train services are relegated to thin black lines. The circular treatment of the lines around the city centre is simply beautiful and elegant: there’s no doubt as to what the most important part of the map is. Labels are all set horizontally for easy reading.

What we don’t like: While an amazing achievement, the map is perhaps too informationally dense for quick scanning of the network, or for casual users. The placement of the grid at the very top layer of the map becomes visually distracting when it passes over elements like terminus names and tram lines. The grid is hardly the most important part of the map and should be placed behind many of the objects shown, not in front. The organic treatment of lakes and other bodies of water is at odds with the strict diagrammatic layout of everything else on the map.

Our rating: Informationally rich and quite beautiful. Let down a bit by the strange grid overlay and blobby looking lakes. Four stars, but definitely a map that’s meant for deep perusal rather than a quick overview.

Source: Official LVB website

Unofficial Map: Unified Transit Map of Riga, Latvia by Viteks Bariševs

January 13, 2012
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Yesterday morning, I got an interesting email from Viteks Bariševs in response to my assertion that transit maps rarely show completely different transit modes (bus and rail, mainly) on the same map due to their differing natures. He is working on a totally unified transit map for Riga – and that includes showing a staggering 53 bus routes, 19 trolleybus routes and 9 tram routes – a monumental task!

His map certainly looks impressive, showing a dense network of routes and stations. Interesting aspects include the inner city inset, which switches to a traditional geographically-accurate map with numbered stops. The legend then cleverly tells you at which of these stops different routes call at, thus preventing the central part of the map from becoming a twisting spaghetti-like maze of route lines.

I’m not entirely convinced by Viteks’ method of differentiating between different services by using white dashes of different lengths within each route line (as seen in the detail image): it interrupts the flow of the routes, and can look a little messy when multiple lines are running parallel. My preferred method would be differing line thicknesses (probably tram as thickest, trolleybus as a line the same thickness, but with a solid white line down the centre, then buses as thinner lines). Failing that, you could simply rely on the letter prefix on each route to clue people in as to what type of service that line represents.

If the representation of all of Riga’s transit wasn’t enough, Viteks has also produced a map of night bus services that is nicely overlaid on a ghosted-back version of the daytime services, allowing travellers to relate one set of services to another.

Viteks has big plans for his map, telling me that he hopes to have it become the official map for Riga in the future. It certainly shows a lot of promise, even from these few preview images. Click through on the source link below to view more images from this intriguing project.

Source: Viteks Bariševs’ Riga Transit Facebook photo album

Unofficial Map: Paris RER Line B as the Eiffel Tower by Sonoko Hagiwara

January 12, 2012
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Words cannot express just how much I love this cleverly thought of, deftly executed and incredibly cute rendering of Paris’ RER Line B as the Eiffel Tower. Hagiwara has drawn her inspiration from the official RER line diagram, with the bifurcation of the line becoming the “legs” of the tower. Almost seems like a clever advertisement for the RER, and only took her 20 minutes to execute!

Source: Sonoko Hagiwara – link no longer active

Official Map: Sao Paulo Metropolitan Transport Network, 2012

January 10, 2012
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Unusually, this map from the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo shows services offered by completely different transportation companies on the same map. To my mind, this type of integrated map needs to be used more often – travelers don’t necessarily care who offers the service, they just want to know if they can get from point A to point B.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: Comprehensive and all-encompassing. Great legend, even if it takes up more than half the sheet of paper it is printed on. I love the line names for the CPTM services – precious stones. It makes for some lovely and unusual colours on the map itself as well. Bilingual legend.

What we don’t like: Seems very cramped in places. The spacing on the Diamond line to the west of the city is far tighter than on the lines to the east. The grey drop shadow on the interchange stations (seemingly indicating light coming from the top left of the map) is ugly and unnecessary.

The whole thing is very busy, with dots everywhere – blue dots, green dots, white dots with green outlines, dots with an “E” in them – all of which need you to refer to the legend to determine their meaning. The need to show the logos of all the service providers on the map itself just adds to the visual noise.

Some routes seem unnecessarily complex for a diagrammatic map – the Yellow Line weaves all over the place, and why does the Lilac line need to jog northwards after it connects with the Emerald line at Santo Amaro?

Our rating: A comprehensive look at transit in a huge city, but a bit of a mess, really. Two-and-a-half-stars.

Source: Official Sao Paulo Metro website

Historical Map: Harry Beck’s 1961 Victoria Line Tube Map Proposal

January 8, 2012
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It seems I’m having a London Underground kind of week…

When people ask me what my favourite version of the London Tube Map is, I always show them this.

By 1961, Harry Beck was no longer responsible for producing the Tube map, it having been forcibly passed on to Harold Hutchison. However, more out of hope than anything else, he continued to produce new mockups of the map which he passed on to London Transport for consideration, including this beautiful one from 1961. It was returned to Beck with a curt letter in December 1961, making it obvious that London Transport had no intention of rehiring him to work on future maps.

Have we been there? Yes.

What we like: A simply gorgeous hand rendering of the Tube Map. The stand out element to me is Beck’s masterful treatment of the proposed Victoria Line, which runs at a perfect 45-degree diagonal from end-to-end. He had to rebuild the entire map to achieve this, but the end result is worth the effort. Compare this treatment to today’s Tube Map, where the Victoria Line runs at unconvincing angles to fit into the existing layout.

What we don’t like: Strangely, the Piccadilly Line spur to Aldwych runs inside and then across the main line, when it would be simpler to run it straight down on the right. An unusually complicated detail from a man so normally driven to simplify and clarify.

Our rating: The apotheosis of the Beck style. Almost everything is reduced to its simplest form. His ability to take apart his own work and put it back together in a more compelling form has never been better shown. 5 stars.

Source: Scanned from my personal copy of “Mr. Beck’s Map” by Ken Garland, Capital Transport Publishing, 1994

“Tate Gallery By Tube” by David Booth

January 8, 2012
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One of my all-time favourite pieces of London Tube art. So cleverly done and executed perfectly. By David Booth (no relation!) of The Fine White Line Design, 1986.

Historical Map: “Hutchison” London Tube Map, 1960

January 7, 2012
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Requested by: My dad (whose love of transit maps I have inherited)

The London Tube Map is so synonymous with the name Harry Beck that I feel sure many people think he’s still holed up in a studio somewhere working on the maps even now (he died in 1974). In actuality, Beck’s last published Tube map was released in 1959: in 1960 it was replaced by this new version, ostensibly made by London Transport’s own Publicity Officer, Harold Hutchison (although he was not known as a designer).

Beck was horrified, believing he had an agreement with LT that “all future work on the diagram was to be carried out or edited by me”. However, if there was an agreement to this effect, it was verbal only and Beck got nowhere with his protestations. For better or worse, the diagram he had worked over 25 years on had passed on to new hands.

Have we been there? Yes

What we like: The first Tube Map to use lower-case for station names. This has two positives: it makes the diagram easier to read as a whole, and also allows the all-caps interchange stations to become more visually important.

What we don’t like: An absolute lack of curves where routes change direction make this diagram very stilted and angular, lacking the grace and flow of the best Beck diagrams. The strange jog in the Central Line at White City (where the Central Line crosses the Metropolitan) is very visually unappealing. The map gets very cramped around Bank and Monument, leading to “Aldgate” having to be broken up on either side of route lines to fit. Square stations markers for British Railways connections also disrupt the flow of the routes.

Our rating: Reviled by some as the map that was stolen from Beck, it’s not a patch on what came before it. Aesthetically, I don’t feel it is up with the best versions of the Tube Map – the sharp diagonals give a jagged, staccato feeling to the whole thing, and it’s all rather obvious that Hutchinson wasn’t much of a designer. Two stars.

Source: The London Tube Map Archive – link no longer active

Unofficial Map: Integrated Transit Map of Kiev, Ukraine by Igor Skliarevsky

December 29, 2011
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Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to post until the New Year, but I couldn’t wait to show this exciting new map of transit in Kiev, Ukraine.

This beautiful diagram was designed by Igor Skliarevsky in his own time, simply because he was frustrated with the limitations and design of the official map. As he says on his website (pardon the Google Translate from Ukrainian), “As a designer, I find it difficult to put up with inconvenience and ugliness of things that surround me.” As this was the main reason I designed my integrated transit map of Portland, Oregon, I definitely agree with Igor on that front.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: Lovely minimalist transit map design with a very elegant flowing feel. I particularly like the curved lines that join different transit modes and the subtle gradients between the coloured circles at transit stations. Fantastic hierarchy: the Metro is most important/largest, then light rail, then commuter rail. Yellow informational icons stand out well – an advantage of a system that doesn’t use every colour for its route lines! Plenty of lovely white space, even though all text is duplicated (in Ukrainian and a transliteration).

What we don’t like: A few tiny errors here and there. “Ploscha” is capitalised in Kontraktova Ploscha, but Poshtova ploscha – directly underneath – is not. Type on the commuter rail lines seems a little too small in comparison to the Metro lines. I feel that the terminus cap where the T2 and T1 lines end should be purple, so each of the three light rail lines gets to be a terminal cap colour – at the moment, orange is used twice (also at the T1/T3 terminal). The QR code may be useful, but boy, does it ruin the minimalist aesthetics of the map!

Our rating: Igor is certainly to be commended for this excellent effort, a gorgeous map indeed. Four-and-a-half stars!

Source: Wayfinding Kiev website – link no longer active