Transit Maps

Submitted by Alexis Hunt, who says:

This transit map (in brochure form) covers the bus network in the area stretching from Canmore to Lake Louise in Alberta, about 80 km from end to end. There’s a lot of information to unpack in here, but here’s a few things we found particularly interesting or worth noting:

• A lot of schematic maps try to simplify geometry in order to make the relation between routes and the lines more interesting to follow. This map, on the other hand, actually makes it more complicated, showing the Trans-Canada Highway doing a full 180 around Tunnel Mountain in order to fit the mountain on the page without an inset, while in reality it only does about 90 degrees before continuing on to Canmore.
• It’s easy to miss just how far apart these towns really are, from looking at this map. Many commuter transit maps relax the scale a lot as they get into suburbs, but there’s about a 16:1 difference in scale in this map! Between the junction of the TCH and the Bow Valley Parkway (highway 1A) in the bottom left, and the Lake Louise Park and Ride, is close to 48 kilometers, while the part of Canmore depicted on this map is only about 3 km long in its entirety.
• You’ll note that they recorded the actual distances between several locations on the map, to help get a sense of scale. It’s got to be a very difficult challenge to properly convey those distances without losing too much resolution.
• Many of the locations on this map, especially on the seasonal routes, are tourist destinations, reflecting the tourist-heavy interest, particularly in the summer, in the area.
• Different shapes of stop markers are used to indicate dropoff-only and pickup-only stops. This is neat, as marker shape doesn’t seem to be a common place to put variation, but it’s doesn’t add much visual busyness and it gives us fond feelings of Mini Metro. In some places (such as the Benchlands Trail overpass in Canmore) it can be difficult to tell if a marker is a circle or square, though.
• It’s not clear what the hatching (don’t know the technical terms) on parts of the Moraine Lake and On-It services is for. This is commonly used to indicate future construction, but this makes no sense in context. We actually can’t figure it out for sure, but it looks like the Moraine Lake route is distinguishing between the incoming and outgoing routes, and trying to indicate that there isn’t through service, while on the On-It service it seems to be trying to distinguish between the trips which do and do not serve Canmore (see the schedule).
• The Canmore local Roam route 5 service doesn’t appear on this map, probably in part because this map is by Parks Canada rather than the Bow Valley Regional Transit Commission, and partly for space reasons. (It’s worth noting that we couldn’t find a full-system map from the BVRTC for their Roam services.)
• The map sets out full service and fare details of the various routes, including what you can bring with you on the bus, no doubt in part because of the tourist audience and in part because there is very little in the way of regularity to the fares and service dates.
• The thinner lines in the inset area in Banff to let them fit in is a nice touch.
• Stops served in both directions are inconsistently notated with either both arrows (in Lake Louise area) or none (elsewhere).
• The area is beautiful and absolutely a destination worth visiting if you get the chance, although the crowds are getting pretty bad these days.

Transit Maps says:

First off, my apologies to Alexis — this map has been sitting in my queue for ages, and I really should have gotten to it earlier.

Yes, this map has some problems with variable scale and the draftsmanship is a little dodgy in places (there’s some very unconvincing curves around corners), but I’m going to give it full marks for getting this kind of information out there. As National Parks around the world get more and more popular, we need to find ways to cut down on the use of single-occupancy vehicles within the parks themselves. A brochure/map like this that makes public transportation in and around the park look easy and accessible is only to be commended.

Like Alexis, I particularly like the comprehensive table at the bottom left that clearly outlines all the fare and service details for all the routes — this is great information for potential riders to have. If anything, I’d like to see more emphasis given to the cost-effectiveness of buying multi-day passes for the Roam network ($12 for three days is a pretty good deal!), so that people can make educated decisions about their transportation choices.

The differing scales in the map could perhaps be dealt with by drawing break lines across the Trans-Canada Highway between the major areas, just to make it clear that the distances between them are larger than shown. The inclusion of distances as labels does mitigate the need for this a bit, though.

The inset of Banff almost feels unnecessary — it adds very little detail to the depiction of the town on the main map, and almost seems to have been included just to fill up an otherwise empty space.

The “pecked” lines (to use the official term, Alexis) really do just seem to be used to say that not every bus follows this route — it’s more obvious for the brown On-It route to Calgary, as not every bus stops at Canmore, so we have to assume it retains the same meaning for the Moraine Lake service.

I would have refrained from placing the TCH “Route 1” maple leaf directly over intersections — it makes it hard to follow routes through the intersection, especially coming out of Banff itself.

Our final word: A very serviceable map that does a good job of outlining transit options in and around Banff. A little more polish would really make it sing. Three stars.

Source: Parks Canada website