Project: High Speed Train Routes of France Transit Diagram

February 2, 2011
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Presenting my next transit-styled diagram, this time showing all the high speed train routes that pass through France. This includes the French (SNCF) TGV trains, the Eurostar trains from London, the Thalys services from Belgium and the Netherlands, and some ICE services from Germany that operate in tandem with corresponding TGV services from France. It does not show high speed trains that do not pass through France: for example, the ICE train from Amsterdam to Germany does not pass through France, so is not shown.

Click here to view the map full-screen.

Research for this diagram was particularly tricky as no one source outlines all the routes in one comprehensive listing. I had to compile the information from various sources, none more valuable than the amazing Deutsche Bahn web timetable, which I have fond memories of using in 2003 as I caught trains all over Europe while backpacking.

Once I started the diagram, the sheer amount of high speed services in France initially overwhelmed me, and it was a long while before things formed a coherent pattern for me. Once I worked out the complex routing of trains out of and around Paris, things began to fall into place. I decided that colour-coding would try to reflect the origin of the train, so all trains out of the Gare de l’Est in Paris are variations of green, for example,while all Thalys routes are a shade of the rolling stock’s distinctive maroon. I find it particularly interesting how the initially homogeneous colours become more mixed the further from Paris you get, especially towards Marseille, where lines from all over France begin to converge towards their final destination.

It’s interesting to note that the equivalent diagram in America would consist of one route – the Acela Express from New York to Washington, DC – and even that barely qualifies as “high speed”. Fast by American standards, maybe…

But do note that these trains do not necessarily travel at their maximum speed (up to 300km/ per hour or 185 miles/hour) on all the routes shown. To attain these speeds, the trains have to run on specially-built tracks, which currently are only on the highest density parts of the system. However, all these routes use TGV/Eurostar/Thalys/ICE rolling stock, which is the criterion for inclusion on this diagram.

My favourite parts of the diagram include the grand loop around Paris to the east, the complex interplay of routes around Lille, and the subtle inclusion of the Winter routes to the French Alps without having to accord them an entire route from start to finish: more complexity is not what this diagram needs!

As always, comments are always welcome!

Update: March 3rd, 2011: New version of the diagram with a new route added from Melun to Marseille (Don’t know how I missed that one!). Routes from Le Havre to Strasbourg and Cherbourg to Dijon were deleted, as these “experimental” (and poorly patronised) routes stopped running in December 2010. Winter services to Evian and Saint-Gervais also added. Finally, the station names have been made a little larger.

Project: European E-Road System as a Subway Diagram

October 31, 2010
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Interstate System? Europe laughs at your petty Interstate System, America. In 1975, the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s Economic Commission for Europe ratified a document outlining international traffic arteries through Europe and beyond. Commonly known as E-Roads, these highways criss-cross Europe in much the same way that the Interstate system does the United States, but with even more roads and even longer routes.

However, this system is overlaid on the top of national highways with varying levels of acceptance and success. The UK, while a signatory to the agreement, does not signpost E-Roads at all, while other countries have brought their national numbering totally in line with the E-Road system. As such, knowledge of this system is not universal and it often appears that there is a theoretical concept of a Pan-European highway system as opposed to an actual network of highways.

I actually started this diagram almost as soon as I finished my Interstates as London Underground diagram, and originally worked it up in exactly the same style as that piece (see image 4 above).  However, I soon realised that the European system’s extra complexity was not suited to that particular graphic style and put the project on the back burner while I pursued other diagram-related projects.

In August, I decided to start the project completely from scratch with a new, more precise style — a culmination of all the things I have learned creating all my transit-styled diagrams up to this point. The results were immediately more rewarding: the whole diagram hangs together much better this way and I couldn’t be happier with the end result.

To give you some idea of the work that I’ve put into this diagram, here’s a short time-lapse video of its construction in Adobe Illustrator. Each shot is taken roughly 30-45 minutes apart.

As usual, comments and corrections are welcome.

And finally, a couple of notes:

  • Ferry routes shown are as listed in the United Nations agreement document, and do not necessarily correlate to an actual, existing ferry route. Some existed in 1975 and have since shut down, others have never existed at all except in theory.
  • Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, The Hague is the seat of government.
  • E04 through Sweden is coloured as if it is a continuation of E55. This is intentional, as E04 is E55 in all but name. By the time the route of E55 was decided upon, Sweden had already signposted the entire length of the designated road within Sweden as E04 from an earlier system. To save the expense of new signs, Sweden was allowed to keep the E04 designation.

Project: Amtrak Subway Map

July 11, 2010
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Presenting the latest in my series of transit-styled diagrams (see also the Interstate System in the style of the London Underground and a Washington, DC Metro map redesign), the entire Amtrak passenger rail system in the style of a subway map.

Surprisingly, I haven’t seen another take on this anywhere else on the internet, but I guess it is a fairly monumental undertaking (Good thing I’m the patient type!). Every last station is shown, the result of a lot of research on both Amtrak’s official site and Wikipedia.

UPDATE – November 26, 2012: I’ve updated this map with the latest route and station information. Only minor changes: extended the Downeaster to Brunswick, Maine, added a second Santa Clara station (University) to the Capital Corridor route, a couple of stations dropped off the Keystone service, fixed a few timetabling errors and typos.

UPDATE – December 11, 2012: Another update to include the new Northeast Regional service to Norfolk, Virginia.

UPDATE – October 9, 2013: Update to the Pacific Surfliner route: deleted the Orange and Laguna Niguel stations; added Carlsbad Village, Carlsbad Poinsettia, Encinitas and Sorrento Valley stations. Removed Richmond from the Coast Starlight. Added Ardmore back to the Pennsylvanian route – Amtrak’s site lists it as serving that line (it seems that it stops there only on Sundays).

UPDATE – January 7, 2015: Updated the Vermonter route: added the new Greenfield and Northampton stations; and removed Amherst station.

Project: Washington DC Metro Diagram Redesign

February 17, 2010
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If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good Metro/Subway/Underground map. Some of them are design classics and really shouldn’t be messed with (London especially). Others have flaws, but are mostly tolerable (Boston not naming all stations on the Green Line really annoys me, but the rest of the diagram is quite well done).

And then there are the diagrams that I simply can’t abide.

And, at the moment, foremost amongst those is that of the Washington, DC Metro system. I know that it’s one of the most comprehensive mass-transit systems in the US. And I know that some love its broad, brightly-coloured route lines and overly-large station dots, both of which do lend sort of a child-like simplicity to the system, but I’m not one of them. My main problem is that it looks like it’s been done by an amateur – white keylines around the route lines are of different thicknesses in different parts of the map and station dots simply aren’t centred on their lines. Also baffling is the choice of an extremely ugly symbol to indicate parking at stations. There’s an international symbol for parking, and a blue circle with a white “P” inside it looks a lot more elegant than something akin to a boxy mid-1980s Volvo.

Delving further, it became obvious to me that there are also some serious inaccuracies on the current DC Metro diagram: whether these are because of space restrictions or error, I don’t know. Friendship Heights on the Red Line should straddle the border of the District, not sit well outside it, as should Southern Avenue on the Green Line. The next station out on the Green Line, Naylor Road, also sits very close to the border in reality – something not indicated at all on the current map, which just heads on out in a straight line. And why are the District/County border lines exactly the same shade of grey as the Capital Beltway road?

Another huge problem for legibility is the number of different angles that type is set at. We have station names set horizontally, at 45° degrees reading up from the left AND at 45° down from the left. And where type can’t quite fit at those angles (I’m looking at you, Foggy Bottom-GWU and Farragut West), the designer cheats and changes the angle.

I’m also not a fan of the huge call-out boxes that explain the peak hour restrictions on the Yellow and Red Lines. The one on the Yellow Line makes you work really hard to find Mt Vernon Square/7th St-Convention Center station before you can even visualise the gap in services on the map.

Most staggering of all, on the current map, the borders of the District/Arlington County don’t describe the perfect diamond shape that they should – they’ve been distorted to fit lines and stations in. On a diagram that is reduced to perfect 45° angles elsewhere, this is unforgivable.

Finally, there are big changes afoot with the Metro system. Work is already underway on the Silver Line, which will run parallel with the Orange Line from Stadium-Armory to East Falls Church before splitting and heading past Dulles Airport deep into Loudon County. If the current style of map adds another route at the thickness that lines are currently shown at, very little of the underlying “map” will still be visible. I also doubt that the current “double dot” indicator for a Transit Center will be visually viable when three lines cross one at Metro Center, or three cross two at L’Enfant Plaza.

So, this is my solution.

Fitting on the same US Letter sheet (albeit rotated 90°) as the current PDF available on the Washington Metro website, with the distinctive diamond around the District/Arlington County at exactly the same size, as well as type. All information that is shown on the current map is present on my version (plus a little more, as you’ll see below).

My first amendment was a thinning of route lines to allow the addition of the Silver Line without obscuring more of the “map” underneath the routes. Where possible, lines exit the District at the correct relative position along the border, and stations that straddle or are located very close the the border maintain that position. An added benefit of the thinner route lines is that I was actually able to show the commuter/heavy rail lines and stations in a manner that is informational, but subordinate to the main Metro lines.

Note that the Red Line runs underneath the Silver/Orange/Blue line heading south after Farragut North – this is done to denote the lines have no interaction or interchange at this point: something the current map doesn’t do a very good job of.

Line colors are now denoted by a simple single letter at the end of each line, rather than the clumsy and obtrusive “GREEN LINE”, “BLUE LINE”, etc laid alongside each line on the current map. It is absolutely necessary to denote lines in another manner than just colour alone – red/green color-blind people perceive very line apart from Blue and Yellow as very similar shades of muddy brown. Also, the peak hour restrictions on the Red and Yellow Lines are now clearly indicated by darker lines running down the middle of the route line between relevant stations, and are fully explained in the Legend on the right hand side of the diagram.

All station names are now set horizontally. Every single one of them! And very few of them overlap lines or other important elements, even with the station name overload that seems to affect so many US transit systems. I mean, “U Street/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo” – really?!

The Capital Beltway and borders are now different shades of grey and much different thicknesses, and the District itself has a subtle coloured background to set it apart from the surrounding counties. Colours for the rivers and parkland are more muted than on the current map, which allows the routes themselves to stand out more.

Is my approach perfect? No. My map probably exchanges some of the individual charm of the original in search of clarity and accuracy, but it definitely shows a different approach to the problem… which, to me, is a fascinating thing.