Submission – Official Map: Ortenau S-Bahn (OSB) In-Car Map, Germany/France

February 26, 2020
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Submitted by Neil Connolly, who says:

This is a map of the local train network of Ortenau (the German county next to Strasbourg in France) as it appears on the train itself. As you can see, it runs trains into France too.

While I very much appreciate the network (access to the Black Forest, Offenburg, etc., from France, where I live) the map has always annoyed me, but I can’t figure out exactly why. What are your thoughts?

Transit Maps says:

There are plenty of minor problems with this map that certainly add up to an “annoying” level, to use Neil’s words. The garish zone colours, uninspired typography, logos slapped on everywhere with white boxes behind them, the differently-sized and coloured station ticks (why?)… it’s all a bit of a slap-dash, random affair.

My biggest gripe, however, is that it doesn’t really give you any idea of how the network actually works. Can you catch a train from Offenburg directly to Ottenhöfen? Do different routes overlap to increase service frequency in a corridor? From what I can see from a quick look at the OSB website, there are seven routes in the network, with five using Offenburg as a terminus and with two more acting as connecting branch lines (Biberach to Oberharmersbach-Riersbach, and Achern to Ottenhöfen). It’s a relatively simple network to depict and showing it in full would really add to the utility of this map. There aren’t any OSB trains that run through Offenburg to a destination on the other side, so it’s not possible to get from Achern to Hausach on a single train, for example. (Of course, this being Germany, there’s almost certainly a Deutsche Bahn RE train that can do that, but those services seems to be outside the scope of this map.)

On a side note, I remember waiting for what seemed like ages for a train from Offenburg to Strasbourg back on a freezing cold day in early 2004. Brrrrrrr!

Our final word: Not particularly well executed, and not showing individual routes really limits its usefulness. 2 stars.

Submission – Unofficial Map: Greater Tokyo Railway Network, 2020 by Bernie Ng

February 7, 2020
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Submitted by Bernie, who says:

It’s been a while! I’m wondering whether you would be interested in taking a look at a diagram I have completed recently, showing all railway lines (except local or in-park people movers, such as the Disneyland monorail) around the Tokyo conurbation. I welcome any and all feedback!

Transit Maps says:

What an undertaking, Bernie! Mapping Tokyo’s subway lines alone is a huge challenge, let alone every darn rail in the whole metropolitan area, so I applaud the effort involved. The resulting map isn’t exactly compact (the PDF Bernie sent me is around 107 by 75 inches – even bigger than my own monstrous Highways of the United States of America map) but that’s probably beside the point. This is a map that’s best savoured in its digital form, zooming in and scrolling around to uncover all the details.

Stylistically, the map puts me in mind of both Zero per Zero and Jug Cerovic, but it’s also very much in line with Bernie’s earlier work as well. I think the piece holds together really well, with a lot of sweeping curves and concentric rings, though perhaps the outer parts of the map seem a little empty in comparison to the dense centre. Bernie’s goal was to unify all the disparate rail networks with a common design language, and I think he’s succeeded for the most part. Information about Toyko 2020 venues and soon-to-be-opened stations is also most welcome.

For me, where the piece really shines is in the insets to the right of the map, which present a wealth of additional information and insights about the network. A comprehensive overview of services to Narita Airport, a guide to through-running services, and a rather wonderful little map of Shinkansen services that would be a worthy stand-alone map. So much information packed into such a small space!

Our final word: It would make an enormous and unwieldy poster or printed map, but it’s wonderful to look at on a large monitor. This is a huge undertaking and obviously a labour of love, and that’s to be applauded. Four stars! You should definitely head over to Bernie’s project page to read more about his process and design decisions.

Source: Bernie’s Behance project page

Official Map: Amtrak Network Map by James Niehues for Amtrak’s “The National” Magazine

February 5, 2020
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Yes, that James Niehues.

As you’d expect from the acclaimed master of ski resort maps, the mountains in this map are gorgeously rendered, and Amtrak’s routes are drawn as straight red lines — almost as if they were ski lifts across the country. I particularly like it when a route line “disappears” behind a particularly tall mountain — it’s something that really sells the implied dimensionality of the map.

It is perhaps unfortunate that some routes have been omitted from the map — none of the Michigan Services make it, nor the City of New Orleans, which is almost unforgivable. Perhaps it’s better to treat this as a work of art than a practical map?

On a personal note, I’m just happy to say that I’ve now been published in the same magazine as James Niehues — my Amtrak as Subway Map was the very first in this series of alternate Amtrak maps appearing in The National, way back in December 2016/January 2017.

If, like me, you’re a fan of James Niehues’ work, you might want to check out this book about his career, The Man Behind the Maps (affiliate link).

Source: Amtrak’s The National

Official Map: Ouigo TGV “Ouigoland” Map, France, 2020

January 30, 2020
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This confection of a map appears on SNCF’s website for their low-cost, no-frills, everything-costs-extra TGV service, Ouigo (a name that makes a pun in both English and French — “we go” in the former and “yes, go” in the latter).

The map is certainly bright and cheerful, and very definitely on brand for the service. It uses the bright magenta and sky blue colours from the train livery liberally and presents all of France as a theme park (complete with “roller coaster” track!) called “Ouigoland” — tying in perfectly with the service’s tagline of “Let’s play!”

The major destinations get little illustrative icons to depict the region, ranging from a lovely little Hotel Negresco in Nice to a paper cone of anthropomorphic frites (!) in Lille. The elephant for Nantes confused me at first, but there is actually an enormous mechanical pachyderm —  Le Grand Élephant — in that city. You can take rides in it! The starfish sunning itself on a towel is probably my favourite.

While I love the style of the map, it’s really just used to highlight potential destinations, rather than giving any indication of the actual network. This is probably intentional, as the cut-price nature of Ouigo echoes that of no-frills airlines: the destination is the thing, not the journey or route taken to get there. You’re really meant to go to the Ouigo website, enter your starting and ending locations and see how cheap the fares are, basically.

Our final word: Adorable and well-executed, if not actually useful to gain a full understanding of the ins-and-outs of the rapidly expanding Ouigo network. Hmmm, maybe a project for the future? Three stars.

Source: Ouigo.com

Unofficial Map: German Intercity Rail Network, 2020 by u/theflyingindonesian

January 27, 2020
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Thanks to everyone who has alerted me to this rather wonderful map of the German Intercity rail network, created by a Reddit user known only as “theflyingindonesian”. This is actually something that I thought about tackling after I finished my French TGV network map way back in 2011, so I know how daunting and complex a project this is!

If you’ve never seen the official Deutsche Bahn diagrams for these networks, prepare to be very disappointed. They’re incredibly average pieces of work, with awful “RGB-bright” colours and arcane combinations of dotted and dashed lines to indicate service frequency. They’re also split up into two separate maps — one for EC/IC services, and another for ICE — probably because it would be impossible to work anything out at all if the two maps were combined. I reproduce the EC/IC map here, just so you can see how average it truly is. So right from the start, this new map is a major upgrade.

I particularly like the dead straight trajectory of the lines from Hamburg down to Fulda, and the clear treatment of the potentially difficult and convoluted Rhine-Ruhr area. I also like the way that the routes for trains that pass through major stations get a ghosted-back line to link the routes across the (sometimes very large) station rectangles.

On a map this complex, some labels are going to have to sit across route lines, but I think it’s generally been handled well and everything seems very legible. The route designation lozenges are distributed evenly across the map, and I generally don’t have any problem following a route from end-to-end. I’m not entirely sure about the usefulness of including a “selection” of RE routes: they make the map a bit busier than it needs to be, although perhaps it does help to indicate some gaps in the high-speed rail network.

The colours used for the routes are interesting: they mostly seem to be nicer, less bright versions of the ones on the official map. Which is fine, I guess, but I’d be interested to see a version where colour conveys more meaning. I’m pretty certain that the colours on the official maps are arbitrarily assigned for the sole purpose of keeping similar colours as far apart as possible, so with a little thought a more meaningful purpose could be assigned. Perhaps a trunk-based system like the New York Subway where lines that run along a major corridor get assigned like or similar colours could be employed?

A note: it would appear that many of the apparent typographical errors in the map are actually intentional and meant as some type of in-joke by the author. Make of that what you will!

Our final word: Infinitely superior to DB’s official maps, and quite glorious to look at. 4.5 stars!

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Source: Reddit/r/transitdiagrams

Historical Map: Car and Bus Routes to Wanamaker’s, 1929

January 24, 2020
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A rather wonderful little map from the 1929 edition of the Wanamaker’s Diary, showing how accessible the store – generally regarded as one of the first department stores in the United States – was by public transportation. I particularly like how all the modes are clearly defined by delightful little profile illustrations – adorable little motor coaches, single cars with trolley poles for streetcars and multiple cars for the subway and elevated lines. The sheer proliferation of multiple streetcar routes to the west of the map is something to behold.

Source: Emily Higgs/Twitter

Official Map: VTA San Jose Light Rail Map, 2020

January 20, 2020
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Along with a major service revision in December 2019 that – amongst other things –closed the Almaden Shuttle light rail line, San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) also took the opportunity to introduce a new light rail map, shown here.

While it’s nothing outstanding, it’s clean, clear and easy to understand – which actually puts it ahead of quite a lot of other maps out there. I would like to see another use of the big curve on the Orange Line between Alder and Cropley somewhere else on the map: it just looks a little odd being the only instance on the map. As riders on the Orange Line are required to transfer to get downtown on the Blue or Green lines, it could be helpful for the map to indicate preferred transfer stations to make that as seamless as possible. Is Old Ironsides better, or is Champion? Or one of the others?

Best practices would also ask for the “O”, “G” and “B” bullets to be repeated at the ends of their respective lines to aid colour-blind users, and listing each line’s terminus stations in the legend would also be helpful. Speaking of the legend, I don’t see a single instance of the bike lockers icon on the actual map – oops!

Our final word: The previous VTA light rail map had a lovely little tilt to the left which mirrored the real world alignment of the lines from downtown up to Tasman, which I do miss on this new version. However, this one is cleaner and simpler, so I think it’s an improvement overall. 3 stars.

Source: VTA website

Historical Map: Scenic Route of the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway, late 1930s

January 8, 2020
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Here’s a very handsome little map showing the lines of the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway from sometime in the late 1930s. By this point in time however, almost all of the routes were run by buses, making the name of the company somewhat ironic. Just two streetcar lines remain: Fields Corner to Quincy (with branches from there to Quincy Point or Houghs Neck), and Sullivan Square to Stoneham.

The map itself is drawn in a lovely, ornate illustrative style that was very popular at the time with scrollwork around the map’s legend, a decorative border and a beautiful compass rose. The use of blue for both water and terrain is rather clever — the differing textures used allows the two to be told apart easily and also makes the black route lines and text stand out from the background better.

This particular copy of the map has had some additions penciled in by an unknown hand — a whole new line from Taunton to Norton, and some directional arrows along routes on the right half of the map, almost as if someone was planning a journey to take advantage of the $1 Ride-all-Day far advertised in the copy below the map.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Historical Map: Chicago Central Area Transit Plan, 1974

December 19, 2019
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A map from on what looks like a presentation board showing the mid-1970s version of the Chicago Central Area Transit Plan. Initially planned as a whole new system of subway lines to entirely replace the Loop in downtown Chicago in the late 1960s, rising costs caused the program to be split into parts: the “Core Plan” seen here, with the balance to be built later. As it happened, none of it was ever actually constructed.

The three components of the “Core Plan” — the Franklin Street Subway (red), the Monroe Street Distributor (blue) and a small linking section of the Randolph Line (green) — were chosen because they could be built with a minimum of disruption and provided the best integration with the existing system.

The map itself has a nice clean architectural feeling to it, perfectly suited to the presentation format it was intended for. One odd bit of 1970s styling is the use of lower case for the extant line names — “dan ryan”, “douglas”, etc.

See also: this great panoramic map from 1977 when the Franklin Line was the last surviving part of the plan, and this article over at Chicago-L.org outlining the entire sorry history of the project.

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Historical Map: Gotthardbahn Brochure Diagram, 1957

December 18, 2019
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I absolutely love this almost abstract representation of the Gotthardbahn from a Swiss advertising brochure from 1957. Just major cities, the distinctive loops and spirals of the line (described in detail in this post from 2014) and the famous 15-kilometre-long Gotthard Tunnel shown illustratively cutting through a massive mountain.

Source: Retours.eu