Transit Maps

Submitted by Elliott, who says:

I’ve been a fan of your work for a while now, and thought I’d submit my own work for judgement.

I’ve had a crack at designing a map for an as-yet non-existent tram and bus network for Bristol, UK, a city in dire need of reliable, integrated public transport. It would operate as a network of 19 tram lines in and around the urban area of Bristol, with five ‘metrobus’ routes linking the city to nearby commuter towns. Whilst there’s still a huge struggle between residents of the city, campaign groups and the city’s councils, I tried to envisage what a network could one day look like.

I had a few problems in terms of design, particularly trying to distinguish the separate bus routes apart from the rest of the tram network. The city centre orbital route also operates as part of each branch line, with trains running clockwise before branching out into the suburbs, and needed to find a way of denoting this (eventually with arrows and graduated lines).

I’d look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Transit Maps says:

Thanks for your submission, Elliott! I like both the way this diagram looks and your boundless ambition when it comes to envisioning a future for transit in Bristol! While normally I steer clear of commenting on the feasibility of networks depicted in fantasy maps, I will just say that running the trams from 19 feeder lines around a one-way downtown loop sounds a little… problematic.

That aside, the diagram is certainly striking, with its central focal point and use of only 90-degree angles. The liberal use of locality names throughout the map mitigates the lack of geographical cues, though it might still be hard work for non-locals to relate this diagram to the real world. The choice to show that central loop as a solid black with all the other lines fading into it is probably a wise one, though it might be a good idea to not use black (or any really dark colours) for any of the other lines – note how Lines 4 and 12 take on more prominence because that fading effect is not present: it almost looks like there’s one through-running route between the two termini.

A few thoughts – I think your station labelling is a little small. A good starting point is to make the x-height of your labels the same height as the thickness of your route lines and see how that looks/adjust from there. The typeface used, while clean and distinctive has a few quirks that hamper legibility: the ampersand (&) looks way too much like a lower-case “e” for my liking, and Oldstyle numerals – where some characters are smaller than others or drop below the baseline – are something I find just a bit too idiosyncratic for good transit map design. If your typeface is an Opentype font, you may be able to change the numerals from “Oldstyle” to “Lining”, where all the glyphs are of equal height and always sit uniformly on the baseline.

I have to say that I found it hard work to differentiate between the tram and bus routes at first glance: while the bus routes are thinner than the tram routes, it’s not enough to be able to quickly tell them apart. Some things to consider might be an obviously different line style or distinctive colour for the bus lines, and maybe changing the shape of the bullets to a square instead of a circle for that instant visual difference.

Another thing I’d like to see is your line numbering doing more work to help make sense of the system. At the moment, it all seems a little random. You could maybe number the routes sequentially in order clockwise around the map, starting from the 12-o’clock position and paying close attention to the ending position of any branching lines to keep them in the correct sequential order – the outer terminus of 1a should appear before 1b, for example: it’s the other way around on the diagram at present. Alternatively, you could perhaps bundle routes from each “exit point” of the downtown loop with related numbers… maybe “T1″ through “T5″ for all the routes that exit via Temple Meads, for example. Either of these approaches would also have the advantage of bundling all the routes together properly in the legend. Using the above example, all the Temple Meads services would run neatly after each other instead of being spread randomly throughout the legend as they currently are. Routes 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8; or routes T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 both make a lot more sense than routes 4, 7, 8, 17 and 18! Help your users find the information they need!

Our final word: A really well-drawn diagram of this expansive fantasy network: it just needs a little more attention to detail to really make it work for me. A great start!