Submission – Official Map: Valley Metro Light Rail and Streetcar, Phoenix, Arizona, 2025

July 9, 2025
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Submitted by a few people—sorry for the delay in getting to this!—including Shameek, who says:

Phoenix is opening the new southern light rail extension and splitting the system into two separate lines, so naturally they released a new map! I like some of the ideas in here, especially the downtown inset and treating the streetcar equally, but I wanted to hear your take.

Transit Maps says:

It’s always nice when transit systems expand past their first starter line and get to make more interesting diagrams! I quite like the modern, clean design of this one although it seems that the image file has been rendered without anti-aliasing, which gives a curious bitmapped look to the type and other design elements. The icons for park-and-rides and transit centers suffer the most here, as their small reproduction size doesn’t work well with the harsh edges created.

Despite this, the diagram feels balanced, with evenly spaced station labels, neatly designed line designation bullets, clear directional arrows on the one-way segments, a good map legend, and very readable locality labels. Perhaps the Downtown Phoenix box could have a white fill instead of grey to draw the eye to that area a little more, but that’s hardly a dealbreaker. The symbol for the Downtown Phoenix Hub is quite lovely, and the inset map of the area provides just enough context to direct passengers who need to interchange between the two light rail lines. Interestingly, the loop that must exist to for the A Line trains to change direction is omitted – both for design clarity and probably to reinforce that all riders have to leave the train when it arrives at the Washington/Central station.

The one less successful element is the S Line streetcar. Trying to fit a small local service onto a diagram with a scale as large as this one is a daunting task and keying numbers to a legend is probably the only solution if every stop needs to be named. However, I’m not entirely convinced by the somewhat haphazard order that the stations are numbered in. Stations 9 through 12 are numbered the opposite way to the direction that the streetcar travels in – as clearly shown by the directional arrow – which hardly seems intuitive. Maybe a “join-the-dots” approach where the numbering follows the route from one end to the other and then backtracks along the other one way section could work better? I also think that the green S Line should cross above the blue A Line instead of under it, as it’s very hard to follow here – in fact, it almost looks like Mill Ave/3rd St is an alternate terminus as the route line disappears almost immediately after the station marker.

Our final word: Very competent and clear, despite the unintentional bitmapped look. A bit of extra love when it comes to the depiction of the S Line streetcar would improve it even more.

Source: Valley Metro website

Quick Project: Queensland Rail Network Diagram

July 2, 2025
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Okay, as promised in the previous post, here’s my version of the Queensland passenger rail network as a diagram.

As is usual for these redesigns, I’ve only spent a few hours on this – just to show that better design doesn’t necessarily need to take a lot of time. Everything is meant to be simple but clear. The rules – the same canvas size as the official map, and all of the information on the official map has to be shown for a true apples-to-apples comparison.

The main and obvious difference is the trunk line from Brisbane to Cairns, which I have straightened out so there’s only two changes of direction along the whole route. All the station names – including the RailBus stops at Hervey Bay and Airlie Beach – are on an evenly-spaced vertical grid, and all station labels are to the right of the route line. I made a conscious decision to start the first curve out of Brisbane north of Bundaberg, so that the Bundaberg Tilt Train service could be shown as a completely straight line. Then, the 45-degree angle of the trunk line through Rockhampton allows the Spirit of the Outback to head west a bit more elegantly than on the official map, on which it takes a hard 90-degree turn.

Despite the diagrammatic nature of the design, the shape of Queensland is actually more accurate apart from the east coast, which I’ve just simplified as much as possible to reduce distracting elements – we don’t need all those little capes and islands! Cape York Peninsula is in its correct place, the Gulf of Carpentaria is the right size and all the wiggles in the Queensland/NSW border are present and accounted for. I allowed myself the use of 22.5-degree angles for the coastline to reduce stair-stepping and make the coastline look a bit more natural. Generous curves at the corners and some path roughening also help to soften the geography up a bit.

As the main diagonal axis of the diagram follows the east coast from the top left to the bottom right, that’s also the way I’ve angled all of the diagonal station labels. This gives a nice flow to the diagram instead of having the labels run the other way and creating visual tension. I’m not opposed to using diagonal labels on a diagram, but I do believe in limiting the number of directions that they go to just one where possible. I do know that it would be very difficult to design a small diagram like this one with all-horizontal labels! As all the labels hang off the bottom of the horizontal route lines, I was able to come up with a consistent placement for the service names just above their respective route lines. This also allowed me to move the western end of the Inlander service at to a position that better approximates where Mount Isa actually is.

The background colors are simple – the other states and their labels are just tints of the Westlander gold, and the ocean is cyan with a touch of yellow added instead of magenta, which makes the blue look more tropical – but it’s so much better than the dull grey and floating Queensland of the official map.

For the icons, I’ve omitted the redundant “bus connection” symbol, as the interchange markers and thin grey lines are explained in the legend and do that work for the reader. I’ve used the excellent and dynamic Accessible Icon to indicate wheelchair accessibility, which has the added bonus of not being boxed in to a square background like the standard wheelchair icon. This gives it a distinctly different shape to the hearing loop icon, which – let’s be honest – does not reproduce well at small sizes. This way, the icons can be differentiated and understood a bit more easily – and having the legend actually on the map helps as well!

Speaking of the legend, I’ve used all that empty space in the Pacific Ocean to provide useful information about all of the train services – destinations, frequency and distance travelled – as well as explain the iconography of the diagram. In case you’re wondering: yes, distances on the remote and antiquated Gulflander service are still measured in miles, not kilometres! A survivor from another time indeed!

As always with these little redesign projects, your comments are welcome! What works? What doesn’t? Let me know what you think.

Submission – Official Map: Queensland Rail Network

July 1, 2025
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Submitted by Bushland Maps, who says:

I have noticed that no one has submitted the Queensland Rail network map, so here it is! Sort of…

I have attached the link to the web page rather than the image because the legend isn’t on the map, its actually below it on the webpage… That will be fun to format!

I find this map peculiar for a few reasons, namely the fact that corners, station dot locations, and label locations have had no thought put in to their placement. Most labels along the trunk route have been placed over the coast despite the huge amount of empty space on the map, and the corner at Rockhampton is hideous!

Let us know what you think!

Transit Maps says:

This is one of those designs that really can’t decide whether its a map or a diagram – and the whole piece suffers greatly because of it. There are diagrammatic elements, like the dead straight lines with evenly-spaced stations for the lines heading west into “the outback”, but then the main trunk line from Brisbane up to Cairns (a distance of some 1600 km or 1000 miles!) weaves around all over the place in an attempt to stay “realistically” aligned to the coast, complete with “geographically” placed stations – note the huge gap between Rockhampton and St. Lawrence, for example.

The quotation marks around “realistically” and “geographically” are very intentional, by the way – because the map itself isn’t even really that accurate. Cape York has been pushed a long way to the east, with the Gulf of Carpentaria becoming disproportionately larger as a result. As is often the case with pseudo-maps like this, the coastline is overly detailed and distracting – with some ugly stair-stepping because of the rigid 45-degree angles. And do we really need to know where Lady Eliot Island – a tiny coral cay some 80 km off the coast – is located? Of the region locator labels, only the one for the Sunshine Coast is somewhat useful, but it really needs other regions to be similarly named – Darling Downs, Far North Queensland, etc. – or it’s just more distracting noise that doesn’t serve much of a purpose.

As to the labels for the main trunk line crossing the boundary between land and water, I don’t actually think that’s too much of a problem. I’d rather have the majority of labels (all of them, if possible!) to the right of the route line than have a mixed bag of some to the left and some to the right. As it is, poor old Proserpine looks very out of place as the sole label off to the left! As long as the contrast between the land and sea background is low, the text is still perfectly legible. Part of the problem stems from the grey used for Queensland here, which just looks dull and dead. To be honest, I’d much prefer that the ocean be a nice tropical light blue, Queensland white to maximise contrast and draw the eye to the important part of the map, and the other states a light, earthy colour to give an “Australian” vibe to the map. A grey Queensland floating on a white background without the rest of Australia around it just looks odd. And the empty space in the ocean could be used to add a useful legend instead of that rather sad north pointer. (Perhaps a hot take: I don’t think north pointers are necessary on a map of this scale: we know which way north is here!)

To be clear: this is never going to be a good geographical map – too many compromises with the placement of stations would have to be made. For example: the Westlander line would need to end much further east (Charleville is only halfway across the state) and all of the stations between Brisbane and Roma would need to fit it the easternmost half of that! And the Kuranda Scenic Railway (a wonderful train trip if you haven’t done it!) would just be a tiny blip out of Cairns.

So I’d lean fully into making this a proper diagram. Simplify and straighten all the route lines. Space all the stations on the main trunk line evenly. Pare back the “geography” to match the simplicity of the route lines. Make the background colour palette more visually pleasing. Add a comprehensive legend. And most importantly – add some craft and thought to the design, because this is pretty bland autopilot stuff at the moment.

Yeah, maybe I’ll do just that. Watch this space!

Our final word: A good example of a hybrid map/diagram that really doesn’t work.

Source: Queensland Rail Travel website

Submission – Chicago Metra Line Rebranding

March 11, 2025
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Submitted by Nick, who says:

Hi Cameron. I live in Chicago and our commuter rail Metra is considering rebranding its lines and recently released two proposals. I thought you and your readers might enjoy reviewing them. The announcement, proposed designs, and link to a survey are here. The proposed designs are available in a PDF here [I’ve also reproduced these below – Cam].

I’ve been riding Metra for more than 20 years and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the current line names have their faults but the proposed designs are “interesting” to say the least.

Transit Maps says:

The obtuse naming conventions of Metra’s commuter lines are like the names of lines on the London Underground – they have a certain old world charm about them, but they’re absolutely terrible for anyone but the most seasoned of commuters. Hey, let’s have some lines with “Milwaukee” in their name that don’t actually go there! To be honest, I thought that these line names would never be changed in a million years, so I’m kind of ecstatic that this discussion is even happening.

I do think it’s important that these rough little diagrams are almost certainly just tools to illustrate the status quo and the two new concepts, so I don’t think we need to get too hung up on the design right now – once the surveys have been done and some data compiled, then more complete (and better) maps will be generated.

That said, I think the concepts do have some problems.

The “cardinal direction” concept perhaps gets in its own way by having both directional prefixes and colour-coding by downtown terminus. This leads to all of the directions being denoted by multiple colours (two for north, two for west – both of which are the same two colours, yellow and green – and three for south). Maybe there could be two separate colours for the two “halves” of Union Station to prevent that station’s yellow routes from spreading out and dominating the map? The order the lines are named in also seems haphazard – the bullets for the northern lines count down when read from left to right, which goes against our natural reading order, while the southern lines don’t seem to have any natural order to their numbers – c’mon, the Millennium Station lines are just crying out to be S5, S6 and S7 at their outer termini from left to right, instead of S6, S5 and S7!

This problem carries across to the “M Numbers” diagram – there’s no discernable pattern to the numbering of the lines. A hub-and-spoke network like this should really be numbered in sequential order from the outer end of each line. Normally, this would start at the twelve o’clock position and go clockwise (we’re familiar with how a clock works, so this is can be a very intuitive design shorthand), but Lake Michigan forms a natural barrier to this system – you’d start at “M1” then have to jump halfway around the diagram to get to “M2”! Perhaps starting with “M1” to the west of the map would work better in this instance?

Our final word: These are very early concept diagrams with a lot of work still to done, but making things as easy as possible for commuters to understand has to be the end goal, and I’m not sure either of these are quite doing that right now. Still, it’s going to be interesting to see where this goes! If you use Metra, I definitely encourage you to go and do the survey.

Source: Metra website

Submission – Official Map: Metro Rapid Map, Madison, Wisconsin

February 28, 2025
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Submitted by Matthew, who says:

Madison, WI just opened the first phase of our new BRT system, with new stations, new electric buses, and a new diagrams. I’d love to know what you think about the design, especially how the city handled differentiating the two types of station platform set ups. (I haven’t seen many diagrams with this feature!)

Transit Maps says:

This diagram is fairly simple and workmanlike: there’s nothing extraordinary about it, but it gets the job done. The canvas does feel a little empty to me and there’s some design language inconsistencies that could be looked at – why do some 90-degree corners get soft curves while others are sharp, for example – but it’s nothing too egregious.

The distinction between the rapid busway section versus the local, street-running sections is nicely done and very clear, and the addition of street names along the routes is helpful. I’d probably have liked to see the information that’s specific to the Segoe and Milwaukie Street stations as call-outs linked directly to those stations rather than as unrelated asterisked notes off to the side. As someone who’s not from Madison, it took me way too long to find these stations on the diagram to work out what these notes even referred to and why I should even care.

As for the distinction between center-running and side-running stations being shown graphically on the diagram… it’s nice, I guess? I don’t see it as totally critical information to show on a diagram, especially on a bus where the doors are only ever on one side of the vehicle – unlike a train where passengers could exit on either side so knowing where the platforms will be is actually advantageous. The depictions of the two station types are visually distinct and the legend explains them well, so why not – though I feel like it’s a problem that didn’t necessarily need to be solved at all!

EDIT: I’ve been corrected – the Madison BRT buses do in fact have boarding doors on both sides (I tried to research this before posting, but I apparently didn’t do a very good job!), so the distinction on the diagram is more useful than it seems at first glance.

Our final word: Nothing too exciting here, but works well enough. Perhaps feels a little unfinished.

Source: Madison Metro Transit website

Submission – Official Map: Transit Map of Denpasar, Bali, 2025

February 21, 2025
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Submitted by Ida Bagus Nararya Adityananda, who says:

This is the new transit network map of Denpasar, Bali metro per January 1st 2025. After the closure of Trans Metro Dewata buses that connects 4 regencies and city in Bali. Now, only Trans Sarbagita operates with its 2 corridor from GOR Ngurah Rai to GWK and GOR Ngurah Rai to Batubulan, Gianyar.

Transit Maps says:

On first glance, this looks like a rather nice diagram of bus services in and around Denpasar in Bali. It’s only on closer examination that the reader realises that a large portion of the service shown aren’t currently operating. All of the route lines for the Trans Metro Dewata (TMD) are at a lower opacity, all the stop names are crossed out and the legend at the bottom of the map has been replaced with bold red text explaining the situation.

Apparently, the ownership of the TMD has recently passed from the central government to the Balinese provincial government, who seem to have no interest at all in actually running the buses. The legend even has a QR code link to a petition to get the service running. Leaving all the non-operational routes on the diagram seems like a very deliberate choice to me, especially considering how important tourism is to Bali. It’s almost as if the map is saying, “look at all the fun places you could go by bus if they were actually running,” hoping that people will be annoyed enough to sign the petition.

This strangeness does overshadow the fact that this a more than competent diagram, with some lovely design touches. I particularly like the little bus illustrations that show their livery in the legend, and the disclaimer that this diagram is really meant to be viewed digitally – but if you are going to try printing it, then it should be printed on an A3 sheet or larger.

Our final word: It’s a bold choice to deliberately show services that aren’t actually running on a transit map: outside of short-term service disruptions, it’s not something I’ve seen before. It’s definitely driving a point home, and not really very subtly!

Submission – Historical Map: Suburban Tramways of Bordeaux, 1954

February 19, 2025
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Submitted by Florian, who says:

I submit this map because first of all, I live there and I was thrilled to learn there is a blog about transit maps design. And I love old maps, which I was also thrilled to see they are welcome here.

This map dates from 1954, merely 4 years before the end of the first Bordeaux’s tramway. The network was quite extensive, much more than today. However, these lines were integrated within the traffic and were not given priority. It means that as cars became more common (and the 60s were THE decade where cars became big in France), the tramway was seen as quaint, outdated.

One interesting part is that in this period, some maps of Bordeaux were oriented with the North to the right. One can compare it with the current map. As the right-bank of the river was not developed as today, it was not considered useful to put in on the map as there was nothing relevant – well, except the people living there obviously. Hence, it is quite logical to put it at the bottom and make the network “flows” from the inner city to the suburbs.

I find amusing that some, but not all, lines are named by the city they go to (P for Pessac, Br for Bruges etc.) and also that the stops are numbered – which is actually quite useful to know the length of a line and gauge the position of a stop. However it is a bit busy in some places and I am also confused as to how some lines worked, especially the P line and its 5 (?) terminus.

Transit Maps says:

What a lovely map (and it really is one, as there’s a detailed scale in the bottom right-hand corner underneath the awesome “CTB” monogram)! This is what makes things a bit cramped in parts, as the map is trying to be geographically faithful, even though everything is very simplified.

It’s important to note that the map only shows the suburban tram routes – what in the U.S. would have been called “interurbans.” There were another twenty-odd city tramways in addition to these routes: a few of them can be seen on this map as thin numbered lines leaving the Commune de Bordeaux denoting “urban lines penetrating into the suburbs.” Tram lines contained wholly within the commune are not shown at all on this map. And if I’m reading things right, the numbers along the lines aren’t exactly numbering stops, but fare sections: I would imagine that tram lines of this length would have many more actual stops than could be shown on an overview map like this.

And as for how the lines actually worked. let’s just hope that the trams themselves had headboards or roll signs that told prospective riders where they were actually going to!

Our final word: A great slice of history showing the last days of an extensive tram system. I love it!

Submission – Official Map: Madrid Cercanías Rail Network, December 2024

January 6, 2025
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Submitted by Juan, who says:

I send the new version of the Renfe-Madrid Cercanías network. It seems to me that it has improved quite a lot the previous version. This previous version had crossroads, angles, etc. I would like to know your opinion about this new map.

Transit Maps says:

What a massive improvement this over previous official versions! [See our reviews for the 2022 and 2013 versions – Cam] For once, a diagram has been entirely rethought and redesigned instead of trying to keep using a framework that clearly wasn’t working and the results are definitely worth it, in my opinion.

First and foremost – the fare zones are (and I don’t say this often!) really quite lovely: subdued pastel tones instead of harsh grey and white and simple, almost concentric shapes with an absolute minimum of changes in direction. The names of the zones are also arranged in a very clear, organised and visually appealing manner. Basically, a lot of other transit diagrams around the world that show fare zones could look to this one for some ideas on how to do it right.

The routes the lines take across the diagram definitely benefit from the redesign as well: C-5, in particular, has a much smoother trajectory and many other lines have been straightened out and simplified for the better as well. Strangely, the odd little “bump” for Sol station remains, even though it seems like there’s no real need for it anymore.

It’s not all perfect, though: some of the station labelling is a bit carelessly placed or cramped for room and the stations on the southeast leg of line C-3 are very unevenly arranged due to the need to fit them within the proper zone boundaries. It seems to me that the zone boundaries down here were designed to work best for line C-5, and C-3 suffers a bit as a result. The 90-degree turn that line C-7 takes before heading northeast isn’t nested properly with the other lines at that corner (the radius is too large). Finally, the pecked grey route line for the “bike line” – which I presume represents Madrid’s Anillo Verde Ciclista – has pretty poor contrast with the background and can be pretty hard to see at times.

Our final word: So much better than previous official maps, with a quite dreamy representation of fare zones. Not perfect, but a massive step in the right direction!

Source: Renfe Madrid Cercanías website

Submission – Unofficial Map: Tramways in Gdańsk, Poland by Arsen Mosiichuk, 2024

December 18, 2024
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Submitted by Arsen, who says:

Hello, this summer I with Sergey Steblina as art-director designed a transit map of Gdańsk trams. I am very interested what Transit Maps think about this.

Transit Maps says:

Overall, this is very solid and clean work – very much in the style of diagram popularised by Ilya Birman, with straight segments connected by wide, sweeping curves. For the most part, this looks rather lovely, though the tight obtuse angle that Line 12 takes to head down to the bottom left looks a little unconvincing, as does the squiggly routing that Line 10 takes around the Nowy Port loop at the top right. The routing of Line 5 around this loop looks like it might have an error as well: if it enters the loop going from Kasztanowa to Na Zaspę and then travels counter-clockwise around the loop, it would exit at Rybołowców back to Kasztanowa – meaning that there’s no need to show Line 5 running directly between Rybołowców and Na Zaspę, a segment that’s only served by Line 7.

The colour palette of the map is nice and bright, and the parks, water and city centre are nicely indicated, but I do feel that the very light green chosen for Line 2 is just too light when compared to the other lines. It almost disappears completely when running alongside the dark purple Line 11, for example. The bright yellow of Line 6 poses some more contrast problems when its station tick is adjacent to the map’s white background at the top left of the map.

Speaking of the station ticks: I love the modern design of them with a slight inwards tapering, but it does create something of an optical illusion where the last tick at a station – the one leading to the station label – looks a tiny bit smaller than the others. This is one of these things that probably just needs to be tweaked a bit by perhaps making that last tick just a tiny bit wider so that it looks visually right rather than being mathematically correct.

Finally, a quick Wikipedia search seems to indicate that Lines 4 and 7 only run on weekdays, and Line 11 only runs during weekday peak hours – all of which would be useful information to include in the diagram’s legend.

Our final word: Clean and modern, though I’ve seen a few maps previously with a very similar design style. Some of the curves could be cleaned up a bit, and a couple of colour choices could perhaps be revisited. Otherwise, this is great work.

Book Review: “Iconic Transit Maps” by Mark Ovenden, 2024

December 16, 2024
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After 2003’s Metro Maps of the World and 2015’s Transit Maps of the World (our review here), this is Mark Ovenden’s third offering on the subject of global transit maps and diagrams. The question to be asked, then, is simply – is a new book on the same subject worth it?

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