New Project: Field Notes Brand “Mile Marker” Map

March 26, 2019
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I’ve been sworn to absolute secrecy on this project since mid-January, so I’m very excited to finally share it. Early today, Field Notes (the purveyor of beautiful memo and note books) released their latest quarterly limited edition, “Mile Marker,” with cover designs celebrating the Interstate Highway system. Included with subscriptions – and available for separate purchase on the Field Notes website – is an old-school foldable highway map, designed by me in collaboration with the Field Notes team.

Although this “Mile Marker” map is inspired by my older “Highways of the USA” map, almost everything has been completely redrawn and re-evaluated – with thicker route line weights for the smaller print size, new labelling set in all-caps Futura Bold to match the Field Notes house style, and new icons for highway route number designations. This map shows all two-digit Interstate highways as well as the “major” U.S. Numbered Highways (those ending in “0” or “1”, as defined by AASHTO*) in thinner grey lines. This struck a good balance between simplicity and complexity while allowing the map to retain its distinctive bold graphic style.

As well as the folded map, there’s also a limited number of “suitable for framing” flat press-check prints available for purchase on the Field Notes site. A true limited edition – once these are gone, there are no more!

I have to say, one of the best parts of this project was finally getting to collaborate with Jim Coudal, who has always been an amazing supporter of my work. He was the very first person to draw attention to my original “Interstates as Subway Map” poster way back in 2009, and has kept an eye on my output ever since. He had a vision for this map that I knew I could achieve, and we both worked towards that goal – the project was an absolute blast to bring to life!

*Note: U.S. 2 is considered as a “major” route, as it is the northernmost east-west U.S. Highway (there is no Highway “0”).

Infographic: Passenger Volumes in Vancouver, BC by u/Mobius_Peverell

March 26, 2019
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Here’s an interesting little infographic (clearly based off the official Translink map) that’s making the rounds on Reddit/Twitter/etc. at the moment, showing average weekday ridership on rapid transit in Vancouver, British Columbia. Created by u/Mobius_Peverell on Reddit with “Excel, GIMP, and two afternoons” (in their own words), it’s quite a striking graphic. It definitely shows the dominance of the SkyTrain, and the Canada Line in particular. However, it’s important to note that the 99 B-Line, running from UBC to Commercial-Broadway, is in fact the busiest bus route in either Canada or the United States, with an average weekday ridership of over 56,000 passengers – it just looks small in comparison to the even busier SkyTrain lines.

If there’s one improvement I’d make to this graphic, it would be the inclusion of some ridership and/or boarding numbers on the map itself. Yes, there’s a scale at the top, but it’s not easy to transfer that down to the map itself with any accuracy. The dot sizing for each station’s boarding is particularly hard to calculate mentally. As it is, the graphic lets you compare general ridership trends, but not the actual numbers behind those trends.

Compare to this 1954 flow diagram of subway lines in Manhattan, where all the data is shown directly on the map.

Source: r/vancouver on Reddit

Historical Fantasy Map: Proposed 1974 Detroit Rapid Transit System by Jake Berman

March 25, 2019
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Jake Berman is one of those transit map design enthusiasts who are simply too prolific to note everything they do – suffice it to say that you should head over to his website and check out all the cool transit map things he makes.

However, I do have to share this map – recreating a failed attempt at a south-east Michigan rail-based rapid transit system – if only because I think that Jake has absolutely nailed the mid-1970s design aesthetic. Thick route lines with hard angles and unnecessary wobbles, all-caps station labels, all lower-case agency acronym… it’s got the lot! Nice work, Jake!

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Source: r/detroit on Reddit

New York Subway Map from “Miles Morales: SpiderMan” #4

March 24, 2019
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A rather adorable double page spread from this comic, showing our heroes racing to get back to their school before the vice-principal does – bike share versus taxi! The whole trip is superimposed on a “comics” version of the New York Subway Map, which is actually fairly faithful to the real thing in terms of placement of elements, though it’s been simplified a lot with the removal of the underlying street grid. A bold choice by this reality’s MTA to go with hexagons for station markers and service bullets! There’s also no visual differentiation between local and express stations here – Kings Highway on the B/Q would be a white dot in our world, for example.

Also amusing is that Prospect Park station is closed due to “superhero activity” – I wonder if our erstwhile webslinger had anything to do with that? Also, I think we can place the Brooklyn Visions campus somewhere around the intersection of Avenue U and Nostrand Avenue?

Art by Javier Garrón; Colours by David Curiel; Written by Saladin Ahmed.

Source: Saladin Ahmed/Twitter

Historical Map: Seattle Transit Coach Routes, 1970

March 23, 2019
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It’s the end of an era in Seattle, as buses will no longer serve the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, instead being routed along surface streets above the tunnel from today onwards. The tunnel will now exclusively be used for light rail services, which will increase with the opening of East Link in the future.

To commemorate this occasion, let’s have a look at an historical map showing a time when buses previously ran on the surface downtown.

It’s a pretty simple affair, with red and blue bus routes being surprinted on top of a standard Rand McNally map of Seattle… if you look closely, you can see that black road lines continue through the middle of the circular route number bullets. The dense downtown network (with buses running along every avenue from 1st to 5th!) is almost impossible to make out, but there’s a more detailed downtown map on the reverse. It shows through the the thin paper a bit, as well as what seems to be a very large notice about only exact change being accepted to the bottom right.

Of note is the extremely dense and regular grid of routes in Ballard, and the comparative lack of routes in South Seattle. Many routes end in a little loop, so I’m guessing that these are trolleybus routes that can’t just turn around on the spot to go back the other way.

The presence of the blue “Blue Streak” express bus routes allows us to date the map even more precisely than the 1970 copyright notice at the bottom of the map. These express services commenced on September 8, 1970 with Route 41, a route that still exists today in the current King County Metro network.

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Source: SounderBruce/Twitter

Submission – Tourists’ Trolleybus Map of Yalta, Crimea by Aleksandr Karavaev and Nikolay Bashkov

March 21, 2019
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Submitted by Pasha Omelekhin, who has had maps featured on the blog previously.

Transit Maps says:

Somewhat blurring the line between illustration and map, this diagram — created to provide visitors to the city with an overview of transit in the city and how it relates to points of interest — presents the trolleybus lines and the city as an oblique “birds-eye” view from the sea with the mountains rising behind. Printed versions of the map are die cut to the shape of the mountains and sea, which is a rather lovely and unexpected touch.

The attention to detail is quite staggering, with all of the little point of interest icons being drawn in proper perspective according to their location on the map. I’ve often bemoaned icons drawn from conflicting viewpoints on other maps, so this is rather wonderful to see. There’s also a sense of whimsy — the dockside crane on the waterfront is lifting up one of the letters in its label, for example.

The time that it takes the trolleybus to travel between key points is indicated on the map, as well as approximate walking times to points of interest (though the exact route to take is probably left to a more detailed map). Connections to normal bus services that can get to other points of interest are also shown.

If I had one complaint about this map, it’s that the graceful, sweeping route that the trolleybuses are shown as taking bears very little resemblance to the real world. In actuality, the route takes a hard 90-degree turn away from the coast at the stop where route 42 starts and runs along both sides of the canalised Bystra River (northbound on the west bank, southbound on the east bank). While not essential details to show, both the turn and the split route along the river could serve as very important mental wayfinding tools for people unfamiliar with Yalta’s geography — the very people the map is meant to assist. Earlier iterations of the map (see the short video below) showed both of these in various forms, so it’s interesting to see how the design moved away from a more literal interpretation to this more stylistic form.

Our rating: Looks absolutely gorgeous, full of wonderful details and information. However, I feel that the map’s heavily stylised form actually detracts somewhat from its stated mission of assisting tourists. Three stars.

Do check out the map’s project page, however, as it’s full of great information about the process behind the map (in Russian, but Google Translate does a decent job).

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Source: Nicolay Bashkov’s website

Submission – Official Map: Bus and Tram Map of Norrköping, Sweden, 2019

March 15, 2019
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Submitted by Kristofer, who says:

This is the new official map for the Östgötatrafiken network in Norrköping. Line 2 and 3 is tram, the rest is bus. I like the overall design of the map, but think it is very hard to read the stop names, because of the very thin font on dark background. Also it is a little strange to denote the lines as unidirectional in the legend (e.g., Line 2 From: Fridvalla To: Kvarnberget). And they misspelled the main stop Resecentrum (Transport hub, by the railway station) on the map.

Transit Maps says:

Overall, I’d have to agree with Kristofer’s summary of this map – the labelling (in what looks to be Helvetica Condensed Light) seems a little too small and spindly to be read easily, especially reversed out of the darker background. The misspelling of the network’s main hub station is pretty unforgivable as well (oops!).

I’m not thrilled with the delicate ticked lines for the tram routes, although they do differentiate them from the bus routes, I guess. Again, it just seems very spindly against the dark background – the red Line 2 in particular seems to get lost in the background.

I do think the dark labels for the localities work well, although the labels for Hageby and Rambodal could easily have been set horizontally instead of on an angle. For that matter, the southern terminus of line 119 at Trumpetaregaten could easily be horizontal as well. Being the only angled terminus label on the map really makes it stand out like a sore thumb.

And yes, labelling the routes in the form of “To” to “From” does seem to confuse things a bit. Hopefully, common sense kicks in and everyone realises that the routes go both ways along the line!

Our rating: Striking at first appearance, but much of the text could stand to be a bit larger and bolder. There’s a lot of empty space on the canvas, so some reworking could use that space more effectively. Two-and-a-half stars.

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Source: ÖstgötaTrafiken website

Submission – Official Map: Buses of Paris, France, 2019

March 8, 2019
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Submitted by my dad (and you wonder where I get my love of maps from?), who says:

You may be interested in the new Paris bus map, showing major changes to be implemented in April.

Transit Maps says:

Thanks, dad! This is certainly an interesting map, as it uses a lot of familiar elements from the Paris Metro map — the Parisine font family, the slightly muted/pastel colour palette and even the general stylised layout of Paris itself — but to considerably less effect.

Part of this is due to the fact that the map is necessarily far more detailed: it has to show over 60 bus routes as well as four of Paris’ tram routes (1, 2, 3a and 3b). While the Metro map is gradually becoming loaded down with more routes as it incorporates tram, RER and Transilien services, it can always treat them more diagrammatically than a bus map can — as there’s always a need to relate bus routes to the labelled roads they travel upon. This means there’s a lot more angles used throughout the map, making it look less unified and neat. In particular, the areas around Gare St-Lazare and Gare de l’Est have a huge amount of routes heading in all directions, making some of them quite difficult to follow. Added to this, the Les Traverses local circulator routes also have to be shown in some detail, jammed in between the other lines where they can fit.

Another part of the problem is the muted colour scheme — it works well enough on the Metro map where similar hues can be kept apart, but the sheer number of routes crossing the city here means that it’s inevitable that similar or identical colours run next to each other in a lot of places, which isn’t ideal. In true rational French style, the bus numbers actually indicate useful information about the route — a number starting with “2” indicates the route begins at Gare St-Lazare, for example (more detail at Wikipedia) — so one wonders whether that could be leveraged into the route colours somehow? The assignment just seems a bit random at the moment.

It’s also not fully explained why some routes get downgraded to have a grey route line instead of a coloured one, but I presume it has something to do with frequency of service?

Our rating: Tries its hardest to look like its more well-known sibling, but the density of required information makes it come off second best. Making a bus map for such a small, dense network like this is a thankless task and the effort is laudable, but it’s not quite working as anything but a general overview for me. Two stars.

Source: Official RATP website

Submission – Photo: MBTA Green Line Strip Map

March 7, 2019
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Submitted by Chris Coveney, who says:

Pet MBTA peeve – there is NO reason that angle of the E-line standoff can’t match the D-line on the Green Line strip Map . (Now it will endlessly annoy you too!)

Transit Maps says:

It’s not just the mismatched angles of the branches that makes my eye twitch on this map, Chris. I can’t help but notice that all the stops on the “B” branch that were closed in 2004 have had their names erased, but their station dots remain.

There’s also still a reference to Arborway (closed in 1985) on the “E” branch, although with a subtitle naming Heath Street as the actual terminus. The map itself dates from 1990 or later, as it used to read “Hynes Convention Center/ICA”, so it’s possible that this map was made in the period when the Arborway closure was still thought to be temporary and its use as the name of the branch line was still common.

Still, this is a map well and truly past its use-by date – which seems to be an all too common sight on the MBTA.

Submission – Unofficial Map: Montreal Metro Strip Map by Max Robb

March 5, 2019
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Submitted by Max, who says:

Some time ago you had someone submit a redesign of the Montreal map in the style of Harry Beck (August 2013), but noted it included a number of “un-Beckian” turns at the ends of the green line. Inspired by this, and that Montreal’s system was manageable for a first-time designer, I removed as much of the geography as I felt I could. I picture this being the right sort of map for above the doors of a train car.

The map’s odd angle came about by a bit of an accident, and is likely its greatest flaw, because it crowds out the station names in a number of places, and a steeper angle would likely do less of this.

Transit Maps says:

I think this is an interesting way to depict the system within the confines of a narrow space, Max, and for the most part it works fairly well. Of course, there’s some necessary distortion to make things fit (including “north” being at both ends of the map where the two termini of the Orange Line are), but the indication of the islands helps with orientation somewhat. The twinning of the Green and Orange lines between Lionel-Groux and Berri-UQAM works well, as does the way that the Yellow Line continues along the slope set up by the Green Line – deftly done!

The main problem that I see –and it’s one that Max has already identified himself – is the spacing of the stations, which can shift from being quite cramped, to generous, and back to cramped again along the length of a line. An approach here could be to mark out the longest line – the Orange Line here with 31 stations – into completely even divisions, and then use that measurement as the basis of a grid to align the other stations on the map to. This would definitely help the left end of the Green Line to Angrignon, which seems the most cramped part of the map to me.

After that, look for more simplification and alignment of elements. The right end of the Orange Line could continue up its slope until it is level with the Blue Line and then travel horizontally, for example.

In short, I think this is a good concept that fits a lot of information into a tight space, but it needs some refinement to really make it work. Keep at it!