Submission – Unofficial Map: Metro Bilbao, Spain by Raül Santín

November 25, 2018
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Submitted by Raül, who says:

Hello, this is my third transit map that I create, but the first one that’s not a fantasy one (previously I did a Tallinn Metro Map and a Tram network for my town), so it’s a redesign of Metro Bilbao and suburban network. I would like to know your feedback about it, and I would also like you to publish it because I don’t think there are many circular maps out there, at least in Spain. 

Being a circular map, there is a lot of distortion, but not so much looking at the current official map, which shows the lines very schematically, although retaining the geographical shape. I think there are things to improve, but overall there’s more legibility and the routes are clearer (for example in the official map some stations show the tram stop very far from the rail one, when in reality the tram stop is just in front of the train station). I also used the official metro typeface, Rotis Semi Sans. 

I haven’t been able to find just a standalone metro map (the one in metro bilbao’s website is just a plain thermometer). So my final product features other companies like Euskotren and Renfe, showing until zone 3, the farthest zone where the actual metro network arrives. Maybe it’s not the most useful or practical map, but it’s a different approach, I think.

Transit Maps says:

I think you’ve summed your own map up pretty well, Raül – it’s an interesting experiment, but I’m not entirely sure that it’s a totally successful one. The circular/radial design works fairly well for the most part, and I like the way it adds emphasis to the central part of Bilbao, but it also introduces more than a few problems. 

The first and most prominent of these is the need to put the labels for two major stations across the route lines at San Mamés and Bolueta. Even with the white halo around the type, they’re both very hard to read against the black route line of Metro L2.

Secondly, the station marker at Zazpikaleak/Casco Viejo is quite unconvincing, as it has to stretch awkwardly across a big gap and ends up jammed on top of a big right angle curve on the right hand “half” of the station. The main effect of this is to visually separate Metro L3 line from the rest of the Metro system, which isn’t really desirable.

Pink for the background zones? It’s interesting to see zones that aren’t grey, but it can clash a bit with some of the lighter lines and type, especially the yellow C4F Renfe Feve line. It’s certainly distinctive!

I’d probably also like to see the lines that continue on to zones 4 and 5 to extend past the edge of the circle just slightly as an instant visual cue that they extend further than the map shows. I feel that the arrowheads in their current form are perhaps a little too subtle. The type of the minor lines is perhaps a little too small in comparison to the Metro labels? And finally, the legend feels a little too fractured, placed as it is at various corners of the map. I’d probably prefer to see it as one unified element below the map.

Overall, this is put together very well and certainly has some interesting ideas, but is perhaps just a little too experimental for everyday use.

Submission – Fantasy Map: Pacific Electric, Modern Day by Julian

November 9, 2018
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Submitted by Julian, who says:

Although Los Angeles’ Pacific Electric interurban system fell victim to the postwar wave of urban railway closures, systems in other cities were preserved on account of their grade-separated infrastructure. In San Francisco in particular, the only streetcar lines that were preserved were the 5 that were segregated from traffic for part of their length. Since certain segments of the Pacific Electric system were not only segregated from traffic but 4-tracked and underground, it isn’t hard to imagine much the same happening in Los Angeles after the MTA takeover.

This alternate history scenario diverges from reality around 1940 and imagines the rehabilitation of the surviving Pacific Electric interurban lines to rapid-transit standards, paired with a project started in the 1960s to build new rapid transit lines around a cross-shaped ‘starter system.’ The result is something like the New York subway system, with the system organized around 4-track trunk lines, but distinctive in its own right- an iconic American rapid transit system that count have been.

Transit Maps says:

What I love most about this “alternate reality” transit map for Los Angeles is that Julian has created an entirely plausible backstory for it, one that he has explained in great detail in a series of accompanying timeline maps, which I have included in full underneath the main map. Basically, Julian asks “What if the old Pacific Electric tracks weren’t ripped up, but instead maintained and upgraded over the years?” It’s an interesting proposition, and he’s explored the concept well. Of course, there’s no small amount of irony here as the current real-world LA Metro looks at reclaiming some of these old rights-of-way to build new rapid transit lines: the West Santa Ana branch stands out particularly in that regard.

As for the map, it gets the job done in showing an increasingly complex system in a consistent and low-fuss manner. There’s a few problems with the spacing of labels – some are much further away from their station markers than others – and some random capitalisation of words. “1 st” looks more like it’s saying “first” than “First Street”, for example. And “3 st” and “4 st” just look like badly written ordinal numbers. “Three-irst”?

There is one clanging mistake in the map where routes 10 and 12 swap their northern outer ends. If you follow the route lines, it looks like the 10 should go to Eagle Rock and the 12 should go to Burbank Airport. Easy enough to correct, though! 

Our rating: The map by itself is fairly workmanlike, but the thought that Julian has put into its development elevates it beyond its simple look. A fascinating hypothetical series of maps, worthy of some detailed perusal.

Submission – Photo: B/C Full Line Map, New York Subway

November 5, 2018
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Submitted by Max, who says:

I was at the newly redone 110 Street/Cathedral Parkway stop the other night and caught a glance of this new map for the B/C trains (sorry for the low-quality photo, but because of the new train arrival countdown clocks, time pressures made me take it from the other side of the turnstile). It makes some sense to see these both on the same map as they’re both part of the IND system, but it doesn’t seem that useful outside of the area around where I was because the lines are so far apart in Brooklyn. I think the best single feature may be that the lines crossing that should happen between Hoyt-Schermerhorn and Lafayette and DeKalb and Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center doesn’t happen.

Transit Maps says:

I think you’re missing the point of this map a bit, Max. The map makes sense not because the B and C are old IND lines, but because they’re the only lines that actually stop at 110th/Cathedral Parkway. Thus, the map depicts where you can get to directly from that station. From other photos I’ve seen, similar digital maps down on the platforms would “grey out” the stations in the opposite direction of travel. In effect, this is really just two intertwined strip maps for each line.

However, I personally don’t find the map particularly attractive. It looks like it’s attempting to channel the Vignelli diagram, but it’s not totally successful. The severe angles, especially around W4th/Washington Square, are too harsh for my liking, and the dashed route line for the rush hour extension of the B is also pretty ugly. I do wonder whether a dynamic display would work here: during rush hours, the extension is “on” and shown in full, while in non-peak hours it’s simply turned “off” and not displayed at all. The map is digital after all, and almost certainly connected to a network in order to also display advertisements. (Unless this is what it already does: it’s hard to tell from a static image!)

I also wonder why it was thought necessary to display the labels for the terminal stations on the left hand side of the lines when all the other labels are to the right. It’s specially a problem at the southern end of the B, where the label for Brighton Beach clashes with the adjacent labels on the C. Ugly and unnecessary – it’s completely visually obvious that these are the last stops, and there’s plenty of room in all instances to move the labels to the right where they belong.

Our rating: Meh. Tries to evoke Vignelli but falls somewhat flat. Two-and-a-half stars.

Submission – Official Map: Buses around the Eastern Suburbs, Sydney, Australia

November 5, 2018
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Submitted by Felix, who says:

Transport for NSW released a new bus route map for the Eastern Suburbs, which I noticed a hard copy of and they provided a PDF upon request.

There are many bus routes in the area and, because of the hilly terrain, many have quirks in their routes. I’ve spoken to many a tourist or visitor at Bondi Junction interchange, or one of the beaches, confused about which bus to take. I assume this is one of the objectives of the map and why it uses a physically accurate map, with the beaches clearly marked – many tourists are visiting multiple beaches and walking between them, where possible. Also of note, the map omits buses such as the multiple 37_ buses that go from Randwick to the city – both areas on the map. I understand not including all routes, as there’s no natural cutoff point, but I think would be worth having them as faint lines or similar.

Design issues I noticed are: the grey lines of roads are not on the legend (and these roads are mostly not straight in reality), two buses are in black but it’s not clear why, there is no end dot for the 323 or the 311, it omits the arterial roads either side of the Moore Park green wedge, because they wouldn’t fit on the 45 degree orientation, some T-intersections of the blue lines show a turn, others do not (e.g. 381 at Bondi Road), and the bus interchange at Edgecliff and Bondi Junction are on top of the underground platforms, but the map suggests they are kind of near each other. Also, there are two floating train stations at Hyde Park, and despite the title, there are clearly ferry and train routes on the map, why not call it Public transport around the Eastern Suburbs? Lastly, there are time estimates for some walking routes (I think are helpful), but not the coastal walk from Bondi to Coogee segments.

Transit Maps says:

Before I address Felix’s concerns with this map (many of which are valid), I will note that this map does represent a pleasing maturation of the “new”  Transport for NSW house style: it’s definitely the most confidently executed and aesthetically pleasing map I’ve seen thus far from them. The combination of simplified routes and geography in particular is working quite nicely. There is a bit of “bus number hunting” that needs to be done to follow some routes across the map, but as it’s really meant as an overview of services, I don’t think it’s too bad.

That said, the omission of buses that reach the Eastern Suburbs from Central Station (the 37x routes that Felix mentions) is kind of baffling. I commuted to Randwick from Central on the 373 back in 1991–1992, and all of those buses are a major method of moving between the two areas. As it stands, this is only a map of Eastern Suburbs buses if you start or end your journey at Circular Quay or Bondi Junction. The fact that the 388 – a very short route from Paddington to Bondi Junction which runs just once each weekday – gets included on this map over any of the 37x routes is (for me, at least) more than a little bizarre.

I don’t have a huge problem with the roads around Moore Park being omitted – as the routes shown don’t interact with them at all, they’re superfluous detail. I would have liked the City Circle rail lines to have been shown as the Eastern Suburbs line has been – as Felix says, the “floating” stations just look a bit odd. Straightening out windy roads is absolutely fine on an overview map like this.

As far as walking times go, I’m fine with what is displayed. Walking distances between transit modes need to be shown because that’s very useful information for a user to have. The coastal walk is a recreational path over a much longer distance, so the time taken to walk it will vary widely depending on the abilities and goals of those who are walking it.

Our rating: Looks great, and does a reasonably good job of showing an overview of the routes that have been included. The exclusion of routes to/from Central Station is mystifying, however. Two-and-a-half stars.

Submission – Official Map: AppalCART Bus Routes, Boone, North Carolina

October 29, 2018
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Submitted by Jessie Archer (who I note has an “appalcart.com” email address, so possibly had something to do with the creation of this map).

Transit Maps says:

First off, can we just note how awesome “AppalCART” is as a transit system name for a city in this part of North Carolina? Possibly one of my favourites ever.

At first look, this is a reasonably attractive bus system map, especially for a smaller transit agency but it does feel a little rough and unfinished overall. 

The stylised framework of the map is fine, but I’m not entirely sure that every little street and road in Boone needs to be shown in such detail – it feels a little busy and unnecessary. My general feeling is that a map like this should only show major arterial roads and those that the buses actually travel on. If the road doesn’t merit a label, then its inclusion is debatable.

There’s a few contrast issues with the route lines and the background, especially the light blue “Express” route, which almost completely disappears. While the palette of colours is quite pleasing, the route lines really could stand to be just a bit brighter in order to make them “pop” from the background.

The spacing in between concurrent route lines is perhaps too wide, being almost as wide as the route lines themselves. This prevents adjacent lines being read as a coherent whole travelling along a single road, especially in the busier central portion of the map.

I’m also not convinced that the map’s solution for directional stops – one that requires a detailed explanation in the map’s legend – actually works that well. Most maps solve this by using arrows at each stop to indicate the direction of travel (with a dot or double-headed arrow for bi-directional travel), which is more instantly obvious to the reader. Working out which side of the road is the “left” or “right” is way too mentally taxing, especially when the routes travel in every direction.

I’d also like to see labels on the parks, actual depictions of the college’s football and baseball stadiums, and perhaps a shaded area denoting the main ASU campus as well.

Our rating: Definitely has the potential to be really good – it certainly has a lot of the right elements – but this feels like a second or third draft that needs some more refinement and polish to really sing. Two stars.

Submission – Proposed Cork Light Rail System, Ireland

October 29, 2018
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Submitted by puerto-nic0, who says:

The proposal for a Light Rail system for Cork City, Ireland. The proposal is from People Before Profit, Ireland’s socialist party. Light rail has long been promised for the city, but recent government initiatives have made it a more likely possibility.

It connects in the north to Cork’s suburban rail system, the regional (underdeveloped) heavy rail system, which connects to other parts of the country (as well as to Northern Ireland).

Transit Maps says:

Of all the types of “bad” transit maps, the poorly rendered “vision for the future” has to be one of the most frustrating. A map like this serves as a massive opportunity to generate excitement for a sustainable, transit-oriented, less car-reliant future in Cork… and this is what was presented? Unfortunately, it just looks shockingly amateur in its execution – which, in turn, reflects poorly on the proposal itself, regardless of the concepts contained within (which also seem to advocate for expansion of the commuter rail network, with stations added or reopened after extended closure).

All-caps labels set at wildly varying angles, poor typography, an ugly call-out box, no legend, clashing colours… need I go on? 

Our rating: Half a star, because it’s not quite as horrific as some maps that I’ve given zero to, but it’s still a very (un)worthy Hall of Shame entrant.

Project: Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean Trade Route Maps

October 27, 2018
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Earlier this year, I was commissioned to create a series of trade route maps for Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean, a leading global provider of deep-sea ocean transportation for cars, trucks, rolling equipment and breakbulk cargo. The client had already developed some rough “subway map” visualizations for their network, noting that their current geographical maps of longer routes compressed many ports into very small areas while leaving vast swathes of empty ocean taking up the majority of space. Their theory was that a subway map visualization could expand the denser areas (especially Europe and Japan/Korea), while vastly reducing the amount of wasted empty space – a problem not too dissimilar to that faced by H.C. Beck when he first drew up his famous Tube Map in 1931.

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Submission – Fantasy Map: Integrated Rail Diagram of Washington, DC and Baltimore by Chris Smere

October 18, 2018
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Submitted by Chris, who says:

This is one of my latest works: an integrated rail diagram for the Baltimore and Washington DC areas. The style is inspired by Vignelli’s subway maps from the 70s. There are no intentional geographic references. I have tried to show all rail services – heavy, light rail and streetcar – in the same manner (all strokes are of the same thickness). Station indicators are different depending on service/transportation mode (circle = metro, subway, square = light rail, streetcar, diamond = regional, commuter rail). The diagram is supposed to reflect current services and lines under construction and two proposed infill stations (metro: Potomac Yard; commuter: Potomac Shores). What are your thoughts on this?

Transit Maps says:

A really nice bit of work from Chris here, which overall does a good job of dealing with the differing scales of the component systems. Because of its more tightly spaced light rail lines, Baltimore comes off looking a little bit cramped in comparison to DC, but it’s not a huge deal. On the other hand, this is probably the best representation of the Purple Line I’ve seen so far, with a simple trajectory and lovely, evenly-spaced stations.

It’s perhaps a little unfortunate that the shortest line – the current DC Streetcar, here renamed as Line 4 – is visually the strongest, as it draws the viewer’s eye right to it. All the other streetcar/light rail lines are pastel hues, so the dark charcoal grey used here seems out of place. 

The different station marker shapes are a good idea in principle, though they can be a little hard to tell apart at a glance. Particular care needs to be taken with the square and the diamond and their relationship to the line that they sit on to prevent confusion – when lines are angled at 45 degrees like on the left of the map, it becomes even more difficult to quickly tell if a station is a square or a diamond.

I personally prefer to flip the Silver Line (Chris’ Line F) underneath the Orange Line (Line E) at East Falls Church so that it travels across the map sandwiched between the Orange and Blue lines. This gets rid of the need for the dinky little jog that the Silver Line has to do after Stadium-Armory, which always seems a little detailed and fussy in a diagram like this.

Our rating: Very competent and stylish, and definitely makes one dream of a day when rail transit in this region is unified under a single fare structure, much like a German Verkehrsverbund. Three-and-a-half stars.

Project: My Boston Rapid Transit Diagram Update, 2018

October 14, 2018
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Ever since I first designed it way back in 2012, I’ve tried to keep my popular alternative Boston MBTA rapid transit map updated as new stations opened and other changes to the network happened. However, with the opening of the Silver Line route to Chelsea (SL3) earlier this year, certain parts of my design just weren’t going to cut it anymore. Looking at the old version, it was also painfully obvious to me that I could do a much better job now with all that I’ve learned over the intervening six years. So! Redesign!

View the map below (updated to March 2022 with the opening of the GLX to Union Square), or click here to view it full-screen.

First things first: note that this an evolution of the previous version, not a complete redesign. So a lot of the general look and feel remains the same – the 3:2 ratio of the overall dimensions, the use of a circle centred on Bowdoin to define the scale and grid of the map, the distinctive configuration of the Green Line branches, etc. These are all things that I was still happy with from the previous version, so they became part of the building blocks for this version.

One thing I really wanted this new map to be was a little less generic than my old one: its station connectors and iconography really looked like they could have belonged to pretty much any city. So I looked back to the original 1967 MBTA spider maps, which used black dots for stations with thin connector lines between lines at North Station and Haymarket; while the individual line map used coloured squares to indicate connections to other lines (see image to left). I used these as inspiration for the station markers on my map, drawing on the MBTA’s heritage while also updating them slightly to account for the modern system’s increased complexity. Using black dots meant that I had to brighten up the line colours considerably from the old version, which used richer “heritage” hues, like crimson for the Red Line in honour of Harvard instead of a normal red. The 1967 spider map also inspired my use of a thinner route line for the Mattapan Line, which really helps differentiate it from the  adjacent Red Line at Ashmont. While it may seem heretical to some, I also ditched Helvetica Medium as the map’s typeface, opting for the superbly legible Fira Sans instead (also used on my Amtrak Subway Map). Finally, I’ve employed the superb Accessible Icon to indicate accessibility at rail stations – it reads much better at smaller sizes than the old ISO Standards icon; and it originated in Boston, so its use seems highly appropriate.

From here, a lot of the work was just being far more deliberate with how the map was structured. More elements were purposefully aligned with each other this time around, which creates a cleaner, more organised feel.  For example, the Red Line from Alewife all the way down to Braintree is now a perfectly symmetrical bow shape, which pleases me immensely. The Needham Line (included in full this time around!) lines up with Forest Hills station, then Morton St, then Shawmut. The Mattapan Line aligns with the Greenbush Line. The Red Line bullet at Braintree aligns with the Blue Line bullet at Wonderland, defining the eastern edge of the network. There’s way too many examples to write about, so here’s a picture. The pink guide lines show intentional relationships between elements on the map: note in particular how  the baselines of station labels line up all across the map to create invisible horizontal gridlines.

The Silver Line was simplified a lot from the old map: running three lines in parallel for the SL1, SL2 and SL3 out of South Station was going to be too unwieldy, so one line was to represent all trunk services. I also committed to horizontal labels for the  Silver Line, so the SL2 down to Design Center doesn’t quite maintain its true geographical relationship to the Red Line now, extending far further south than it should. However, I think this is a worthwhile tradeoff, as the Silver Line is now a lot more legible and attractive. The new SL3 up to Chelsea integrates itself into the network very cleanly, I think. In a little bit of a cheat, I haven’t used accessibility icons for the Silver Line in order to make the map a bit less cluttered, although its full accessibility status is noted in the legend at the top.

Other things I’m really pleased with: the simplified geography of the coastline and the fading gradient blue to represent water. The even spacing of all the stations on the Orange Line (the northern half was compressed a lot on the old version simply because I was running out of room). The use of bullets to indicate the downtown Green Line branch turnaround stations (also explained fully in the legend). The perfect “Y” bifurcation of the commuter rail lines at Back Bay. The detailed and accurate depiction of the station layout and services at Readville. The indication that only the Silver Line is accessible at Boylston. Very few labels cutting across route lines (There’s only three, compared to at least 11 on the previous version).

For me, this new version is a huge improvement over the old one – not just in how it looks, but also in the way that I pulled the whole thing together. The design gelled right from the start, and I made almost no compromises to the design rules that I set up at the start of the project – always a big indicator of success! While my memory is hazy of the process from six years ago, this version felt like it took far less time and wasn’t anywhere near as frustrating.

As always, thoughts and comments are welcome! Prints are available in the Transit Maps store.

Submission – Fantasy Map: Gotham Transit Authority Map from Upcoming “Joker” Movie

September 29, 2018
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Submitted by Jason, who says:

Gotham City Subway Map on the set of the new Joker movie filming at Bedford Park Blvd station. What are your thoughts on this?

Transit Maps says:

There’s plenty of other posts out there on the internet that talk about the innumerable easter eggs in this map – Kane County, Starlin Avenue, etc. – so I’m just going to talk about the map itself here.

Previously, The Dark Knight Rises riffed off the current New York Subway map, so it’s fun to see this movie use a Vignelli-inspired map instead, even if it’s not a perfect stylistic homage. I mean, randomly angled labels on a Vignelli diagram? It just wouldn’t happen. The network itself also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense: what happens to the “H” from Burnside when it joins onto the “K” near Fort Hamilton? Where does the “8″ end and the “9″ begin? Most of the routes seem to be unnecessarily circuitous – this network really needs a couple of good, straight trunk lines instead of all this weaving around.

The “How to Use This Map” text at the top left of the map has been cribbed directly off the Vignelli diagram, although with poor spelling and punctuation. The Gotham Heights neighbourhood label covers up a couple of station names, which is pretty unforgivable. The GTA logo is pretty neat, if a bit large on the map.

Very notable is that the general geography of Gotham City – the shape and position of the islands – remains faithful to what’s been established in the comics and The Dark Knight Rises, even if locality names and the entire transit network itself are completely different.