In the USA, new transit takes time. Whether it’s Environmental Impact Statements that take seven years to write, or tunnel boring machines that take longer than expected to do their work, or lawsuits from people angry that light rail might take away one of their beloved exit ramps, or mayors who want to rip up new streetcar tracks after they’ve been installed… the list goes on.
China, however, is a completely different matter… as this great timeline GIF from Peter Dovak illustrates. Using his lovely “Mini Metro” framework, he’s created a year-by-year breakdown of the growth of mass transit in China… and the end result is certainly breathtaking. Watch out especially from 2010 onwards, when the number of systems (and lines within individual systems) just explodes.
A tongue-in-cheek rationalisation of Bay Area rail transit to remove all the slashes in those terribly long and indecisive station names: North Concord/Martinez, Warm Springs/South Fremont, etc. Amusing, but also a pointed look at the peculiarly American habit of attempting to appease everyone when it comes to naming stations.
Now, can someone do one of these for Washington, DC? *cough* U Street/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo *cough*
This is a really lovely little diagram, which treads the fine line between simplifying the network and depicting Helsinki’s complex geography very deftly. Near-future extensions (up to 2023) are depicted with hollow route lines and estimated opening dates for stations and new track.
One thing it does lack is a legend – while most of the map is pretty self-explanatory, an indication that Line 5 and the short 6T extension only run when cruise ships arrive and depart from the termini would be handy. As it is, they’re shown as thinner lines on the map with no explanation.
One minor technical thing: when route lines pass underneath another set of lines, their colours show through a tiny sliver of a gap between the topmost lines, which looks just a little messy. I’d personally adjust the thickness of the white keylines here to hide those completely.
Typographically, there’s a little bit of a stylistic disconnect between the big, rounded type used for main line stations and tram termini and the smaller condensed face used for the rest of the labels, but it’s not too bad. Generally, the requirement for bilingual labels has been handled quite well.
Overall, a very pleasing map, and certainly a lot better than the slightly stodgy official map. Three-and-a-half stars.
I’m kind of surprised that this hasn’t been done before – there are plenty of similar track maps out there for other major transit cities like London and Paris – but this is very nicely executed indeed.
The map looks great, is easily understood even without consulting the legend, and has copious footnotes for those who want to really dive deep into the inner workings of the subway. Extra kudos for cleverly fitting the label “MANHATTAN” neatly within Central Park, solving an otherwise awkward problem.
Also: who knew that JFK was so freaking huge?
Head on over to Andrew’s project page for more information about the project, and to download a full PDF of the map for close-up study.
Sent my way by quite a few people, here’s yet another gorgeous transportation map from Art Lebedev Studios. It bears a lot of their usual trademarks –interesting and unusual station ticks, gradients between line colours at interchange stations, superb point-of-interest icons – but it also brings a playfulness that I haven’t really seen before in their work. The route lines have a very pleasant organic flow to them, and there are some very nice “flavour” icons dotted around the map as well.
The directional arrows for one way travel (seen in the second image above) are some of the nicest I’ve ever seen, subtly incorporated into the lines themselves but still very clear in their meaning. The more street-accurate “enlargements” at the main bus station and tram/airport bus interchanges are also extremely well implemented, and very useful for those less familiar with the city.
If I had one minor complaint, it’s that the point-of-interest icons are drawn with differing perspective: some are flat (the various markets and the Potemkin Stairs), others are more top than front, and others are more front than top. They’re all very well executed, but I personally find it just a little visually jarring to switch between viewpoints.
As always with a Lebedev Studios map, it’s not just about the finished piece, but the process – go and check out their page where they describe all the design options that were discussed, tested, discarded and implemented. The first solution is not always the best!
Our rating: Fantastic, organic, friendly mapping for transit. Four-and-a-half stars!
NYC is relaunching its ferry service today, and they’ve produced a subway-style map to illustrate the service. The typeface and station symbols seem a bit more London than NYC to me, but otherwise seems like a decent map. What do you think?
Transit Maps says:
Apparently, the first morning of this “new and improved” ferry service didn’t go that well today, as the Mayor’s photo opportunity caused major service delays and prevented riders from boarding because the boat was filled up with dignitaries and media. Not exactly setting a positive tone from the start, but I digress…
The map, while competently drawn, really seems like a massive missed opportunity to me. It’s very empty, and fails to show how the ferry system connects with other transit options. Are there subway stations within a half-mile walk of the ferry wharves, especially on the Manhattan side where people may need to continue their journey to their office location? What about connecting bus services? The ferries don’t exist in isolation, but as part of a greater transportation whole, and that should really be reflected on the map.
But, hey, we get to see where Central and Prospect parks are (not near the water).
Some other comments: there’s a couple of truncated labels (“-HATTAN” is the most egregious), and the coastline treatment veers awkwardly between very simple (Manhattan) and overly complex (Jamaica Bay).
Our rating: This really strikes me as a “bare minimum” effort. The new service has a map that shows where the ferries go, and that’s about it. Could be so much more with a little thought. Two stars.
I’ve long admired this fascinating map of the railway network in and around East Berlin, produced at the tail end of the Cold War in 1989. However, the only copy of it I’d ever seen was a horribly oversaturated scan that I reviewed over on Transit Maps back in 2012. So I was absolutely overjoyed when I was pointed towards this far superior scan (left), which is both higher resolution and much more colour accurate: for a start, you can actually tell the difference between the dark green S-Bahn and light green regional lines!
Despite the better quality, the scan was still unsuitable for Photoshop-based restoration and reproduction, so I decided – as I often do – to recreate it completely in Adobe Illustrator. Along the way, I discovered many interesting things. For starters, the map was almost certainly printed with five spot colours: dark green, light green, blue, black and light grey. Unfortunately, this does lead to some serious registration problems on the original map (mainly due to the cheap, flimsy paper the map is printed on), but at least the colours are bright and distinct.
Next, the typography is an interesting mix of the expected – Helvetica for subheadings and Univers Bold for all the station labels – and the more esoteric. I had a very difficult time matching the font used for the larger light grey text: no common historically-accurate sans serif typefaces seemed to combine its distinctive lower-case “k” and interesting top-heavy “ß” glyph. Almost by chance, I came across a reference to a typeface called Maxima, designed by Gert Wunderlich for the East German type foundry Typoart in the 1960s. I tested it out and it was an almost exact match: mystery solved!
Interestingly, the train icon used on the map to signify an interchange with mainline rail services is absolutely identical to the one digitised in Erik Spiekermann’s FF Transit Pict, which certainly saved me some time because I didn’t have to redraw the darn thing! This really isn’t that surprising, as FF Transit was originally designed as a custom typeface for Berlin’s transit network after reunification.
From a technical viewpoint, the map is quite well drawn, though I did have to apply some corrections to account for the terrible ink registration. Some of the labels along the north-east branch to Werneuchen seem to be misplaced in relation to their station dots, but I’ve left them as they were on the original map, because I’m making a recreation, not designing a new version of the map.
Comments welcome! Prints of this map are available in the Transit Maps store – click here!
This is the official map of Canadian Niagara Falls’s WEGO Bus service. I personally like the way the falls are depicted and the river’s sharp 90 degree turn in the lower right hand corner of the map, which I think serves as a nice visual hook. I don’t really like the way the Orange Line is treated, as it is unclear where exactly it runs and terminates once it merges with the Green Line.
Transit Maps says:
Yes, the illustrative approach to the falls themselves is quite lovely, as is the subtle “water” texture in the river below the falls. The actual routes on the map are a different story, however – especially in the central part where the three WEGO routes interact with each other. That area is quite cramped and crowded, which means that there’s not really enough room for all the labels, which need all sorts of angles and leader lines to squeeze in.
The problem is exacerbated by the silly need to label some stations multiple times – once for each colour! (If you ever want to know why I advocate against labels in the same colour as their line, this is one of the main reasons.) Queen Victoria Park is the worst offender with three separate labels, two of which are set in condensed type and one that is not. However, just a little bit north, the Clifton Hill/Hornblower Niagara Cruises stop only gets one label (in blue), probably because the designer started crying at the thought of having to triplicate that long name.
Another problem is that when labels cross route lines, they get a white keyline to separate them from the same-coloured background, which make them stand out in comparison to other labels. If the labels were good old black instead of coloured, maybe this keyline wouldn’t be needed, or one that was the background green could be used for a subtler effect.
As for the Orange Line, I think the main problem is that the main map and the inset tell different stories, which makes things ambiguous – this is never a good outcome on a transit map!
Our rating: Some nice decorative touches, but a bit of a mess as an actual map. It’s usable, but it certainly makes everything more complex and messy than it really needs to be. Two-and-a-half stars.
Q Have you ever seen a ski resort map in the style of a transit map? I was thinking about attempting it, not sure if it is even feasible.
A I thought it was pretty much compulsory for every ski resort in the world to have a James Niehues panoramic painting for their resort map, so it’s no surprise that I haven’t actually come across a transit map-styled one yet.
The closest I’ve seen are these maps by Frozen Underground, but they just link ski resorts together using arbitrary “routes” and the well-worn iconography of the Tube Map, so that’s not quite what you’re after.
If it’s something you want to attempt, then go ahead and be the first – though I personally wonder about the usefulness of it. The big advantage of the painted panorama style that dominates this particular market is that it allows riders to visualise how the trails and the mountain interact with each other. Wide open slopes versus narrow cat track through dense trees; gentle bunny hill versus double-black diamond dropping down into a sheer bowl… the painted map makes this instantly understandable. It gives instant scale and dimension to the mountain, which any stylised diagram is going to find difficult.
Has anyone out there seen a diagrammatic ski resort map? I’d love to see it if you have!
A federal budget outline from the Trump Administration looks to slash funding for rail transportation, including a complete elimination of federal funds for long-distance Amtrak routes like the Empire Builder, Southwest Chief and California Zephyr.
The map above, adapted from my Amtrak as Subway Map project, shows what the “national” passenger rail network could look like under this proposal: isolated, separate rail services, with no cross-country connections and over 220 stations without Amtrak rail service. Chicago, once a thriving national rail hub, now only directly serves its immediate region and loses connections to New York, Boston, Washington DC, New Orleans, California, Seattle and Portland.
As well as this defunding of Amtrak, the budget proposal would cut almost $500 million from the TIGER grant program, and $2.3 BILLION from the successful New Starts funding program, often used by cities to kick-start new transit projects.
Read more in this National Association of Railroad Passengers press release, and make your voice heard if you oppose massive transit infrastructure cuts like this that affect so many people across America.
