Submission – Official Map: Tysons Corner, Virginia Bus Transit Options Map

March 7, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Dan Reed, who says:

Tysons Corner, Virginia is the archetypal suburban edge city and as traffic becomes unbearable, officials are hustling to get people on transit, particularly the new Silver Line with four local stops. The owners of Tysons Corner Center, one of the nation’s biggest malls and a tourist attraction in its own right, seem to have made this “spider map” showing all of the bus and rail service to and from the mall. I think it’s a great idea, though the execution feels thrown together, to say the least. I’m curious to hear your thoughts!

Transit Maps says:

Anything that encourages the use of transit rather than single-occupancy vehicles to reach edge cities like Tysons Corner (already the 12th largest employment centre in the United States and growing rapidly) is to be encouraged, but this map is pretty bare bones and not very attractive. As Dan says, it all feels a bit slapdash, with route lines and labels criss-crossing each other at all sorts of random angles. Metrorail stations only get shown if they have a bus service that goes to Tysons, and only the four stations that are within the Tysons area have a linking route line. The rest just exist in splendid isolation, with no indication of how they connect to the rest of the system at all.

These faults are mitigated a bit on the website, where the map is somewhat interactive: hover over a route and all the others fade back, allowing you to trace a route more easily from beginning to end. A further click is then meant to take you to that route’s timetable, but it seems that most of the regional bus operators have re-organised their websites since this map was made. All you get now for many of the routes is a 404 page. Oops! An interactive map that links to external websites must be kept up to date or it becomes useless and frustrates users.

Our rating: Well-meaning, and a start at getting commuters to Tysons out of their cars, but unattractive and difficult to use. The unmaintained interactive version will not win any friends. 1 star.

Source: Access Tysons website

Submission – Fantasy Map: Split Rapid Railway, Croatia by Voystok

March 3, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Fantasy Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Voystok, who says:

Here’s my fantasy map for the non-existent rapid transit system of Split, Croatia! I made this as a practice project in Illustrator as I’m preparing a portfolio for a college application. The geography is largely distorted and the city lines (M1 and M2) are very disproportionate to the other lines (M3 and M4) which are suburban. I hope one day this city will have a transit system like this.

Transit Maps says:

I like this quite a lot, Voystok, though I feel that it can’t quite decide if it’s ultra-minimalist or something a little more representational of reality. Compared to the straight-line simplicity of the route lines, the zone boundaries seem a little complex and detailed, for example – almost appearing as if they’re the mountains behind the city that hem it to the coast.

So I see two choices: make it more representational, or more minimalist. For the first choice, you might give some indication of the distinctive peninsula that Split sits on, and use the famous old town/palace as a landmark. Make the sea blue! That sort of thing.

To make it more minimalist, you’d simplify things even further. Pare the zones back to an absolute minimum of shapes and extend the darkest Zone 3 grey all the way to the edge of the map. Eliminate the kink in the M2 line and just have it head directly across the loop line, and even up the vertical spacing of that loop a little so that there’s no wasted space.

One more thing to note is consistency in your iconography. Look at how your interchange stations differ depending on whether they’re on a horizontal or vertical section of track. When the M1 Circle interchanges with the M2, both dots straddle the dark blue line… but when the M1 meets the M3 and M4, the dark blue dot sits directly above the dark blue line, with the other dot sitting fully outside the line. It’s a little inconsistent, although I can see why you did it.

One particularly good thing about this is that I can look at an actual map of Split and see how this could work in reality – especially the conversion of mainline trains northwards out of the city to a more metro-like service.

Keep up the good work, this is a very promising start!

Historical Map: Mexico Tramways Company – Lines and Properties in Mexico City, 1910

March 2, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

A lovely old map showing Mexico City’s extensive tram network in 1910. Solid red lines are electric street-running trams, ticked red lines are electric trams on exclusive right-of-way, while green lines are humble mule-pulled trams… of which there are still quite a number. In fact, mule-pulled trams continued to be used in Mexico City up until the 1930s. Electric substations, mule stables, carbarns and other company properties are also highlighted on the map.

Streetcars hung on longer in Mexico City than many other North American cities, with the last line – by then running old PCC cars – only closing in 1984, and being replaced almost immediately by a modern light rail line.

More information on the history of streetcars in Mexico City over on Wikipedia.

Source: Library of Congress Maps Division

Submission – Official Map: Bus Network of Puy-de-Dôme, France, 2017

March 2, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Pierre, who says:

I’d like to suggest this map that I immediately found particularly bad designed. It represents the bus network in a small French region, Puy-de-Dôme. Besides the fact the number of the lines are very hard to read, I find quite difficult to follow each line and the center looks totally messy.

Transit Maps says:

Pierre is right on the mark with his summary of this map… it’s really quite dreadful in so many ways. 

Poorly-drawn, low-contrast route lines all converge upon Clermont-Ferrand, with a minuscule route number embedded within each one. Lines on either side of Clermont’s “station box” use the same colour, making you think they’re a continuation of the same route – until you pull out your magnifying glass and see that they have different route numbers. Label placement is everywhere, and the narrow, bitmappy-looking typeface really doesn’t help.

By far the best thing on this map is the nifty isometric illustration of the bus, and I’m pretty certain that even this just a slightly modified stock library vector file. Slap the right livery on it and call it done!

Finally, one wonders what the town of Égliseneuve-d’Entraigues did to deserve being shown on the map, but to have absolutely no connections to it…

Our rating: Quite abysmal. Half-a-star – just because of the bus – but it’s still the latest addition to the Transit Maps Hall of Shame.

Submission – “Transit Flow” by Ray Luong

March 1, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Visualizations
Tags:

A visual exploration of BART ridership throughout a typical workday. Watching the video below is fun, but the actual tool – made with HTML/CSS, JS, .d3.js, Sketch and BART ridership data – is even better. Click here to view it. 

After you’ve watched it through to about 2pm, some controls will appear down the bottom left to change the speed of the simulation, and also switch between “inbound” and “outbound” trains (which I think should be labeled more simply as “westbound” and “eastbound” as the path always follows a train’s trip from one end of the line to the other). Ray tells me that only showing one direction at a time was an intentional tradeoff, so as to not overwhelm the viewer on top of handling performance in the browser.

Ray’s also written a short piece on the background behind the project here, which is an interesting read.

Source: YouTube

Submission – New Denver RTD Rail System Strip Map, 2017

February 28, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Dan Malouff, who says:

Denver has opened several new rail lines over the past year or so. Apparently, with the most recent one, they launched a new system map. Finally they’re using consistent angles! 

Transit Maps says:

So far, this new design only seems to be on in-car strip maps: RTD’s website still uses a version of the horrid old “wibbly lines” diagram. Small steps!

It’s certainly a vast improvement over what’s come before, although I can’t help but think that it’s been influenced by Theo Ditsek’s excellent unofficial redesign (June 2015, 4 stars). I definitely did a double-take when I first saw this, as the resemblance was immediately obvious to me without even having to go back and look at Theo’s diagram.

All that aside, though, and it’s interesting to note that despite the diagram’s improvement, it still really doesn’t fill the space available on the strip map terribly efficiently… lots of empty space all around. Still, at least they’re not distorting the darn thing to fit the space anymore!

Also of note is the minimal branding for the “University of Colorado A Line” – here reduced to a tiny label running alongside the route – and the continued conversion of the line letters from the old square shape to a more New York Subway-style circular bullet.

Our rating: Another much-improved map (like the UTA strip map from yesterday), even if it seems a little familiar. Three-and-a-half stars.

Source: SkyscraperPage Forums via Dan’s submission

Submission – New Salt Lake City Light Rail Strip Map, 2017

February 28, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Bailey, who says:

UTA (Salt Lake City) looks like they’ve been improving maps in the individual cars, as well. While the abysmal deservingly-zero-star maps are still in use at some stations, all cars have these fancy new maps over about half of the doors of the cars. This was taken in an SD-160 car. I like it, but I feel like it could do without the names of the cities on the map. What do you think?

Transit Maps says:

This is – by a considerable margin – quite the best rail diagram that the UTA has made during the five or so years that this blog has been active. It carries on the upward trend started by the current version of the full system map (June 2015, 3 stars) and pleasingly carries on the corporate look of that map, with consistent typography and legend box. The restrained north/south arrows are also quite nice: definitely an improvement over some of the previous ornate compass roses! Labelling is clear, legible and generally well-spaced… and no leader lines required!

There’s a couple of niggly little things that I’m not crazy about – the Green Line separates from the main spine using 45-degree angles, but the Red Line uses hard 90-degree turns, for example. It would seem that this is simply because there’s not enough horizontal space, but it makes things look a little inconsistent, especially on the West Valley and South Jordan branches, which are right alongside each other. The city names are a bit of a necessary evil, I’m afraid… everyone wants to be represented! They are a little cramped when jammed between the branches and the main trunk, but not so bad elsewhere.

Our rating: I almost can’t believe I’m saying this about a UTA transit diagram, but this is quite decent. Keep heading up, guys! Three-and-a-half stars!

Print Store News – Custom Print Sizes Now Available!

February 24, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps, Prints Available
Tags:

Now that I’ve acquired my own large format inkjet printer, I’m printing and fulfilling all orders from my print store myself. This means it’s much easier for me to produce many of my maps in larger, made-to-order sizes for those who want them.

All of my original maps are created in Adobe Illustrator, so they can scale up to any size as required. In addition, many of my restored vintage maps have excellent image resolution and can be reproduced at larger sizes and still look fantastic. For example, a recent client wanted all three of my vintage Chicago maps as large as they could be: two of them were 44″ wide (first and second images above), while the third (seen outputting from the printer in the last photo above) was an incredible 60.5″ wide by 44″ deep.

I have three paper widths in stock: 24″, 36″ and 44″, so it’s generally best if one of the dimensions of a print equals one of these lengths, but I can trim paper to any narrower width if desired. If you’re interested in a custom size on any of my prints, please drop me a line by using the this form, and I’ll see what I can do! Prices are extremely competitive compared to what you’d find at any “fine art” print shop.

Visit my store here to see all available prints!

Historical Map: Korean Air Lines route map, 1974

February 24, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

Via airlinemaps:

The Korean Air Lines route map from a 1 July 1974 timetable. This is a fun map – it takes diagrammatic elements and mixes them with curves to create a pleasant aesthetic. 

A key that includes the status of the Bangkok-Singapore route and what the destinations without routes indicate would be a good addition.

KAL operated 29 aircraft, including four 707s, three 727s, three 747s and four DC-8s, in July 1974, the Flight Fleets Analyzer shows.

We’ve featured a few transit diagram-style airline maps on the blog before, but this is one of the nicest looking that I’ve seen, even with the oddities noted above (Why show cities that no connections are offered to? Added geographical context? Reachable via partner airlines? It’s a mystery!).

There’s an almost calligraphic flow to the bold route lines which I find very pleasing, aided by generous curves at corners and the target-like circle around the network’s main hub at Seoul. Really quite lovely. 

Source: Bjorn Larsson, Airline Timetable Images

Could a Tweak to the DC Metro Map Fix Overcrowding?

February 22, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Here’s a quick link to an article in the Washington Post by Martine Powers about a study that shows how tinkering with Washington, DC’s Metrorail map influences rider’s perceptions of the system and which path they should take to reach their final destination.

In the image above, for example, the Blue Line has been altered to look less desirable than the Yellow Line when coming into DC from the south… and in testing, there was a 9.5 percent increase in people choosing the Yellow Line over the Blue for their trips based on this map when compared to the official one. Even experienced local commuters were influenced by edits like this to the map, which is kind of astounding.

It’s a fascinating insight into human psychology – we know that this is not a literal geographical representation of the system (MAP NOT TO SCALE!), and yet we still use it to make judgment calls about distance and time. As the author of the study, Zhan Guo, says, 

“The conclusion is that people trust the map more than their experiences. Even for people who have used the system for many years, the map still matters.”

Go read the whole article by clicking below.

Source: The Washington Post