Historical (Unofficial?) Map: Transit of Sofia, Bulgaria, 2009

November 9, 2016
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Well, this is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?

It looks like the map’s designers have attempted to represent the network isometrically, with the city’s grand avenues surrounding the historical central core. However, the whole thing’s just so darn busy that the attempted illusion just doesn’t work. Almost every part of the map is filled with something: labels, logos, clip art, photos of landmarks, even randomly-placed pictures of trams! I’m guessing that the map is unofficial, as there’s no reference to the actual website for the Metro, just two now-defunct .tc websites.

At its widest, the boulevard leading away from the city to the lower right has some seventeen routes running along it, which doesn’t make them easy to follow. The two-line Metro – parts of which were still under construction back in 2009 – is incredibly recessive and hard to follow, buried almost literally underneath much of the rest of the map.

Our rating: Messy, overcrowded with unimportant or poorly-implemented extra elements, almost impossible to use. Half a star.

Source: Original source unknown, found on Mappery.com

Submission – Fantasy Map: Future Southeast Asia Rail Map by James Clark

November 7, 2016
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Submitted by James, who says:

Hi Cam, love your site! I’ve been studying future railways of Southeast Asia, in particular the Kunming to Singapore line via Laos, which will begin construction in December. I’ve created a map of every proposed railway in Southeast Asia:

The details of all the proposed lines can be found on my Nomadic Notes website.

Transit Maps says:

This is obviously a labour of love from James, and it shows. Lots of great, in-depth research combined with local knowledge, and just a little bit of fantasy and wish-fulfilment as well. James notes that he’s included one particular line because he’d like to be able to get to the beach from Saigon on a pleasant weekend, for example.

The map itself is certainly interesting to look at, if just perhaps a little too reliant on the familiar trappings of the London Tube map (interchange markers, station ticks, terminal bars, etc.). James’ decision to retain the proper shapes of each country helps readers to relate the map to the real world, but it also makes the usable parts of the map rather small – there’s a lot of ocean in this part of the world! I think some expansion of the “mainland” area of the map to the top left at the expense of some of the empty expanses of water could have been achieved fairly easily and made the map a little less cramped overall.

On a map like this with a lot of routes, the number of colours used is an interesting decision to make. I feel that a smaller palette repeated across the map in different areas works better than trying to come up with 40 to 50 ever-so-slightly different colours. James has generally done a good job here, although there are a couple of places where very similar colours end up running next to each other: along the northern coast of Vietnam, for example.

As an Australian, I do have to protest at the use of the name “Indian Pacific” for one of the lines: we were there first, and by a considerable margin!

Source: Nomadic Notes – click through to read James’ comprehensive notes, really interesting stuff!

Submission – Unofficial Map: New York Subway and Bus “Bullet Map” by Anthony Denaro

November 7, 2016
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Submitted by Anthony, who says:

You reviewed my map of the Long Island Rail Road a few years ago. Your critiques and your blog have helped me in pushing forward on my current project, a unified Subway and Bus Map,

I’m calling it the Bullet Map, named after the nickname for the circle subway route indicators. I launched it a month ago with a Medium post explaining methodology.  What do you think of it?

Transit Maps says:

Anthony’s actually been keeping me appraised of this massive and complex project for a while now – long enough to know that all routes on the map were once shades of grey as shown in the third image above. While this gave a nice light background for station labels and the eponymous bullets to sit on, I felt that it made for a very monochrome map without any element really tying the whole piece together into a unified whole. 

So I’m glad that Anthony bit the bullet (pun fully intended) and added some much-needed visual “oomph” to the map by reinstating the proper colours for the subway lines (and the Select Bus Service). For me, the Subway is – and always will be – the transit heartbeat of the city, so it fully deserves its place at the top of the information hierarchy. It certainly differentiates the service types a lot better than greys just a few percentage points of black ink apart, and makes route tracing a lot easier! The scope of the map has also expanded a bit, as this new version shows transit west of the Hudson in the form of PATH and the Hudson-Bergen light rail line.

As far as layout goes, I think Anthony’s done a great job of showing the dense networks clearly while still retaining a sense of accuracy with the layout of the city. The map uses angles in increments of 22.5 degrees, which gives good flexibility in handling the different (and sometimes intersecting) street grids of the boroughs. The labelling is neat and consistently applied, as is the nomenclature, which is always a good indication of attention to detail in my eyes. 

Impressively, the map works equally well when one of the transit layers is removed – say, the regular buses, leaving just the SBS and Subway as “rapid” services. Indeed, as part of his Kickstarter campaign, Anthony is working on a smartphone app of the map which allows the user to do that just that with the map as well as scroll around and zoom in. There are also different print versions of the map: a smaller 24×26″ rapid transit map, and a large 36×48″ map of the whole unified bullet map, as well as a host of other rewards. Wisely, Anthony is also offering “borough maps” that show selected portions of the whole map for those parochial types. There’s only ten days left to go in the Kickstarter campaign, and funding hasn’t quite been reached yet, so I’d urge you to go and take a look if you’d like one of these maps in your hands.

Bullet Map Kickstarter Page

Submission – Shannon Cave “Transit Map” Mug by deathandthepenguin

November 5, 2016
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Submitted by the author, who says:

Not a transit map, but a cave map inspired by Harry Beck I made a few years ago.

Transit Maps says:

This is fun! This map wears its influence very much on its sleeve, with much of the Tube Map’s celebrated visual language lifted directly from the source, but this is still very nicely put together. The one obvious difference is the substitution of what looks like Avant Garde for Johnston Sans (note the unjoined capital “R” – a dead giveaway). 

From what I’ve read about the Shannon Cave, this seem to be a fairly accurate depiction of the system, complete with landmark names and the different routes of streams.

Tokyo Subway Map from MariNaomi’s “Turning Japanese”

November 1, 2016
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Yeah, I think the Tokyo Subway map does this to a lot of people. From MariNaomi’s graphic memoir Turning Japanese.

Via: comiccartography Tumblr

Jake Berman’s Unofficial New York Subway Map – on a Wall!

October 28, 2016
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A wall-sized New York Subway map! Despite initial appearances, this is not based off the Vignelli map; rather, it appears to be a slightly modified or newer version of this map from Wikipedia. Anyone know an exact location for this?

Update: New information and a link to a story on Gothamist about this building, which is completely subway themed! The building is at 132A Stanhope Street in Brooklyn if you want to find it yourself. The map is by Jake Berman, and can be found on his blog, 53 Studio.

Source: mslovejoy/Tumblr – link no longer active

Historical Map: Budapest Metro Map, c. 1980s

October 28, 2016
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A charmingly simple – almost naive – diagram of Budapest’s then three-line Metro as included in a fold-out city map brochure. The rippling water pattern for the rivers is rather lovely, as is the simple but effective three-circle depiction of the main interchange at Deák tér. 

The use of large train and ferry icons to depict transportation interchanges is a little vague: the icons are large enough to span between some stations, or are placed so far away from the Metro station that it’s hard to tell if they’re actually in any sort of proximity to each other. The enormous Metro line numbers aren’t really helping, either… On the other hand, the airport is nowhere near as close to the eastern end of the M3 line as this map would have you believe.

Our rating: Quite charming despite its flaws, with a wonderfully austere 1980s Eastern European design aesthetic. Three stars.

Source: xoverit/Tumblr

Submission – Fantasy Map: Greater Brisbane Rail Map by Hayden Green

October 27, 2016
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Submitted by Hayden, who says:

This is a fantasy map of what one day could be the urban rail network in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I’ve been working on this for the last few months, and many of your posts (especially tutorials) have been extremely helpful – I would love to hear your thoughts on the final product. Thanks 🙂

Transit Maps says:

Now this I like! 

A fantasy map that’s not afraid to step out of the shadow of the fairly pedestrian official map (June 2014, 3 stars) and create something new. The thin route lines and generous curves reminds me of the Metro de Porto’s system map (April 2012, 3.5 stars). Hayden’s map does share one fault with that map, though – overall, I find the typography a little on the small side.

Wisely, Hayden has decided to limit the scope of the map to the Brisbane-only portion of southeast Queensland’s rail network, which enables him to show the city proper at a decent scale. For the regional parts of the network, Hayden makes liberal use of station lists pointing off the edges of the map. A couple of these lists are quite a lengthy read, but overall, this approach works quite well.

The use of extra angles help Hayden piece together the network quite convincingly and there’s a nice languid flow to the whole map. Even the convoluted path of the Brisbane River seems calmer on this map than on the official one. I often talk about getting the route lines and background to match stylistically to make the map look like a unified whole, and Hayden’s done an excellent job here of doing just that.

I’m a little less convinced by the zone boundary treatment, which seems a little ostentatious and showy compared to the restrained minimalism of the rest of the map. A simpler way of numbering the two zones could be found with a little work, I think. Similarly, I find the thick blue border around the legend to be too heavy and visually dominant.

Overall, though, this is really excellent work – a fresh look at a potential future for Brisbane! Nice work, Hayden!

Submission – Icons of the Fukuoka City Subway, Japan

October 27, 2016
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Submitted by Zeroplate, who says:

I was in Fukuoka this summer and couldn’t help but admire the icons that the subway lines used to mark each station. Some like the elephant and the ramen bowl tied clearly to local attractions. Others pointed to historical or geographical notes about the city. Still others I never figured out. Since each station in the main part of town was labeled with kanji, hiragana, Roman letters, and an icon, the maps got sorta busy but I enjoyed the whimsy they added to the traveling experience. I’m curious about whether you’ve seen these before and what you think of them.

Transit Maps says:

I haven’t actually seen these before, so thanks for sharing! 

While the icons themselves are a bit of a mixed bag – some seem to belong to a family, while others have their own different style – they certainly liven up these strip maps. They’re definitely a contrast to Lance Wyman’s famous icons for the Mexico City Metro, which are all designed using a common design language and therefore have a uniformity to them that these icons lack. Of the icons shown here, my favourite is the double-headed pen/pencil “N” at Nishijin – lovely!

And you’re right about the maps being a little busy, but incorporating an icon, three different scripts and a station identification number will do that! At least you can’t complain that you’re not getting enough information…

Review: Mini Metro for Mobile Devices

October 25, 2016
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While Dinosaur Polo Club’s Mini Metro – the minimalistic subway building game – has been available for PC via the Steam gaming portal for some time now, it’s only just been ported to mobile devices in the last couple of weeks. Always on the lookout for a fun little game to while away my commute to work, I picked it up for my iPhone almost immediately. Really, how could someone who runs a blog called Transit Maps resist this one?

At its heart, the game is incredibly simple: connect the differently-shaped station symbols with subway lines to move as many little “commuters” to their desired destination as possible before overcrowding forces your system to grind to a horrible, WMATA-esque halt. Square commuters want to go to a square station, circles to circles and so on.

Where Mini Metro really shines is in the superb execution of that simple concept. The subway map aesthetic is quite lovely, and the look of each of the different playable maps is tweaked slightly to match that city’s actual subway map. For example, New York is presented against a geographical backdrop, while the background for Paris is just the right shade of beige. In my opinion, Montreal should always be played in the game’s reduced-contrast “night mode” for the properly authentic look, as seen above.

The pitch-perfect look to the game is augmented by the lovely sound design, which uses the whirring of little train engines, the satisfied pings of commuters arriving at their destination and the warning chimes of overcrowded stations to build a dreamy, immersive soundscape that’s definitely an integral part of the gameplay.

The game works quite well with the touch interface of an iPhone: dragging out new routes with your finger is intuitive and fun. Deleting sections of track or performing major rerouting can be a little trickier at first, but I soon got the hang of it.

I only have an iPhone 5, so the small screen can make things a bit fiddly when there are lots of lines and stations. You can pinch to zoom to get in closer, but this sometimes accidentally reroutes tracks if you’re not careful where you put your fingers! Pause the game to make major adjustments and you should be fine. Larger screens on newer phones and tablets should run into this problem less often. Cleverly, the game almost imperceptibly zooms out as the game progresses, so you never see more of the map than you need at the time.

The game comes with 13 playable maps: earn a high enough score on the first few maps and you can unlock new cities to play. The differences between the cities aren’t just aesthetic: there are city-specific nuances in gameplay as well. Some cities offer different upgrades to your infrastructure, while others present their own unique challenges. I don’t want to give too much away here and spoil all the fun, but it is definitely worth playing to unlock all the different cities: everyone will have their own favourite city that suits their playing style. Personally, I particularly like Melbourne and Osaka, while I find Cairo quite maddening. There’s also a “Hardcore” mode, where any track you lay down is permanent – no do-overs!

Average game time for me at the moment is 15 to 20 minutes per game, which is perfect for whiling away a bus or train ride to work. This isn’t a deep simulation like SimCity or Cities in Motion, it’s a fun little strategic puzzle game dressed up like a subway map. It looks great, sounds great, and is a lot of fun to play. Highly recommended!

Price for the phone/tablet version: $4.99 for the whole game. No ads, no micro-transactions. That’s less than the price of a Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte, and a whole lot more fun!

Source: Dinosaur Polo Club