Phil Roe is a London Underground employee with over 40 years of service. While working in ticket offices in the 1970s, he was worried that he was too slow in calculating fares for customers, so he drew up his own fare zone diagrams for each station he worked at. The example below is for Green Park station, and the fares are in pence!
His maps predate the official usage of zones on the Tube Map, though Phil just says, “I don’t know where they got the idea from, but I think I was there first.”
In addition to the zones, Phil’s also added Hatton Cross (opened 1975) and Heathrow Central (opened 1977) by hand.
Source:Timeout London – lots of other astounding maps that Phil has drawn by hand here as well!
I think I’m gonna hurl… Shows buses, but NOT the Metromover? Come on.
Transit Maps says:
Well, it at least shows the stations that you can transfer to the Metromover at (all two of them), so it’s kind of on par with the buses – no actual bus routes are shown, just a list of numbers at each station. Showing the Metromover on this map is problematic because of the disparate scales of the two systems: Metrorail has 23 stations along 24 miles of track, while the Metromover crams 21 stations into just 4.4 miles of track looping through downtown. Tricky to reconcile those, to say the least. If the map was better organised, a downtown inset could be the answer.
Like its predecessor (August 2012, 1 star), this map suffers from including an unnecessarily detailed base map: do we really need to see every marina, inlet, island, lake and river in the greater Miami area? The drab grey isn’t giving me any Florida vibes, either. The typeface used for labelling is an improvement (Interstate versus the previous Arial), but there’s a sense that everything has just been thrown on where it can fit. Redundant station/locality names don’t help this either: two “Brickell” labels right next to each other? The station names already reflect the locality (or at least they should), so I don’t see a need to double up. Some labels end up under a legend box or even under the route lines, which isn’t very helpful.
The haphazard placement of labels means that some information takes too long to find. A stylised “e” symbol denotes a station that’s served by Downtown Express trains, but that “e” is often placed far away from the station it’s meant to tied to. Why not just put the “e” symbol on the station dot? Or put a small black dot in the centre of the station dot? Information like this should always be placed consistently so that it’s easy to find.
I will say that the depiction of the airport transportation options is much better: the MIA station is really a proper transit hub now (even more so when Amtrak trains start calling there in the near future), so it’s good to see it getting some love.
Our rating: An ever-so-slight improvement on the previous iteration, so a begrudged one-and-a-half stars.
Via long-time correspondent and fellow map-maker Andrew Smithers (check out his Project Mapping website if you haven’t done it yet!) comes this superb diagram of mainline rail services in 1976 France. It was created by famed Swiss designer Rudi Meyer, who was also responsible for the original – and very distinctive – Paris RER map in 1977-1978.
The map is certainly very striking, using a bold blue and green colour palette and minimal distractions from the network. France’s distinctive “hexagonal” shape is rendered simply by its rail network: no borders or coastline required.
Notice how all station labels are set horizontally, with only the names of destinations that are outside France allowed to be set at an angle that follows the dashed lines leaving the country. It’s a very subtle but well-executed piece of information hierarchy that I can’t help but admire.
This being 1976, the original plan for the LGV Sud-Est high-speed track between Paris and Lyon is indicated by means of a cased line: this would be opened in 1981.
Our rating: Striking and bold mid-70s European design. Communicates a dense and extensive network with clarity and efficiency, even if it’s not much use for actual journey planning… the map shows where you can go, but not necessarily how. Four stars.
Any thoughts on the MBTA map from The Simpsons’ Boston lambast bash last night? Looks like the new design.
Transit Maps says:
It sure does, although it has a cunningly crafted square “T” logo to prevent confusion with the real thing. The background water layer has also been deleted, probably to make the route lines stand out a little more obviously. Curiously, it’s labelled as a “bus routes map”, but overall, this is a lovely little piece of detail for a scene that probably only appeared for a very short time within the episode.
Jug Cerovic – whose work has been featured many times on Transit Maps – has decided to collect all 40 maps designed using his “INAT” design language into one very handsome printed volume, funded – as many self-published books are these days – by a Kickstarter campaign.
It’s not just the maps, though: there’s a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy behind the maps (which I have read and enjoyed), as well as annotations and thoughts on each of the maps. The book will be “coffee table” sized at 23.5 by 31 cm (9.5 x 12.2 inches), and printed on high-quality art paper, so it should look gorgeous.
Rewards begin at just €8 for a smart-phone app version of the maps, to €42 (plus shipping) for the book itself, plus some high-tier rewards. I backed this project instantly, so get on over and take a look for yourself.
Found on the band’s official YouTube channel, though I don’t think it’s the song’s actual official music video: that would be this one.
The song – from R.E.M.’s last studio album, Collapse Into Now – literally references Berlin and the U-Bahn, but isn’t anything remarkable by the band’s high standards, and the motion graphics are fairly average as well. However, I will give them full credit for using FF Transit – the typeface actually designed for and used by Berlin’s official transit map.
One of my longest-running projects is a subway diagram-styled map of Amtrak’s passenger rail network, with the original version dating back to 2010. I always made sure to update it regularly over the years, adding and deleting stations to keep it current. In April last year, I attempted to update the design of the map as well, although I ended up trying a few too many overly-clever things with it – overlaying lines on top of each other just because I was in love with transparency effects being the worst offender. The final result ended up being less than satisfactory, and I shelved the project while I worked on other things.
Coming back with fresh eyes almost a year-and-a-half later, I was able to be ruthlessly objective about what worked and what didn’t in that 2015 draft. The confusing overlaid route lines definitely had to go, but the new typography – using the superb Fira Sans – and larger route designation bullets were huge improvements over the original design. From this starting point, I set out with some clear goals for improvement this time around.
First and foremost was more intelligent, harmonious spacing of stations. Previous versions crammed some sections in very tightly, while giving far too much space to other parts of the map. The chief offenders for closely-packed stations have always been the Keystone/Pennsylvanian routes running west out of Philadelphia, all the Michigan Service routes, and the Missouri River Runner between St. Louis and Kansas City – so I paid extra attention to these sections, ensuring that the minimum distance between stops on these sections was the same as that defined elsewhere on the map. For the record, the gap between stations on the Northeast Corridor was used as the “building block” for the rest of the map, and it’s been much more faithfully adhered to in this version of the map.
More intelligent spacing also helped a lot on the west coast. Previously, I’d spaced these stations relatively evenly from Vancouver, BC all the way down to San Diego. This looks nice enough in isolation, but it caused the split route lines in the Empire Builder at Spokane to take up way too much space – the three stations on each of these two branches were placed much further apart than any other stations on the entire map. Eastern Washington state is big, but not that big!
In this version, I broke the west coast into a “Pacific Northwest” section from Vancouver down to Eugene-Springfield, and a “California” section from Sacramento all the way down to San Diego. These two sections were spaced as tightly as their Northeast Corridor counterpart on the east coast, with the connecting rural Oregon/California section on the Coast Starlight being more loosely spaced to fill in the resulting gap between the two regions. This improved the spacing and visual size of the Empire Builder branches immensely, possibly the single biggest improvement on the map. I’d always used a similar approach on the City of New Orleans route right from the first version of the map, so doing this actually made the design of the map more consistent.
I also reworked the trajectory of the Southwest Chief on this version. It’s a little twistier than before, but it puts the Colorado stations in a better location relative to Denver, which I think is a spatial improvement.
Keen-eyed readers will have noticed that there’s a new Amtrak service shown on the map – the Winter Park Ski Train that will start running between Denver and the Winter Park ski resort this January! It only has one return trip each Saturday and Sunday (and on the Presidents Day and MLK Day holidays) through to the end of March, but it’s definitely exciting to add a new line to the map, no matter how short it is! The new purpose-built station at Winter Park will not be served by the daily California Zephyr, which will continue to stop just down the line at Fraser instead.
This version of the map also shows two future Amtrak stations – Hillsborough, North Carolina (opening 2020), and Arcadia Valley, Missouri (potentially opening as early as Fall this year) – as well as the “suspended” section of the Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Orlando. I put this last bit in to show that the map is intentionally designed to accommodate it, just in case – by some miracle – it ever gets reinstated. The potential extension of Northeast Regional service to Roanoke is a little further into the future, so it remains off the map for now (although it would be quite easy to add when the time comes).
By now, everyone should know that I love a good isochrone map, so I’ve definitely been having fun with the Commutometer. It’s an online map that uses data from nine transit agencies around the San Francisco Bay Area to show you how far you can get from your currently selected point by public transport in a certain amount of time. It defaults to 30 minutes, but you can set it from anywhere from 5 minutes to two hours. The nifty four-band isochrone setting seen above can be enabled from the “configure” menu. There’s lots of fun to be had, although some locals seem to have queried its accuracy.
Bonus tip that the app doesn’t tell you: you can use the search tool up to the top left to move the map to Paris or (even less obviously) Rennes in France and generate isochrones for those cities as well. Note that half an hour’s travel from the centre of Paris gets you pretty much anywhere within the city proper!
Hi, I recently got a bit over-fascinated and nostalgic about the old tramways network of Edinburgh and decided it would be fun to plot out a schematic routemap of the old system as it never quite was at some point in the late 1940s. I also had a little bit of fun trying to make it look like it just might have come out of the Corporation Tramways Department, even though they were never keen on branding much beyond the corporate colours of madder and white, the city crest and later on a rather crude “ECT” logotype (which to the best of my knowledge actually applied to Edinburgh City Transport, as it was renamed after the tram network was run down). They never actually issued a schematic map, they were quite topographically faithful. I’ve based the style loosely on Beck’s earlier designs. It’s mainly 90 degrees, but with a 30 degree added for parts of Leith which is geographically fairly correct. I feel this helps identify Leith as an area in its own right, and makes the thing a little bit more interesting, and was a fun challenge to draw. It also meant I could get away with a few non-right angles in other parts of the map to make things fit.
Given my real drive to produce this was to highlight just how much public transport has been lost in Edinburgh, I added the 1950s British Railways suburban network in too. It also meant I wasn’t hugely concerned about how difficult or otherwise it would be to actually use the map to get around if you could travel back in time to 1951!
I borrowed the idea of the daisy rings of route numbers along the way from genuine old ECT maps, and also faithfully maintained the complex system of denoting the service termini but making the reader work the actual route out for themselves by tracing along the lines looking for the correct numbers. There were a number of circular/figure-of-8 routes that had no real terminus as such, so I have indicated the main noted destinations. I’ve also included the colour lighting system that was used to help passengers identify the correct tram at night and in the notorious “Auld Reekie” smog of Edinburgh.
There are a number of geographic compromises taken to fit it to the page i.e. the right-hand line heading down the page in reality was a fairly straight E-W line along the coast.
Last, but not least, I have invented the stops for myself by placing the logical main streets neighbourhoods and landmarks along each route.
Transit Maps says:
Andy, I love this!
It might depict a “perfect” system that – as you say – never quite existed, but it works wonderfully well as an evocative period piece. Everything – the sombre colours, the typography, the lovely rings of route numbers, the ECT monogram and even the nicely understated “old paper” texture – combine to make this quite a lovely bit of work.
There’s lots of detail to pore over as well, especially that ridiculously dense British Rail network. I particularly like the detailed explanation of the colour lighting system, which is a fascinating little solution to a problem. It initially seems quite complicated, but I guess you really only had to remember your route’s set of lights, not all of them!
If you’re not already, you should definitely try and sell prints of this map, because I think they’d be quite popular!
I’ve often lamented that Sydney’s transit maps each seem to live in a “mode vacuum”, where each individual map steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any other mode of transit, even though they’re all operated by the same agency. So the light rail map won’t show any connections to the main Sydney Train network, and the ferry map ignores the major train station located directly behind Circular Quay… that kind of stuff.
Unfortunately, this new attempt at an integrated transit map fails so completely at presenting a coherent overview of the complete network that I really wish that they hadn’t even bothered. First off, this map seems to have more in common with the previous CityRail map than the current Sydney Trains map, which doesn’t present a very consistent branding effort.
All the main line trains are now presented in uniform “T”-branded orange, so it’s basically impossible to work out any service patterns. However, the map resolutely clings to depicting each service as a separate line, which is just ridiculous in the context of this map. Simplifying the train services down to a single-weight route line labelling all the stations would have made more sense, and would have opened up the map, allowing the other modes to get equal visual weight – the ferry and light rail services have to be jammed into some very tight spaces!
Question: why do certain railway stations get called out like major interchanges when they’re not visibly interchanging with anything? This is especially noticeable along the Southern Highlands line, where Picton, Mittagong, Bowral and more all get a peculiar “double tick” treatment with a bold label. Of course, the answer is that these stations have interchanges with country bus services, but those aren’t shown on this map at all, so the ticks no longer have any meaning.
Last time I looked, Kiama was located on the coast, not several kilometres inland.
The depiction of light rail and ferry services are probably the least worst part of this mess, although you’d never know that the Lewisham West light rail stop is less than a 500-metre walk from Lewisham station from this map.
If those two services are shown tolerably, the depiction of bus services definitely is not. All of greater Sydney just gets covered in a light orange zone that means “buses go here.” It’s so ridiculously desultory that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And the label for Southern Sydney gets placed outside the shaded area, so… are there no buses there?
Finally, there’s the enormous and bizarre directional labels: “West to Dubbo” and “North to Byron Bay”. Neither of these locations have the slightest thing to do with Sydney’s transportation network and don’t even really make sense from a statewide transportation perspective. And poor old south doesn’t get a label at all.
Our rating: Very little of this makes any sense whatsoever. Poorly thought out, lazily executed and pretty much useless. Would have been much improved by showing major bus corridors and highlighting important interchange locations. The blanket “We have buses in Sydney!” shading is just embarrassing. Half a star, and that’s only because I think the little illustrative icons at the top left are kind of neat.
Source: Transport NSW “Exploring Sydney” web page – but deleted almost immediately after being posted
