Remember back in August when the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) asked for the public’s input on where future subways in the city might run by means of an interactive “draw a subway map” tool?
Well, they’ve just released the collated results of that survey – which had some 2,600 respondents – as a heat map, and the results are certainly definitive. It would seem that almost everyone wants a subway line along the length of Geary Boulevard, with another major “crosstown” connection running south along 19th Avenue. An extension of the Central Subway to Fort Mason also seems popular, as is – if you combined all the disparate routes into one – a second Transbay Tube.
Though these corridors have been identified, there’s still a lot more planning and funding work to be done before any concrete plans start to take shape. Still, an interesting conclusion to this little public outreach exercise!
I love it when people take my criticism of a map and use it as inspiration to come up with an alternative solution. Having seen my recent review of the new official map (October 2016, 1.5 stars), Peter took it upon himself to redesign it – and quickly, taking less than a day to come up with his version.
Peter obviously agreed with a lot of my concerns about the official map, because he’s addressed pretty much all of them here: simplified coastline and route trajectories, an inset for the downtown Metromover, the placement of the Downtown Express “e” logo within the relevant station’s dot, and so on… it’s like he’s reading my mind! The overall effect is much improved: the map is very clear and easy to read, although the excision of bus route information means that a direct comparison between the two maps is difficult. (One could argue that the inclusion of a long list of bus numbers without any further information isn’t actually that useful, but I digress…)
There are a couple of minor things that could looked at to improve the map further. The maps’s legend is strangely split into two parts, one off to the left and one hiding underneath the Metromover inset: I think these could be combined into one unified box. There’s certainly plenty of space over to the left for it.
The little blue squiggle representing the Metromover on the main map is very nicely done, but the top part of it gets a little close to the “Culmer” label, which could lead some people to think that there’s some sort of Metrorail/Metromover connection there.
I’d move the “Brownsville” station up a little bit to balance the spacing of the labels a little better along that section. The “Tri-Rail” station name is a little cheaty, as the Metrorail station is named “Tri-Rail”, while the Tri-Rail station is called “Metrorail Transfer”, each indicating a connection to the other service at the respective stations. The official map doesn’t do such a good job of making this clear either, so I can understand any confusion on Peter’s behalf. Finally, I’m not really ever in favour of all-caps labels on transit maps (mixed case is easier to read and just looks better, I feel), although i know that Peter was just emulating the real map’s typography to show how it could work better.
Our rating: That’s better! Clean, modern, easy to read – everything the official map should be, and made in less than 24 hours! Three-and-a-half stars!
Source: Peter’s “Transit Oriented” website (no longer on-line)
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!
