Submission – Official Map: Houston METRORail In-Car Strip Map

October 21, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Chris Bastian, who says:

Houston light rail map (2016); one core line (red); two spurs (green/purple) with planned extensions shown.

Transit Maps says:

I can understand that METRO is proud of their two new lines, but at this point they’ve been open for almost a year and a half. I think we can lose the awkward “NOW OPEN” shaded boxes now and reserve that treatment solely for the future two-station extension to the Green Line. The shading is especially egregious where it overlaps the yellow “see inset” arrow… more on that inset later.

The complately vertical labels for most of the stations is also unfortunate: I can imagine everyone on the train turning their heads to the left to read them! Having one half of the labels along the Red Line sitting below the line and the other half above it – to allow room to put the METRO logo in the bottom right corner – also makes it harder to count stops along the line. The logo could move pretty easily to at the top right if the north pointer was shifted or resized, and labels set at a 45-degree angle would certainly be easier on the neck to read!

The inset! A great idea to show more detail where the all the lines intersect, but it’s very confusingly implemented. The main interchange is actually three separate platforms offset by about a city block or so. Northbound and southbound Red Line trains call at Central Station Main; westbound Green and Purple trains stop around the corner at Central Station Capitol, while eastbound Green and Purple trains use Central Station Rusk. The inset shows this arrangement fairly well, except it neglects to show the direction of travel along Capitol and Rusk streets for the Green and Purple lines! Even worse, both alignments have an arrow pointing eastbound (indicating the continuation of the lines off the edge of the inset), which makes things even more confusing. This is a really elementary thing to screw up quite so badly, and must be really, really annoying for those unfamiliar with the system.

Our rating: A stodgy, clunky map, with a horrendously flawed piece of wayfinding in its supposedly “clarifying” detail inset. Needs a rethink. One-and-a-half stars.

Transit Maps is Five!

October 19, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Miscellany
Tags:

Transit Maps is five today! (That’s like 80 in Internet Years, right?)

Thanks to everyone who has joined me on the journey so far – there’s still so much more to come. Check out the archive for a look at everything to date, or visit a random post for laughs!

All the best,

Cameron

Official Visualization: SFTMA Future Subways Heatmap

October 18, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps, Visualizations
Tags:

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!

Source: SFconnect website

Unofficial Map: Miami-Dade Metrorail and Metromover by Peter Dovak

October 15, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

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)

Historical Map: Hand-drawn fare zone London Underground Map by Phil Roe, c. 1977

October 14, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

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!

Submission – Official Map: Miami-Dade Metrorail Map, 2016

October 13, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by lukasmaps, who says:

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.

Source: Miami-Dade Metrorail website

Historical Map: French SNCF Rail Network, 1976 by Rudi Meyer

October 10, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

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.

Source: Andrew Smithers/Twitter

Submission – Boston MBTA Map Appears on “The Simpsons”

October 10, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Popular Culture
Tags:

Submitted by nerdwiththehat, who says:

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.

Kickstarter Project – “One Metro World” Book by Jug Cerovic

September 27, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

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.

One Metro World Kickstarter

Video: “Überlin” Music Video by R.E.M.

September 18, 2016
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Popular Culture
Tags:

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.