Submitted by Pedro, who says:
Rio de Janeiro City Hall made a new transit map! It’s the first official map of the city that shows all the options, including the new LRT line and the Olympic-exclusive lines. What do you think about it?
Transit Maps says:
Well, it’s certainly an improvement over the old Metro-only map (May 2012, 2 stars), and it’s always nice to see a map that integrates different transportation modes. Here, I believe the idea is to show all the transport modes that are valid for use with the official Olympics Travel Card, including the brand new Metro Line 4 and special Games BRT services. Note that both Line 4 and the BRT buses require you to have both a travel card and a ticket to an event to board. Interestingly, the map also shows ferry services, which I don’t think are covered by the travel card.
As for the map itself, it’s competent enough without being outstanding. I think a better job could have been done with highlighting important terminal stations for tourists unfamiliar with the city: it’s all very well saying that a BRT runs from Jardim Oceânico to Centro Olímpico, but where are these places on the map? The map covers such a large area that finding these places initially takes quite while. I’d also have liked to see pictograms for the events at each Olympic venue, just to make it clear what’s going on where.
The map works hard to differentiate all the different modes by using different types of lines for each – solid for the Metro, cased for the BRT services, triple-stroke for the new light rail/tram, dashed for the ferries, and an outlined dashed line for the commuter rail. This last one is arguably the least successful – dashed lines like this often signifying “under construction” or “future service” on a transit map – but it is nicely executed, with the dashes always lining up perfectly with station ticks.
The map does feel a little crowded down to the bottom left corner, with a whole bunch of BRT stations jammed in down there. The generous amount of space given to the mainly empty right side of the map could have been better used to left the left side breathe a little.
There are a couple of little oddities: a non-standard angle at the end of the Santa Cruz train line, and the weird decision to have the Circular Service Honório – Deodoro line run across the other lines to hit the centre of the Deodoro station marker: it would have looked much neater if it just ran up the right side to join a wider marker.
Our rating: Pretty solid work, although I think it could take too long for tourists (the main demographic for this map) to work things out on their first use of the map. A legend to important stations and venues could really have helped in that regard. Three stars!
Source: Rio Cidade Olympíca website – link no longer active now that the Games are over
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