Historical Map: Sydney Railway Layout, 1953

September 29, 2023
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Unearthed on Twitter (It’ll always be Twitter to me, no matter what Elon says) by @crossing_lights, this is quite an extraordinary find.

Long-time readers may have seen the 1939 version of this diagram (and the digital recreation that I made). Here’s the thing: the general consensus has always been that this was a one-off attempt at something in the style of H.C. Beck’s newfangled London Underground diagram. I seem to recall that one theory even had it that the 1939 diagram was produced for visiting dignitaries from London Transport and was never even seen by the general public. Jay Foreman’s “Unfinished London” video on the history of the Tube Map (Part 2) even suggests that Beck himself drew it (to which I say, “Poppycock!”)

But yet, here’s this later version of the map – even though all we have of it is a black and white archival reference photo, not the actual printed piece – which shows that there was at least one further edition/revision. I’d say this is a facsimile of a printed brochure, as there seems to be evidence of a fold line running down the page between Penrith and Kingswood. Careful examination shows considerable differences between this version and the 1939 one.

The most obvious of these is that this diagram is properly typeset (using Gill Sans throughout) instead of the neat handwritten labels from the 1939 version. This actually presents quite a few problems: whereas the handwritten labels could be subtly adjusted in size and width to squeeze longer names in, the typeset labels are all the same size and are pretty unforgiving, layout-wise. The label for Macdonaldtown station now takes up so much room that the designer was left with no choice but to angle the labels for Stanmore, Lewisham and Ashfield (starting a long tradition for angled labels on the Sydney rail map!). Wentworthville has been flipped to the other side of its line simply because the label would run into the Carlingford line if it was on the other side! There’s quite a few places where the spacing of the labels is pretty unsatisfactory: Merrylands is way too close to Granville, for example, and there’s plenty more if you look. However, they did fix the label at Kirkham on the Camden Line!

The parallel lines heading south from Sydenham have been redrawn poorly, with the section from Sydenham to Kogarah being much further apart than from Carlton to Hurstville. Very curiously, the section of the City Circle from Wynyard through Circular Quay (here, just “Quay”) to St. James has been drawn in by hand – perhaps just an addition to this archival print? St. James itself is still denoted by a terminal tick, as this section was very much still under construction in 1940 (Circular Quay station finally opened in 1956!).

The archival records for this map simply and vaguely date this diagram as “pre-1962?”; my dating of c.1940 is because Dumbleton station has been renamed Beverly Hills (August 1940), the Ropes Creek line hasn’t opened (March 1942), and I definitely think that this revision would have been produced fairly shortly after the original 1939 version.

Update: This “No. 2” map has been definitively dated to 1953 in this Twitter post by @crossing_lights, which shows the obverse side of the pamphlet from the NSW Government Archives. Though it’s been permanently glued down so that the map is hidden, adjusting the histogram in Photoshop clearly reveals this diagram on the other side. Quite remarkably, that means 14 years have elapsed between the 1939 “No. 1” version and this one. This does explain the omission of the Kurrajong Line from this edition, as it closed in 1952. It therefore seems probable that the Ropes Creek line, with its limited passenger service, was deemed too unimportant to show on the diagram.

Our final word: A hitherto unknown second attempt at a “Beck-style” diagram for the Sydney rail network. Like its predecessor, it’s not entirely successful, but it’s fascinating to know that it even exists!

Source: Museums of History NSW

Submission – Unofficial Map: Brussels S-Train by Elliot H

September 28, 2023
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Submitted by Elliot, who says:

I’ve come across this blog a couple of months ago, and have been lurking ever since. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at designing a trasit diagram, and having gotten some free time, I decided to redesign the S-Train diagram for Brussels. So here it is, my very first finished(ish) transit diagram.

Transit Maps says:

A great first effort here from Elliot! I’d say that its arguably more successful that the official SNCB/NMBS diagram, which is a pretty staid and old-fashioned thing. However, while the official diagram shows all the other rail modes in the greater Brussels area, Elliot’s version only shows the S-Train lines. This makes the diagram much cleaner, though perhaps at the expense of understanding how it fits into the complete transit picture.

Still, it’s a very confident and stylish piece with a great underlying grid and a lovely colour palette that I feel actually gives some subtle structure to the design. It seems to me that all the lines that run through the central spine of Gare du Midi to Gare du Nord are cooler colours – greens and blues – while cross-town lines that circumvent the centre tend to be warmer colours. I do also note that none of the line colours match the colours from the official diagram, so make of that what you will.

Visually, I really like the treatment of the terminus stations, though I do wonder whether their similarity to the fare zone boundaries could be potentially confusing to readers – are these stations in some sort of special fare zone? Speaking of the zone boundaries, I’d like to see these simplified down further, reducing their shapes to the purest form possible to echo the rigid simplicity of the route lines.

Overall, I think the labelling on the diagram itself is a bit small – the type in the legend is bigger than the type on the map, and I don’t think that’s ever a good result. Likewise, the line bullets could be larger to enable rapid identification of each line. The walking time labels definitely need to be quite a bit bigger; they’re almost unreadable at any distance from the diagram.

Our final word: Lovely, stylish and minimalistic design. Finding the balance between the diagram design and type size is always one of the trickiest parts of transit map design and this could use a bit of tweaking to get it just right. Still, this is an awesome first diagram – great work, Elliot!

Project: My UTA Rail and BRT Design Exploration

September 10, 2023
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I teased this in yesterday’s review of the new official UTA diagram, so here’s my exploration of a few design ideas for an alternative version. As always with this type of project, I look for ways to approach the design problems for the diagram that are intentionally different to the official one. We already know what those solutions look like, so I like to explore the untested and see what happens. Some things work really well, others perhaps not so much… so let’s take a look!

My design rules for this project were pretty simple: use the same canvas size (18″ x 29″, presumably the size of signage frames at UTA stations), the same line colours, the same font family (Whitney Condensed) and show all of the information that’s present on the official diagram.

As hinted at in yesterday’s post, my first action was to make the FrontRunner line dead straight from Ogden down to Orem, becoming the strong vertical axis that the rest of the rest of the diagram is then composed around. This means that the light rail lines have to slide across to meet it, but I feel that the major interchange at Central Pointe station at least gives them a visual reason to do so. There’s no right or wrong answer here: in reality, all the rail lines parallel each other very closely through Salt Lake City – it’s only the diagram’s need to enlarge the free fare zone that artificially creates a gap between them that then needs to be closed before they actually interchange at Murray Central. The official diagram makes the FrontRunner line move over; I went with the other approach.

Speaking of Murray Central, I got rid of that god-awful little kink in the FrontRunner line there by simply retaining a small gap between it and the light rail lines and using a simple connecting line between them. In real life, passengers have to walk across a car park to get between the two parts of the station, so this seems to be both an easy and realistic solution. As this small gap between the lines now indicates some sort of physical proximity, I made the decision to flip the Blue Line out so that the South Jordan and Sandy Civic Center stations have some distance between them. The official diagram places them adjacent when it’s a 2-mile walk from one to the other… which is not the same as crossing a car park!

However, the biggest difference between my version and the official one is my treatment of the BRT lines. Instead of trying to use the same visual “scale” as the rest of the diagram and massively enlarging the area needed to show these routes in their entirety, I’ve instead used smaller, simplified representations of the lines on the main diagram and linked them to insets of strip maps showing all the stop names. It’s worth noting that these insets could also be enlarged diagrams or geographical maps of the routes, but I really didn’t feel like drawing them for this quick exercise (just being honest here!). The plus side of this is that the main diagram can be more “to scale” without the massive distortions that having to include the full BRT routes creates, although I’d still say that even these simple representations are still twice the size they should be if they were truly in-keeping with the relative scale of the outer portions of the map. The down side? Increased cognitive load for the end user as they have to relate the small map to the map or strip map in the inset. Simplicity is definitely a benefit of the official UTA approach, scale be damned!

Other points to note: all labels are set horizontally, even though my type point size is slightly larger and the area that the central portion of the diagram takes up is marginally smaller than on the official diagram. Seriously, it was so simple to do this that there’s really no excuse for the official version not to do it in the future.

I’ve bumped up the weight of all the labels – Book to Medium, and Regular to Bold – which I think makes a tremendous difference to the how solid and grounded the diagram feels. Lightweight, spindly type is not my aesthetic; I like things to be bolder and for my chosen weights to have some good visual contrast between them. I’ve also only used the Whitney Condensed family throughout instead of mixing thicknesses, which I feel helps to unify the look of the diagram.

The free fare zone is highlighted in yellow to draw the eye and also differentiate it from the three grey boxes around the edge of the map. The zone is also identified as such right on the map itself, obviating the need for readers to refer to a legend. Note also how all the labels for stations included in the zone are contained totally within the yellow area – removing any ambiguity about which stations are eligible for that sweet free trip.

All stations that interchange between light rail and FrontRunner now have bold labels, and the two station names for the North Temple/North Temple Bridge interchange have been consolidated into one because, quite frankly, that’s just ridiculous and made the labelling there so much more complex than it needed to be. I don’t mind which name gets used, but just pick one!

A stylistic choice – all the lines terminate either horizontally or vertically, never on a diagonal. It helps unify the design and allows the station name and line designation marker to always be close to the actual station marker, presenting information consistently throughout. The official diagram puts the labels and markers on one line with the marker furtherest away from the station dot – which means that sometimes the markers are a long, long way away from the place they’re meant to be providing information about!

And finally, a bit of whimsy: the locations where the light rail lines cross the FrontRunner lines are vertically accurate (i.e., the diagram properly shows which one goes under or over the other), and there’s a little “shadow” on the lower line to give an illusion of depth. Necessary? No. Fun to do? Absolutely.

Let me know what you think in the comments below! What works? What doesn’t? I’m pretty pleased with how this looks considering I didn’t spend a massive amount of time working on it, but I know it’s not a complete solution – just some ideas rattling around my head that show interesting alternative approaches to the ever-improving real thing.

Submission – New Official Map: UTA Rail and BRT Map, 2023

September 9, 2023
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Submitted by Browne, who says:

UTA, the primary transit provider for northern Utah, has officially launched its newest BRT service, and with it, a new transit map. The OGX is a new BRT route from Ogden Central Station, downtown, Weber State University, and down to McKay-Dee Hospital.

Besides the new BRT line, there are subtle changes to the map’s design as well, such as rounded corners, which had been angular in the previous design. I’m curious to know what you think about the representation of geographic scale between the various lines and how all mode types are presented with similar hierarchies.

Transit Maps says:

Perhaps a little surprisingly, we haven’t checked in with the UTA map since 2015, when it was just taking its first baby steps towards becoming something befitting a transit agency of its scope. I’m pleased to note that the improvement has continued since then and that this is now a more-than-decent effort – clean, simple, easy to read and in line with the agency’s corporate design standards. All to be applauded!

That’s not to say that there aren’t some issues, though – I still think that the weight of the labels (Whitney Condensed Book) are a little light and spindly, and the locality labels are so small and insignificant as to be barely noticed at all. These either have to be larger and bolder (though still a light grey) or dispensed with. When many of the outer stations bear the same name as the locality labels, you really do wonder whether they’re actually needed at all. There’s an uncomfortable mix of condensed and regular thicknesses of Whitney throughout – even though they’re technically the same font family, they don’t really work that well together – the legend looks particularly clumsy.

Some station names are set with angled type. These days, I normally let that go if – and only if – they’re all angled the same way, but there’s a lot of different orientations here. There’s some width left in the canvas, so it really shouldn’t be too hard to tweak things to allow for horizontal labels throughout.

The purple FrontRunner commuter rail line still takes a strange, wobbly path through the map and that little jog in-and-out at Murray Central makes my eye twitch. I personally see the FrontRunner as the central thematic “spine” of the entire system, and I’d love to see a version where it just runs straight down the centre of the map with no deviations at all (even at Murray Central!) until it gets down to Orem, where the inclusion of the UVX BRT necessitates a turn across to Provo [more on that version soon! – Cam, being a big tease].

Talking about the BRT brings us to Browne’s ideas of scale and mode representation. Let’s be honest: scale on a diagram like this is always going to be tricky – the FrontRunner commuter rail extends for some 88 miles, while the entirety of the light rail service area (while still extensive) is only 17 miles from north to south. That said, I feel there should be two clearly delineated scales on the map: the light rail area, and the areas outside that to the north and south. For example, the Draper FrontRunner station should line up horizontally with the Draper Town Center light rail stop, instead of being higher than it. Of course, this diagram’s hand is forced by the space needed to show the Orem–Provo BRT lines at the same level of detail as the rest of the map – this needs that bottom third of the space, so everything else gets forced upwards, and the space between Orem and Provo on the FrontRunner line gets massively enlarged as a result.

At least Orem and Provo form a “closed loop”, where the enlarged scale only affects those two stations. However, this “BRT scale” becomes more of a problem with the Ogden BRT line at the top of the diagram, where it looks like the line extends almost all the way back to Salt Lake City! In reality, the entire line is contained within Ogden, and the southern end of it is only about as far south as the Roy FrontRunner station. Other approaches to this problem could be thinner route lines and smaller labels for the BRT lines so they can be shrunk somewhat in relation to the main diagram; or generalised representations of the lines that are more to actual scale, perhaps supported by inset maps that label everything properly. Of course, this diagram does have a “not to scale” disclaimer, and the information is still easy to understand, so maybe it’s not even a massive problem for general use.

As for the representation of the different modes, the only one I have a problem with is the FrontRunner, which runs far less frequently that the other services and should be indicated as such instead of just lumping it in as “Rail” with other, more frequent services. Everything else is rapid transit with decent frequencies.

Our final word: Getting better! Tries its best at representing networks with vastly differing scales all on the same diagram, though the solution won’t please everyone. Still feels a little too “light” and ungrounded, like it’s floating on the canvas a bit.

Submission – New Official Map: “Harmonised” Montréal Metropolitan Transit Services Map, 2023

July 11, 2023
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A flurry of people have submitted this brand new map out of Montréal for review, so let’s get straight to it!

First of all, it’s important to note that is part of a new suite of maps and wayfinding signage that’s been in development since 2018. Using Montréal’s iconic “black background” Métro map as a starting point, this system has been intentionally designed to use a common design language to “harmonise” the user experience for transit users regardless of travel mode. As seen in the photo below, there’s already a new Métro map out in the wild that uses the same design language, although everything has been subtly tweaked to suit the content of that smaller scale map better – look at the comparative thickness of the Métro lines, for example, or the fact that no stations on the REM or suburban lines are named unless there’s a direct interchange with the Métro.

Note on this photo: Quite a few people sent me this image, which I’ve straightened and brightened in Photoshop. However, I don’t know the original provenance of the picture. If it’s yours, please get in touch so that I can credit you appropriately!

When I last reviewed the Montréal Métro map back in 2016, I wasn’t very impressed – it had moved away from its truly iconic 37-degree tilt to a more standard 45-degree octolinear form and just didn’t seem very polished or confident. It very much seemed like a transitional map, a placeholder for something better in the future… and I think the wait for this suite of new maps has been worth it.

Basing these new maps off the existing Métro maps provides great visual continuity with what has come before, but there’s also a lot of improvements – mixed-case station labels instead of all-caps (finally!), numbered bullets for not only the Métro lines but also the suburban rail lines, and a lovely palette of subsidiary pastel colours for the other services. Using a more standard 45-degree form makes sense now with the increased complexity of the maps, and the way that the space between lines 1 and 2 in the central part of the city has been increased to accommodate the rail stations and their labels is rather clever.

Purists might grumble about the horizontal orientation of the southwestern end of Line 1 (it just looks wrong, even to me as a non-native), but it seems like a pragmatic decision that allows Line 14 to slot in below it on the full system map, and the legend to do the same on the Métro version.

The stylised background representation of the complex geography of the area seems about right to me: it’s not overly-detailed “faux geography”, nor is it simplified to the point where nothing is recognisable. Definitely an improvement over previous maps in my eyes!

I also like that the maps are future-proofed – the branches of the REM line and the future expansion of Line 5 are already plotted in, and it looks like there’ll be adequate room for labels as well – great to see! Not sure there’ll ever be full labelling for the Pie-IX rapid bus line, but it’s a long way down the hierarchy of the map anyway!

The “two-circle” interchange symbol at Sauvé seems a bit fussy to me, especially if you consider that by rights there should be one at Parc as well – there’s an outside walk involved in the transfer at both stations! A minor inconsistency, but something that should be carefully thought about. I’d probably simplify it down to a single dot for simplicity’s sake.

Our final word: A massive improvement over the 2016 Métro map, and the fact that it’s part of what looks like a strong unified wayfinding and signage program makes it even better. It pays homage to the past, while also looking confidently ahead to the future of transit in Montréal.

Source: ARTM website (in French)

New Official Map: Los Angeles Metro with Regional Connector, 2023

June 12, 2023
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Just dropped on the LA Metro Twitter account, here’s a first look at their new system map once the Regional Connector opens at noon, this Friday June 16.

First off, one prediction I made in my previous review [October 2022] has been proven true: this map marks the end of the old colour-based line designations. No more Red Line, Blue Line, etc. – it’s now A, B, C and so on.

I’ll also note that it really does seem that someone responsible for making these maps reads this blog: my last review opined that even spacing of the station names along the B Line might look better than even spacing of the station dots… and that’s exactly what we have this time around. I also like that these labels have all been set horizontally instead of on a 45-degree angle, a treatment which is now solely reserved for stations along horizontal route lines.

There’s no surprises with the depiction of the Regional Connector itself on the map: it’s been shown as being under construction for a while now, and this map keeps true to those earlier depictions. The criss-crossing route lines through downtown LA make a nice design feature, and I do like the way that the “Historic Broadway” label nestles neatly into the curve near it – a clever little touch.

A distinctive feature of previous maps has disappeared with this iteration – the white keyline around station dots that separated them from the route line they were above has been replaced with more generic dots with a white centre. I wonder if they felt the previous approach broke up the flow of the route lines too much? And while the dots for rail services are still round, and the dots for bus services are still square, they’re a bit harder to quickly tell apart with the white centres and slightly rounded corners on the square symbols.

Another change is assigning a two-letter code to all connecting services (Amtrak, Metrolink, FlyAway and the C Line’s Airport Shuttle). This does make the map itself look a bit cleaner, but it also means that users have to refer to the legend to work out what those two-letter codes mean instead of just reading that information in-place on the map.

Our final word: Golly, that new A Line is long, isn’t it? A fairly safe update of an already excellent map. However, it’s perhaps been made a little bit more generic with the removal of what was a very distinctive design element.

Update: Oran V on Twitter provides context for some of these changes – it brings the system map into line with other maps that already used those elements.

Source: LA Metro/Twitter

Official Map: Newark International Airport Regional Rail Connections, 2023

May 12, 2023
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Every so often, I come across a transit map that is just so unfit for purpose that all I can do is scratch my head and ponder, “Just why?” This is one of those maps.

Produced by (or on behalf of) Newark International Airport, it purports to show regional rail services that you can connect to at the airport via its AirTrain. However, it’s so poorly thought out and executed that it’s of very little assistance at all.

The first and most obvious problem is that everything – and I mean everything – is way too small. Labelling is tiny, with even smaller lozenges and bullets underneath the labels that may or may not contain the names of the different regional services and New York Subway lines: they’re almost entirely illegible. And it’s not like the canvas has no space to spare – there’s acres of room to make labels much, much bigger and more legible.

Speaking of the canvas, it really doesn’t seem to have been used wisely. Why bother showing most of the New York Subway, when a simple indication of connecting lines at Penn Station and PATH’s WTC station would suffice? Why show the Staten Island Railway at all when it’s most certainly not a direct connection? This map would be so much more effective if it just concentrated on the regional lines that it’s meant to showcase and just indicated further connecting services where they occur. Get rid of the wasted space allocated to extraneous elements and enlarge the important parts for clarity.

Then there’s the background that can’t decide if it’s a diagram or a map, wavering between simplicity and “geography” just about everywhere. And the way that the text indicating travel times cuts across the route lines when there’s absolutely no need for them to do so. Simply aligning the text to the right would instantly solve this problem!

Our final word: I really try to be more positive with my reviews these days, and look for at least one cool thing or redeeming feature to comment on for every map I post, but… I’ve got nothing here. To be honest, it’s kind of embarrassing that passengers are presented with this when considering their transportation options to and from the airport.

Source: Newark AirTrain web page via @AirlineFlyer/Twitter

Fantasy Map: Washington Commanders 2023 “Season Map”

May 11, 2023
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Posted yesterday on the Commanders’ Twitter account, here’s a Washington Metro-themed map of the team’s 2023 season. It basically just places the team’s opponents for the year on a vaguely US-shaped map using some Metro iconography and colours and calls it a day. It’s superficially fun and adorable, but part of me wishes there was more meaning behind the choice of lines – perhaps grouping teams by the division they play in or something? Still, kudos for having fun with an iconic local design!

Source: Washington Commanders/Twitter

Historical Map: Trams of Brisbane, Queensland, 1957

May 9, 2023
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A simple but nicely drawn map of tram services in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in 1957. The lack of any sort of key for the routes means that users need to have some familiarity with the city to decipher where trams might go. The pamphlet that the map is part of includes information about the route names and first and last cars for the day along with some sight-seeing tours that can be made by tram, so there’s some information to work with, at least.

Interestingly, an ad for a baker on the pamphlet definitively dates this map to 1957, but trams along Cavendish Road (to the south east of the map, and where my mother lived at the time) ceased operation in 1955 and were replaced by trolley buses. Perhaps the map just makes no distinction between the two, although copy on the reverse side still asks riders to “take the Cavendish Road tram”.

Source: State Library of Queensland

Submission – Unofficial Map: Metrovalencia by Tom Göpel

February 10, 2023
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Submitted by Tom, who says:

Hi Cameron, first I would like to mention that I greatly appreciate your work and have learned lots about transit maps from your blog alone. It was also this blog that inspired me to try to design my own maps. It’s a great joy to me now. Here, I would like to share with you my take on the network in Valencia which, I thought, would be a fun challenge. For the line and station design, I’ve chosen a similar style to one that I used in my Bay Area diagram. My goal was to make the Valencia map more aesthetically pleasing, simplify the geometry, and come up with a different idea for the zone boundaries. I’d love to hear your opinion and things you think can be improved. Looking forward to it!

Transit Maps says:

Apart from one thing (which I’ll get to later), I absolutely adore this diagram, Tom. First off, I love the typeface used (Cera Pro), which has a wonderful legibility to it as well as having one of the best sans serif capital Q’s I have ever seen – just lovely. The open feeling that Cera Pro creates continues throughout the rest of the diagram, which feels clean and spacious throughout – nothing is crammed up tight to anything else, which is so nice to see.

Unlike the official diagram [review from June 2022 here – Cam] which doesn’t bother with any sort of mode differentiation (it’s all just “Metrovalencia”), Tom’s diagram differentiates between the more suburban rail lines and the urban tram lines in two subtle but very effective ways. The rail lines are cased with a darker shade of their line colour and use a much larger radius when they change direction compared to the tram lines. These larger curves are another part of what makes this diagram so elegant, but the tram lines need tighter radiuses, especially for the loop Line 4 makes at its eastern end – Tom’s solution accommodates both needs.

Other nice design touches: subtle drop shadows throughout lift the station markers up above the route lines; the texture on the sea is delightful; and the zone backgrounds are lovely and subtle – a far cry from the “in your face” colours used on the official map. They may actually be just a tad too subtle, but I appreciate the different approach. The diagram’s legend is clean, easy to understand and is integrated nicely into the overall design of the piece, instead of being an afterthought.

So what’s the one thing I don’t like? The exaggerated angle that the urban area of the diagram takes. In reality, Valencia’s “north” is tilted about 20 degrees clockwise from true north, and the maritime district isn’t that much further south than the historic core of the city. So seeing everything rotated on a huge 45-degree angle, with the maritime district pushed so far south (and the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències pushed even further out of place), just looks jarringly wrong. The distinctive “green belt” of the old Turia River parkland mitigates this somewhat, but it still looks strange to my eyes.

Our final word: A stylish, elegant diagram with a lot of modern design touches that perhaps strays just a little too far from being grounded by the real world layout of the city it represents. It’s still pretty darn awesome.