I combined two cool developments I’ve seen in transit maps on the internet, the isometric map from Stuttgart (October 2011, 5 stars) and GIFs of the evolution of a system.
I lived in Dallas for school and again as a professional and while the network could be better, I always enjoyed riding the DART. And actually the system really lent itself to the map principles that seemed to work for so well for Stuttgart.
It is diagrammatic and might be difficult to show in this isometric format as the plans for a second alignment through downtown are finalized. But I look forward to the challenge, it will be great to get 5 minute headways on every line. It is currently a huge bottleneck to run every line through the same street-level trackage.
Transit Maps says:
This is pretty neat, Kevin! The isometric viewpoint looks good, although it may be a little disorienting at first and take a couple of loops of the GIF for people to work out how it relates to the real-world layout of the DART network.
One improvement I can think of is to make time run linearly in even increments, instead of “skipping ahead” to the next construction activity. If nothing changed between 2002 and 2009, I think that’s just as important to know as when the new sections were opened. As it stands, the GIF makes it look like there’s near-constant expansion from 1996 all the way to 2014… and that’s not really the case at all.
The “City Lines Bus Map” of the Libertas network in Dubrovnik (Croatia) is not one of the best network maps i have ever seen. It is geographically correct, I have to give them that, but a line for each direction of a route makes it messy where a lot of routes share the same road. And the use of a white arrow in a black dot for stops makes it even messier.
A side note: It is also not possible to find the difference between routes 1A, 1B and 1C on the map. Reading the timetable for each route, I can see that 1A takes the stops Mokosica 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 2 while 1B takes Mokosica 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and that does not make it any clearer to me. 1C is an even bigger mystery, because its route is not described anywhere.
Transit Maps says:
Posting this one for my sister-in-law, who is on vacation in Dubrovnik at this very moment. Fortunately, she and her husband have rented a car to get around Croatia, because this map is certainly not helping matters.
There’s really only eleven bus routes shown on the map, but it just looks like there’s so many more: a tangled web of lines that becomes almost impossible to follow at major intersections. The decision to show each direction of travel for all routes, even if they’re on the same physical street – disregarding decades of transit map wisdom that says that a route line always indicates bi-directional travel unless explicitly indicated otherwise – is just baffling, and almost doubles the amount of lines that need to be drawn. It also creates a proliferation of directional arrows/bus stops, which visually dominate the map.
Other problems abound. There’s a heavy-handed and overly dark drop shadow for the coastline, an unnecessary radial fill for the ocean, and an unexplained dashed line for Route 17 (Peak hour only? Weekends only? Summer only? Who knows!). The arrow for ferries leaving directly from the Old City points directly at the route numbers for regional buses heading south along the coast, which is bound to cause some confusion. Almost hilariously, the white squares used on the map to indicate hotels are shown in the legend as white… on a white background.
Our rating: Not good, not good at all. Hard to decipher and overly complex for such a small network. Half a star, and that’s only because I quite like the aerial photographic representation of the Old City.
The latest iteration of my Amsterdam tram map. I’ve been working on this map almost continuously since its inception in 2004. I made the original map in MS Paint and switched to Adobe Illustrator in 2007. When I did, I also decided to upload the map to Wikipedia. It featured on almost all Wikipedia lemmas about the Amsterdam tram system until earlier this year, when someone decided to replace the map with another one. Out with the old, in with the new, I guess. That hasn’t stopped me from contributing new versions, though.
As the file history shows [at the bottom of this Wikimedia Commons page – Cam], the map has gone through various major and minor design changes over the last nine years. I switched the background color from light to dark to light again, made various changes to the line layout, experimented with different solutions to show in-system transfers and transfers between the tram and metro system, changed the design of the line overview, etc. The changes are too numerous to sum them all up. It’s what I like most about map designing: the broader strokes are usually being set early on in the design process, but it’s the almost endless range of possibilities of portraying a certain piece of information that allows for endless iterations.
Transit Maps says:
This is a good, solid diagrammatic map, Alain – definitely forged and refined through multiple iterations over the years. It’s certainly come a long way even since your initial Wikipedia version from 2007 (red text on a purple background: what were you thinking?).
That said, I think there’s still some room for further improvement, especially with the interchanges. The concept behind a bounding box indicating a major interchange is sound – and a refreshing change from Underground-style circles or dumbbells – but the box can be a bit hard to make out at stops with multiple lines passing through it. The stops west of Dam on the 12/13/14 lines illustrate what I’m talking about here. Perhaps bringing the boxes to the top of the stacking order would help them remain visible, or the size of the box could be adjusted to properly enclose all the relevant routes.
Transfers between tram lines and the Metro are also a little problematic: I feel that the “tick” used for Metro stations sits a little awkwardly within the bounding box. Maybe a black circle could work, or – as previous versions used – a circle with an “M” for Metro could be employed.
I’m also not entirely sold on the need to differentiate between the Metro and “sneltram” parts of the 51 Metro line: it seems to me to be an operational consideration that doesn’t really affect the users of the system. You get on the train at Centraal Station, you get off the same train at Amstelveen… the change of power supply from overhead to third rail at Station Zuid doesn’t affect the journey from a wayfinding perspective at all.
Finally, I think more care could be given to some of the labelling. Hyphenation should be used as an absolute last resort on a transit map and I see too much of it here. Line breaks should also be optimised to enhance readability of stop/station names. For example:
2e v.d. Helst- straat
would read better as:
2e van der Helststraat
and the awkwardly three-lined
Ceintuur- baan/Van Wousstraat
has plenty of space to be reconfigured into the much more readable:
Ceintuurbaan/ Van Woosstraat
Our rating: Overall, I do like this map: it’s clean, simple and generally easy to use. The shape of the routes themselves evoke Amsterdam’s famous canals, even without geographical clues. Some more finessing (what’s a little more after 12 years, Alain?) and this could be really lovely. 3 stars.
IKEA now produces these store maps – not exactly a transit map, but quite a lot like an in-car line map so I though it was worth suggesting. Sorry about the torn-off bits – I have a pet rabbit!
I’d say it certainly makes navigating an IKEA a bit easier and it does emphasise the one-way nature that you’re supposed to go round, but I can’t help thinking it might confuse people who don’t make the jump between a looping path in the store and a line on the map.
Transit Maps says:
I’ve certainly noticed this similarity before, so it’s good to have a good example of this type of map to feature on the site.
Visiting an IKEA store is always a very linear experience – many people trek dutifully through the whole store, even if they’re only after one particular thing – so a strip map makes perfect sense to me. It’s the order of things that matters, not the exact layout. However, the inclusion of short-cuts is a godsend for those who want to skip ahead of the crowds!
Interestingly, this map is for the Wembley store in London, but my local IKEA in Portland, Oregon has the exact same progression of departments.
Before it became Linha 1, the São Paulo Metro’s first line was simply called the North-South Line after its general alignment. Although the photographer on Flickr dates it to 1973 (the year before opening), the map actually seems to show the route built out to its 1978 extent, just before the opening of the Red Line 2 in 1979.
The line extends as far north as Santana (opened 1975), and the 1978 fill-in station at Sé (now the busiest station in the network) is also shown. This may be because this is some sort of planning or projected future map: the eye-poppingly bright “Metro area of influence” zones seem to support this, looking much like walksheds on modern transit planning maps. The map also shows bus ans taxi interchanges, main railroad lines, highways and the very approximate locations of neighbourhoods near the alignment.
America’s latest modern streetcar line opens today (May 6th, 2016) in Kansas City, Missouri, running approximately two miles north from Union Station to the River Market district. To go with the new system, there’s also this spiffy new map, which will be mounted at stops along the route, as seen in this great photo taken by Edward Russell.
Overall, I like it a lot: it’s clean and simple with just enough detail for users to orient themselves and has some nice icons for connecting services as well. I think that there’s a few too many directional arrows – you could probably halve the number and still get the idea across – and the slightly offset stops (meant to indicate that the stations are placed on either side of the named cross street?) are perhaps a little overly detailed for such a simple map.
The main point of interest for me is the typeface used – Halis Rounded Medium, by the look of it. It’s certainly modern and friendly, if slightly idiosyncratic. Its capital “M” looks uncannily like a “W” rotated 180 degrees, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, the kerning between some letter pairs is pretty awful – too tight in some places, yet very loose in others. Taking the word “Metro” as an example, there’s a huge amount of space between the “M” and “e”, and the “r” and “o”, but the “etr” in the middle is set very close. A little manual kerning here and there could have helped this look a lot better.
Our rating: Overall, this is very nice, and should be seen as a template for future American streetcar maps. Let down slightly by some unfortunate typographical oversights. Three stars.
May the Fourth be with you, and all that. Of course there’s a Star Wars-related subway map out there. This map was created by Invasione Creativa, an advertising agency in Milan, as guerrilla marketing for Disney last year. It’s a pretty simple concept, basically replacing stations in the official Milan Metro map (March 2012, 3.5 stars) with planets from that galaxy far, far away. Jakku takes centre stage, replacing Milan’s Garibaldi FS station.
(As a side note, does it strike anyone else as weird that planets in Star Wars only ever have one type of environment from pole to pole? Tattooine and Jakku: desert planets, Hoth: snow, Dagobah: swamp, Third Moon of Endor: forest, and so on…)
Readers of the blog would know that I was extremely disappointed with the recent Montréal Métro map redesign (see the review here), which took a truly unique, iconic design and replaced it with a very ordinary octolinear imitation of itself. So I’ve taken it upon myself to redraw the map as I think it should look: restoring some elements of the previous maps, simplifying and clarifying the network, and adding some new touches all of my own.
First things first: I’ve restored the map’s most distinctive feature – the 30-odd-degree counter-clockwise tilt (older official maps had this at around 37 degrees or so; I’ve decided to use 35 degrees purely because it makes the maths easier). From a technical standpoint, this meant I actually drew most of the map using standard 90-degree angles, then selected everything and rotated it 35 degrees to add the labels and other finishing touches.
Note that stations are spaced to achieve even and harmonious spacing between labels across the map: this means that station dots on the shallow-angled parts of the map are placed further apart than those on the steeper parts. There was a bit of trial-and-error to get this looking right, but it was worth it in the end! It certainly helped to expand the crowded central part of the map.
Simplification! I’ve always disliked the two ends of the Green Line on official maps: they stair-step and wobble around in an overly complex manner compared to the simplicity of the Orange and Blue lines, so I simply straightened them out while retaining their relative trajectory. Similarly, the Yellow Line is now just a simple horizontal path – no kinked line here.
The routes of the AMT commuter rail lines have been straightened and simplified as much as possible, and care has been taken to only have these routes interact with Métro stations where an interchange is allowed. I’ve also taken the opportunity to introduce the official line colours for each branch in the directional arrows at the outer end of each route, just for a splash of brightness.
Labels have been set in mixed-case, which both enhances legibility and allows for larger text (substantially bigger than the current map). I’be also introduced line number bullets, which are placed consistently at the end of each route, and are cross-referenced in the legend at the bottom of the map. These bullets are reserved for the termini stations only, and aren’t used at stations where routes intersect. The interchange between lines is made obvious by the design of the map, and extra bullets at such stations would just take up unnecessary space.
The odd fact that all the elevators in the Métro system only serve Orange Line platforms allowed me to use a single icon for all of them, which works better than the official map’s two icon system, I think. The legend also states this fact explicitly, just to be sure.
Perhaps controversially, I haven’t included the St. Lawrence River at all. The more I worked on this map, the more diagrammatic and simple it became. In the end, the river ended up feeling too “busy” and became superfluous to my needs. If nothing else, its absence serves as a point of comparison between this map and the official one.
What do you think of the map? Leave your comments, critiques or corrections in the comments below.
Here’s a photo I took on the Baltimore Metro. It’s a glass partition with system map showing connections to Light Rail and MARC as well as the Metro subway line. I don’t recall ever seeing a map displayed on glass like this. (Sorry the photo isn’t clearer, but my stop was approaching.)
Transit Maps says:
While maps on glass partitions are unusual, they’re not unique to Baltimore. Off the top of my head, I know that the Stockholm Metro does it, and I feel sure that my readers can come up with more examples. I do always wonder about people trying to read the map in reverse when they’re on the “wrong” side of the glass, but I guess for a simple system like this it shouldn’t present too much of a problem.
The map itself looks like a modified version of the Bus and Rail Connections map (PDF) available on the Maryland Transit Administration’s website, complete with colour photos of the trains to help you tell the difference between a subway/light rail/MARC train (just in case).
Although this crafty map of the MBTA rapid transit system is very obviously home-made, it has some clever ideas for helping visually impaired riders. Each route line is constructed with different materials, each with their own texture, which enables quick identification of lines by touch. Stations are marked with beads, and there are Braille labels as well, although the placement of some of them could be better.
The photo was taken at a disabilities conference in Norwood, MA: the original poster on Flickr doesn’t recall who made it, but would love to find out to credit the creator appropriately.
UPDATE: I got the following message in my inbox this evening:
Hi! I’m a travel trainer for Ways2Go Travel Training. We serve seniors and persons with disabilities throughout the MBTA bus and subway service area. I created the MBTA tactile map using the shower curtain map as a template. Thanks for sharing an image of it! – Linda G. Shepard Salzer
