Updated Unofficial Map: Singapore MRT & LRT Map by Andrew Smithers, 2016

April 4, 2016
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I’ve covered a previous version of this map before (November 2013, 4 stars), but I think this recent update is worth showing, because it’s always fun to see how a concept can evolve over time. 

Like the most recent version of the official map and Bernie Ng (November 2013, 3.5 stars). Andrew has come to the conclusion that placing the alphanumeric station identifiers inside each station marker is the best way to go, and it helps the map tremendously. Finding the extra space to place the identifiers adjacent to a station was always problematic, and will become even more so with triple interchanges like Dhoby Ghaut and Outram Park coming online as the system rapidly expands. 

The new extension to the planned Thompson line past Gardens by the Sea allows Andrew to introduce a lovely curve that echoes that of the Downtown Line above it at the bottom of the map at Shenton Way – a big improvement over his previous iteration. The repeating loop motif that runs through this map is deftly executed and provides the “visual hook” that I always like to see in a good transit map: the design element that ties the whole thing together as a pleasing whole.

A few minor points: the two sets of LRT loops to the northeast are perhaps just a little too close to each other, with labels that almost clash at Compassvale and Coral Edge, for example. Similarly, stacking the label at Lorong Chuan in two lines would perhaps keep better visual distance away from the stations on the North East Line. The Downtown Line crossover could be a little neater: the dashes don’t quite align with each other, creating a bit of an ugly clash (Andrew’s previous map was actually better here). Some of the outer stations seem comparatively cramped in their spacing compared to the relatively spacious central area.

While the map appears quite schematic, it actually aligns quite well with geographic reality (at least in the central part), as shown by this working diagram.

Our rating: An intelligent evolution of ideas. Still four stars, but a better four stars, if you know what I mean.

Erroneous Sydney Ferries Map from “Lonely Planet” Guidebook

April 1, 2016
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My dad just sent me this Sydney Ferries map as featured in the latest “Lonely Planet” Guide to that city. It’s obviously licensed from the official version (February 2015, 2.5 stars) with some minor edits like the removal of the background grid lines. 

However, the map’s whole background has been accidentally shifted upwards, leaving all the routes seriously misplaced relative to the harbour. The Parramatta River line now appears to use Parramatta Road to reach its destination, while Taronga Zoo has relocated to Fort Denison in the middle of the harbour.

Oops.

It’s right up there with this 1977 map of BART with the entire Bay Area map rotated 180 degrees compared to the route lines. 

Official Map: Bus Routes of Midland, Texas, 2016

March 28, 2016
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Brought to my attention by Twitter user Zmapper, here’s a first (and hopefully a last) for a public transit agency – an official map that’s been drawn in Microsoft Excel. Lest you think I’m joking, the downloadable PDF on the EzRider website is named “Copy of Midland Bus Routes sch 2.xlsx”. The visible cell gridlines behind the map are also a bit of dead giveaway.

I understand that smaller agencies are strapped for time, money and resources, but this is kind of ridiculous. Excel is a spreadsheet program with the most rudimentary of drawing tools. It’s for number-crunching, not for any kind of cartographic application. While I certainly admire the ingenuity shown in forcing Excel to produce something it clearly shouldn’t have to, the results unfortunately speak for themselves.

Even stranger, the agency’s other route map – for its services in nearby Odessa – is based on a quite competent street map of the city, so I can’t really fathom why it was ever decided to proceed with this odd little exercise.

Our rating: Bordering on the bizarre. Zero stars and an entry into the Hall of Shame.

Source: EzRider website

Submission – Historical Map: Proposed Baghdad Metro Map, c. 1981-1984

March 25, 2016
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Submitted by peopleneedaplacetogo, who says:

The Wikipedia article for “Baghdad Metro” includes this unsourced image of a proposed network map. The way the colours are used in different directions is quite unusual but I guess makes sense if each colour corresponds to a destination (e.g. if destination signs on the front of trains are coloured).

Transit Maps says:

Hooray for reverse image search, which eventually revealed that this absolutely beautiful diagram was drawn by Richard Dragun of the Design Research Unit while he was a consultant designer on the Baghdad Metro project from 1981 to 1984.

The route colour designations – each colour always points towards a destination at the end of one of the four branches, rather than representing bi-directional travel – are certainly unusual, but they work quite effectively for a simple network like this. It’s the beautiful rendition of the system that really sells the concept, though: the interplay between the directional arrows and the diamond-shaped station markers is lovely, and the filigree cross-over route lines on either side of the main interchange station at Khalani are also executed very deftly. Heck, the concept even makes the ubiquitous railway “arrow of indecision” logo look great!

Our rating: A wonderful concept, beautifully drawn – a map that totally visually represents the place it was designed for, even if the system never came to fruition. Five stars!

Fantasy Maps: Zootopia Transit Authority Maps

March 24, 2016
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I’ve had quite a few requests for a review of the first map above, which is concept art for the movie Zootopia by art director, Matthias Lechner. The map does appear briefly at one point of the movie as well.

Leaving aside the logistical nightmare that would occur from having so many loop lines in a transit system, this is a fun little map. As one might expect from a Disney film, it comes across almost like a transit system for a theme park, with separate themed zones or regions, with distinct and definite boundaries between them. Tundratown (which I’m guessing is cold, having not seen the film yet) gives way instantly to the tropical Rainforest District and so on. The names of the stations are also themed – Frosty Road, Drift Street, Avalanche Avenue, etc. in the aforementioned Tundratown – which is either cute or twee, depending on your outlook.

Designwise, the map is pretty simple. The background colours are perhaps a little heavy, the geography seems overly detailed, and the labelling of stations is a little haphazard: lots of angles and names cutting across route lines. The ZTA logo is a little uninspired as well, but this is a neat concept.

It is interesting to compare this concept map to one that appears on a large format cinema standee (second picture above, photo taken by me). This represents a strip map in a subway car, and has a definite – and almost certainly intentional – New York vibe to it. The routes seem to be quite different to those in the concept map: a lot of the route and station names are the same, but they’ve all been moved around a lot, with almost all the stations seemingly located on one central trunk line. Strangely, all the lines are now called loops, but none of them actually seem to form an actual loop! I do like the icons for the trains to the left: each one has ears that correspond to the type of animal referenced – mouse ears for the Little Rodentia Loop, for example.

Source: Matthias Lechner’s Zootopia concept art page (right at the bottom, but look at everything – it’s all gorgeous!) 

Project: New York Subway Map in the Style of the London Tube Diagram

March 22, 2016
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A little while ago, someone asked me whether I had ever seen a map of the New York subway system in the style of the London Underground diagram. Rather surprisingly, I hadn’t actually come across one, so I decided to draw one up myself. Having just completed my own reworking of the Tube Map, I was already acquainted with its design rules and requirements, so this project didn’t actually take that long.

All of the subway trunk lines have been adapted to use their closest matching colour from the Tube Map: the BMT Broadway uses the Circle line’s yellow, the IND 6th Avenue uses the Overground’s orange, and so on. The IRT Flushing line’s purple gets substantially darker to use the Metropolitan line’s maroon, as does the IND 8th Avenue’s blue with the Piccadilly’s dark navy. I used the Waterloo & City line’s sea green for New York’s three shuttle lines, as the W&C is the only shuttle-like line on the Underground, and it looked much nicer than using the Northern line’s heavy black. One notable thing is how terrible the IRT 7th Avenue (red) and IRT Lexington Avenue (green) lines are for colour-blind users when they run adjacent to each other.

The other thing to note is that – in true Tube Map style – service patterns generally aren’t shown. This, of course, makes this map next to useless for actually navigating the subway – there’s literally no distinction made on the map between the J and the Z, for example – but that’s the way things roll in London! I did make one tiny concession to New York’s complexity by adding route designation bullets at the terminus stations of each service, but you’re completely on your own after that. Express services, turnbacks, skipping stations at certain times: these are all trifling details that London does not even attempt to convey – so neither does this map.

The other departure from the true Tube Map style was the requirement to adhere to Manhattan’s street grid as closely as possible, rather than evenly spacing the stations out along a line. As can be seen above, this mostly works pretty well, although occasionally the density of labelling required a street to be pushed slightly out of alignment.

Once the map reaches the outer boroughs, a more diagrammatic and evenly-spaced approach could be used successfully. The section of the map into Coney Island works particularly well, I think.

The complex routing of lines near Atlantic Avenue/Barclays Center actually turned out pretty well. The Tube Map “dumbbell” interchange symbol is particularly ill-suited to the needs of the 4 Av–9 St station complex. Here, even an offset symbol fails to clearly show that the (orange) D service does not stop along the southbound Fourth Avenue line. The single red tick across the green route line at the Brooklyn Museum stop is also less than satisfactory, but space limitations demanded that approach.

In real life, the R and M run underneath Broadway, so it was nice to be able to line the routes up with the N and Q Broadway station tick. Little touches like this are immensely satisfying when putting a complex map like this together.

Overall, this was definitely a fun little project. Applying the design language of one transit map rigorously to another system is always interesting, even though the results here are decidedly mixed. The map certainly looks attractive, but the Tube Map’s style is ill-suited to the intricate working complexities of the New York subway system.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

See a revised version of this project from 2019 here. Prints for sale!

Photo: Maps in Repurposed Transit Shelter, Portland, Oregon

March 16, 2016
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This small cafe on Fifth Avenue in Portland is housed in one of the last remaining bus shelters from the pre-2007 transit mall, and (awesomely) still retains the maps and informational signage of that vintage. 

To the left is the transit mall directory, featuring the last iteration of Portland’s icon-based route grouping – a beaver for routes to the southeast, a leaf for southern routes, a rose for southwest routes, and a deer for those to the west. Note that the icons have been made subsidiary to the directional lettering: they originally stood alone with no letters at all, and were phased out at the same time as the mall was redeveloped. 

The directory also notes where to go to catch the MAX light rail. Interestingly, it lists the (then new) Yellow Line, but the Transit Mall Stops map to the right doesn’t show it at all. This map cross-references the route groupings from the left with bus stop locations along the mall, so you know where to go to catch your bus. This system has been replaced with a far more prosaic A, B, C, D for southbound routes and W, X, Y, Z for northbound stops these days (map).

If you look really closely, you can also see a 2007-era MAX light rail map reflected underneath the cafe’s logo in the middle.

It’s nice to see a bit of transit history preserved like this, and I know a lot of people miss these bus shelters – they were enclosed on three sides and certainly gave a lot more protection from the elements than the current glass awning-only shelters.

Source: Photo taken by me this morning.

Map of Washington DC Metrorail Service, Wednesday March 16, 2016

March 15, 2016
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Yes, it’s a cheap shot, but I just couldn’t resist.

For those who haven’t heard, the Washington DC Metrorail will shut down entirely tomorrow for emergency inspection on its wiring after a previous fire. On a weekday, with less than a day’s advance warning.

Submission  – Sydney Tram Network at its Maximum Extent by VoomMaps

March 15, 2016
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Submitted by the map’s creator, who says:

After having tried for a long time to find a schematic route map for Sydney’s historical tram network without any success, I decided that the only option was to make one myself. This was a particularly tricky task as all of the maps I could find online showed only the tram tracks, but not how the routes functioned. After many hours going through many different websites, trying to figure out the different streets the tram tracks were on and drawing up the map, I have come up with the attached map.

Transit Maps says:

I’ve previously featured VoomMaps’ map of the maximum extent of railways in New South Wales (May 2015, 3.5 stars), and here’s another map in the same vein. Basically, it’s a “what if?” map, showing how Sydney’s tram network might look if every tram line that ever existed was still in place. (There are two exceptions: the two old spur lines to the Milsons Point and McMahons Point ferries have been superceded by the direct routes over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.)

It’s important to note that the route numbers are the author’s own invention, grouping trams by destination. Sydney trams never had route numbers: destinations were shown by name, sometimes supplemented by a coloured “flag” on the blind.

The map is nicely executed, and it’s very interesting to see how many of the southern suburb lines are separated from the main system, acting as feeder lines to the suburban railways instead. The Northern Beaches trams were also always separate, with The Spit proving an impassable location – ferry service linked the trams on either side until the Manly trams closed in 1938.

I like the way that the routes all collapse into combined trunk lines in the CBD, which definitely helps to simplify things. The list of city terminuses to the top left is also very helpful.

A couple of minor things: Cronulla is shown as being an awfully long way from the coast (the tram station at Shelly Park was just steps away from the beach), and I personally find the crinkly harbour shoreline a little too detailed for my liking – I think it could be simplified just a little more to better match the schematic look of the map. Is it practicable to add start and end dates (where known) for lines? That would certainly add an extra layer of historical information to the map.

Still, overall this map is superbly researched and beautifully drawn. Four stars.

Unofficial Map: Greater Tokyo Railway Network by “Kzaral”

March 14, 2016
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Whoa. An incredibly detailed “Underground-style” map of rail in the Greater Tokyo area – it seems to show everything from ropeways, aerial cables and streetcars all the way up to Shinkansen – by Flickr user Kzaral. 

Transliterating the station names to English means that the diagram simply can’t be as compact as other maps where Japanese characters are used, but there’s still a good sense of rhythm and balance to the map. All labelling is horizontal, with very few labels cutting into or going across route lines – quite the achievement! The colour palette is strangely drab with lots of tan/yellow/orange and pink/purple – are they all based off official line colours?

But enough from me: go take a look at the whole thing nice and big. Enjoy!

Source: Flickr/Kzaral