I’ve been a fan of your website for some time and have dabbled in creating some transit maps of Philadelphia, utilizing many of your tips. The latest is a Vignelli inspired map based on A. Merritt Taylor’s plan for future rapid transit in Philadelphia. The plan is from 1913 and if executed would have left Philadelphia a very different place.
[This 1913 plan was featured on Transit Maps in October 2014 – Cam]
Transit Maps says:
A handsome interpretation of this classic rapid transit plan from Arthur, executed in an equally classic style. The layout looks great, but I feel like the labelling could be a little larger: there’s generally plenty of room. Getting all of the labels just a little further away from the route lines would be good as well. Because of the small labelling, the connecting services icons – which neatly, represent the old Reading, Penn, and B&O railroads – are small and indistinct as well.
I do think that the route designation bullets that Arthur uses at the base of the maps should be integrated into the map itself as well, otherwise they’re not really much use to people unfamiliar with the system. Verbally, the route names are also a bit of a mouthful: “Oh, you need to catch the sixty-nine-bee-el to get to where you’re going” just isn’t as easy as “the five” or “the A”.
On a technical side, there’s a couple of places where I can see little gaps along the route lines when they go around corners: the paths either need to be joined, or – if they’re separate elements sitting on top to cross over other lines – they need to have round end caps applied to disguise the gap (Cam’s sneaky Illustrator tip #253).
Our rating: A fine depiction of a 100-year-old transit plan. Three-and-a-half stars.
Just to show that there’s always a different way to approach the same design problem, here’s a completely different reworked Tube Map by art director/designer, Rich Cousins. Like me, Rich seems to have reached a breaking point where all the additions to the Tube Map over the years have made him say, “there must be a better way!”, although his criteria for a successful redesign are quite different to mine. Note that this map dates back to July of last year, so the new “Zone 2/3″ around Stratford isn’t shown.
In short, Rich has aimed for simplification and reduction, even eschewing the addition of the Thames for orientation. I’ll note here that the last time the official Tube Map got rid of the Thames, the angry mob got out their pitchforks, so I’m not sure this would ever be a popular decision – proceed at your own caution, Rich!
He’s also made the decision to remove TfL Rail and the Emirates Air Line: this is at odds with the way the official Tube Map is evolving, but it’s Rich’s map and he can do what he wants in regards to those “peripheral” services. One thing that the removal of TfL Rail does is to make the shuttle Overground line between Upminster and Romford look even more ridiculous without anything to connect to at the Romford end!
Rich has made some fundamental changes to the methodology of the map that make quite a difference to the way that it looks. First, he butts all lines heading in the same direction as each other right up to each other, regardless of whether they’re in the same real-world tube or tunnel as each other. I don’t mind this too much: it doesn’t change how you use the Tube at all, and it does clean up the District and Piccadilly lines from South Kensington out to Acton Town quite a lot. Similarly, it consolidates the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines quite nicely as they head north out of Baker Street.
A little more problematic is the way Rich has consolidated as many interchange stations as possible into a single dot. It’s a nice idea in theory, but it actually removes a lot of the nuanced information about changing lines that the real map imparts without the reader really being aware of it. For example, Rich has combined Bank and Monument into a single dot. Technically, he’s right: once you’ve passed through any of the fare barriers, you can reach any platform in the complex. But it’s a heck of a walk from one end to the other, which the official map neatly implies with its long “corridor” connector between the two ends. It also makes the stations which Rich has been unable to combine into a single dot stand out like a sore thumb – the long connectors required at Euston, Paddington and Edgware Road being prime examples.
(I’ll also note here the error at Paddington: the Bakerloo line needs to come down to the District/Circle line platforms at Praed Street, not the Hammersmith & City/Circle line platforms at the opposite end of the complex.)
The single dot is also applied a little inconsistently: the separate stations at Walthamstow Central and Walthamstow Queens Road get a single dot, while Clapham High Street and Clapham North get separated out into two distinct stations. Both are shown as interchanges on the official map.
Relative spatiality is an area where I think Rich’s map falls down. His argument seems to be that elements that don’t directly interface with each other can be shown in the wrong place if it enhances clarity. I respectfully disagree, as I think that maintaining the correct relative position of stations and lines helps to reinforce how the network relates to the city around it. There are lots of examples of what I consider “poor” placement on the map, including West Ruislip, South Tottenham, Mill Hill East to the east of the main branch, and the absurd routing of the Overground right through the middle of the Hainault Loop.
I absolutely adore Rich’s Northern line – dead straight from Morden all the way up to Edgware – but the poor old Victoria line has to take a terribly convoluted path from Warren Street up to Euston and back down again to hit Kings Cross St. Pancras – a victim of the single dot policy, I’m afraid. I also admire his attempt to do something visually different with the fare zones by smoothing them out, but I think they could still use some further refinement to get the shapes just right.
Almost inexcusably, Rich’s map doesn’t present any accessibility information, although he says he’s working on a solution. Again, his single dot solution is harming the map here, as the multiple dots of the official map are used to show accessibility information for separate sets of platforms at large interchange stations. For example, the DLR at Bank/Monument is fully accessible, but none of the other platforms are.
Station names in colours that match their line is something that I’ve never particularly cared for: the different chromatic values make some names more visually prominent than others, when they should all be equally important in the information hierarchy. The explosion of Overground lines also means there’s a lot of orange labels on the map – like the map needs more orange! Still, it’s interesting to see the technique applied to a complex map like this (I think Chicago’s “L” map used to do this as well).
I hope no-one thinks that I hate this map after this long and detailed review, because I don’t. It’s a well-considered and nicely drawn alternative Tube Map, with a lot of thought-provoking additions and alterations. Like me with many of my redrawn maps, I suspect he’s put in a lot of these changes to purposefully make his map as different as possible to the official one – because who wants to look at the things that have already been done?
One more post about my redrawn London Tube Map before I move onto other projects.
One thing that bothered me about the map as I worked on it was the way that no visual distinction is made between interchanges that are made within the fare control area – that is, simply moving from one platform to another – and those that require you to exit one station and re-enter at another nearby station, preferably by tapping out and then back in again with an Oyster card. There are many such interchanges in London, some of which are well-known and others which seem to be a deep, dark secret known only to the most seasoned of commuters. They’re officially known as Out-of-Station Interchanges, or OSIs, and they even have time limits defined to set boundaries for “reasonable” interchanges between stations.
It seemed to me that the distinction between a normal interchange and an OSI is fairly important, so I set out to see if there was an easy way to distinguish between them on the map. In the end, I came up with what I think is an elegantly simple solution: retain the white “corridor” connector for normal interchanges, but use a thinner black-only connecting line for OSIs. The white connector visually joins all the interchange dots at a station as a unified whole, while the black connector separates them, immediately implying a more complex journey.
Above is a great example of how the new connector works. The Underground and Overground platforms at Walthamstow Central are connected by a normal interchange symbol, while the short walk to the nearby Walthamstow Queen’s Road station is indicated with a black OSI connector. Another OSI connector can also be seen at the Seven Sisters/South Tottenham interchange. Hackney Downs and Hackney Central were recently linked by a footbridge inside the fare control area, so they’ve been upgraded to a “true” interchange symbol.
Showing out-of-station interchanges consistently and properly did require one fairly major reconfiguration of route lines at Paddington. Here, I’ve brought the Bakerloo line down to join with the District and Circle lines at the Praed Street section of the complex. The short walk through the National Rail station to reach the Hammersmith & City/Circle line platforms is now neatly indicated with an OSI connector.
The Bakerloo flips back up to the north again after Paddington to place Edgware Road in the correct position relative to the other Edgware Road. While this pair of stations could technically have been shown as an OSI, I’ve chosen not to: it’s not a very convenient or useful place to change with Paddington and Baker Street nearby, so the map rightfully discourages their use as an interchange. Note also the OSIs at White City/Wood Lane and Shepherd’s Bush.
Not shown, but also useful: an OSI connector between the two Hammersmith stations. Have a look at the big image of the map to see all the OSIs that I’ve identified, and let me know if you think I’ve missed any.
While you’re there, have a look at the potential future additions to the Tube Map that I’ve added just to give you something else to look at: the Metropolitan line extension to Watford Junction, the Bakerloo line extension to Hayes via Old Kent Road (which may or may not ever get past Lewisham) and the Battersea Power Station extension of the Northern line, which is nicely lined up in case it gets extended further to Clapham Junction. Yes, I’m very aware that any future Tube Map will also have to deal with all the new Overground and Crossrail 2 lines, but that’s beyond the scope of this project (at the moment).
As you can see, he’s carried across the New York style of showing all the service patterns on the map. In New York, this is used to distinguish between local and express services, while in London, it reveals the secret inner workings of the lines that the Tube Map never really gets around to showing. For example, Metropolitan line services out to Rickmansworth and beyond don’t stop between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Moor Park.
It’s just a fact of life in London: service patterns are indicated on the platform with signs and announcements, rather than on the map. I well remember standing on the westbound District Line platforms at Earl’s Court back in 2003, watching for the arrow on the indicator board to point towards Wimbledon so I could get back to where I was staying in London at the time.
Unfortunately, if you took the Tube Map’s design principles – show the line, but not the service patterns – and applied it to New York, you’d come up with a map that everyone would decry as useless because it doesn’t show express versus local. This is probably why such a map doesn’t seem to exist.
I guess you could add extra route lines to get around this problem, but then it wouldn’t truly be in the style of the Tube Map, would it?
Edit: You can buy prints of my attempt at such a map here.
Inspired by this schematic map of the Sydney Suburban Network from 1969 (June 2012, 2 stars), I decided to create a retro-looking map of the rail network in 1950 in a similar style.
Transit Maps says:
I think you’ve nailed the look and feel of this piece quite well, although – like me with my digital recreation of a 1939 map of the Sydney network – you’ve discovered that modern computer-designed artwork can look way too clean to pass for something made over half a century ago, despite the weathered paper texture you’ve added.
The system still looks very recognisable – there’s a few more branch lines than today and the City Circle is still incomplete – but this map shows the majority of the Sydney Trains network we still use today.
Kielce is a mid-sized (200,000 inhabitants) city in Poland, well-known across transport enthusiasts for its extremely inefficient transport system, consisting of over 60 infrequent (most of them make under 10 trips each way per day) lines. Local transport authority tried to make things a little bit easier… and produced something equally awful. It’s not easy to make meaningful scheme when you have nearly fifty lines on one stop, but this map is making orientation even harder now.
Transit Maps says:
At first, I thought Kyryl was joking when he said that there were nearly 50 lines at one stop, but it turns out that he’s not. The Zytnia stop on the southern edge of the city centre handles a ridiculous 42 different routes throughout the day, which is insane. The infrequent service that Kyryl also notes could have something to do with the fact that – according to Wikipedia – the city only has around 165 buses to run these myriad routes, meaning that (on average) there can only be 2 to 3 buses assigned to each route at a time, even at peak capacity.
The map is similarly dysfunctional, and almost impossible to use. The “shield-hunting” that’s required to follow a route from one terminus to the other is just too mentally taxing, and I just gave up after a while. Things aren’t helped by all the diagonal stop labels, especially the one stop at the northeast of the central zone that has a diagonal label in all four directions. What?
The use of a white or background-coloured keyline behind the labels to separate them from the background is a good idea in theory, but the designer has forgotten to pay attention to the mitre joins, so letters with acute angles have created huge “spikes” that jut out way above or below the type. Ugly work that’s easily fixed with a little attention to detail.
Our rating: This map reminds me a lot of this terrible night bus map for London (September 2015, 0.5 stars), except it’s even worse. Almost impossible to decipher, breathtakingly hideous and fully indicative of a transit system gone totally mad. Fully deserving of zero stars and an entry into the Hall of Shame.
A lovely celebratory poster for the Metro’s opening year, showing the overall envisioned network at the time. Only a short section of the red Linea 1 was actually open initially – as can be seen running across the poster about a third of the way down – and the eventual system as built today is substantially different to this vision (March 2014, 3.5 stars).
Of particular interest are the black diamonds dotted liberally around the poster, which contain Mexico City-like icons for some 40 proposed stations on the red Linea 1 and yellow Linea 2, some of which were never constructed.
Check out the Marin County transit maps on page 110 of this thesis (source below). They’re so distinct! Maybe you’ve seen them but I couldn’t NOT send you these. Vignelli much?
Transit Maps says:
I haven’t seen these before, Denis – and you’re right: they’re absolutely fantastic. I feel that the mid- to late-1970s was a time when America actually embraced clean, modernist “European” design, especially on the West Coast. So, while I can see some Vignellian influences – “one dot, one stop” especially – I think these maps are also very much a product of the time and place they were created. I doubt that Vignelli would have appreciated the use of non-standard angles or the literal pictorial depictions of the ferries to San Francisco.
Of the two maps, I think the South Marin one is more effective: a brighter colour palette and a logical order to the diagram makes it a little better, in my opinion. The Larkspur map gets a little too clever with the “roundabout” device used to represent urban areas, and the Route 29 Canal line seems unnecessarily convoluted and cramped for space. I do like the representation of the Larkspur Ferry Terminal’s iconic triangular space frame roof, which was then only a year old.
Our rating: Lovely little diagrammatic maps, very evocative of the time and place they were made. Four stars!
As special educator, I work with a 7 year old boy who has memorised the complete Berlin S-/U-Bahn, bus and tram network. Every day, he draws exactly one section of the network (without any mistakes, of course) and gives it to me as a present. Last month I started to puzzle all the parts together into one big map on the wall of my office. The common project is not finished yet, but I encouraged him to pay more attention to the west part of Berlin 😉
I am impressed; I am very, very impressed. I’d definitely love to see this again when it’s finished!
While I was researching my redrawn Tube Map, I stumbled across the above representation of the Underground as it supposedly appears to a wheelchair user. While it’s probably meant to be more metaphorical of the fractured nature of the network than a literal representation, I find myself infuriated by it. For example, the “map” really makes it appear that if you get on at Kings Cross St. Pancras (possibly the one truly accessible station on the Underground), you simply cannot go anywhere.
There have been other maps that show the same thing more accurately, but the newest one I can find is from 2011. A lot has changed on the Tube Map since then, including adding the distinction between street-to-platform and street-to-train accessibility to the map. Seeing as I had the Tube Map to hand for my previous project, I quickly modified it to show these two different networks. Unlike previous efforts, I also modified the route lines to reflect new end points for lines: if there were no accessible stations between a certain station and the end of the line, I deleted that section of track. As a result, the maps more accurately show the extent of accessible services.
Step-free access from street to platform or better
Use the slider to show the full Underground network compared to the street-to-platform network.
This map shows stations with both of the accessibility icons from the Tube Map. If a station has some accessible platforms and some inaccessible, the inaccessible connections have been deleted. This leads to situations like the Bank and Tower Gateway DLR stations being accessible, but not connected to their respective Tube stations, or the Romford–Upminster Overground shuttle line cutting off at Emerson Park because the Overground platforms at Upminster aren’t accessible.
The only complete casualty is the Waterloo and City line: neither of its two stations are accessible. The Bakerloo line now only serves three stations between Harrow & Wealdstone and Willesden Junction, and most other lines are truncated in some form or another. The Overground continues to be a viable network, although it still loses a lot of stations.
The other main point of interest is the lack of accessible interchanges within the central “thermos flask” – Kings Cross St. Pancras, Green Park and Westminster are it. You can’t change from the Underground to the Overground/National Rail at Liverpool Street or Euston. Baker Street and Bank/Monument don’t exist. This is the biggest impediment to real accessibility on the Underground – the inability to transfer easily between lines in the most important part of the network.
Note that Greenford (the new western terminus of the Central line) is the only street-to-train accessible station on that line: this leads to a very odd situation in the (frankly horrifying) next map…
Street to Train Access Only
Use the slider to show the full Underground network compared to the street-to-train network.
Here’s the Underground network for those people who truly need step-free access from the street outside the station all the way onto the train. This means there’s no gap or height difference between the edge of the platform and the door of the train. It’s a pretty exacting standard, and the percentage of people who truly need this level of service is probably pretty low – but the map certainly doesn’t make for pretty viewing. The Waterloo and City, Bakerloo, Central and District lines have been wiped from the map entirely. The Circle and Hammersmith and City lines now just shuttle people between Hammersmith and Kings Cross St. Pancras, while the entire Overground has been reduced to a short section between Dalston Junction and Canada Water.
Only the DLR and the Emirates Air Line escape entirely unscathed. The Jubilee Line retains good accessibility in its modern eastern section, but the section that it inherited from the Bakerloo line has just one fully accessible station at Kingsbury. The Piccadilly and Northern Lines retain much of their length, but very few stations. Interchanges in central London are at Kings Cross St. Pancras and Green Park –that’s it.
Remember Greenford? Well, it may be fully accessible, but it no longer connects to a single other similar station. So it’s sitting out there all by itself with no possible route to the rest of the map: a Central line station with no Central line.
To close, I’ll note that TfL actually offers a lot of information for travellers who need accessibility information, including this insanely comprehensive step-free guide (PDF link) and more on the accessibility section of their website.
