Submission – Unofficial Map: Radial Map of Rail Services in Potsdam, Germany

October 12, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Milan, who says:

I’m from Germany and wanted to share this map of my hometown’s streetcar/light rail system I created this week. I wanted to share it with you before my thirteenth birthday, which is tomorrow (October 12). Greetings from Potsdam.

Happy birthday, Milan! It’s just about to roll over to the 12th here in Portland, Oregon, so I hope you’re having a great day! 

I really like your map, which reminds me a lot of this prototype radial map of Berlin by famed German designer, Erik Spiekermann (August 2013), as well as the many radial maps by Maxwell Roberts. I especially find your treatments of the rivers and lakes interesting, as they get wider the further out from the centre they get –faithfully following the “spokes” of the radial grid. This could look a little weird if done poorly, but i think your representation actually works very nicely.

Inclusion of the S7 from Berlin and the red regional train lines are also a welcome addition to the map. If you were to develop this map further, a legend explaining the different services and lines on the map would be a good idea. Overall though, this is a fantastic effort, precisely drawn and well thought out: great work!

Submission – Official Map: West Yorkshire Metro Rail, 2015

October 9, 2015
comments 2
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Lyle Read-Challen, who says:

This is the official rail map of the West Yorkshire area, a conurbation in the north of England. Despite the name “Metro” it is really just a collection of commuter lines centred around Leeds station.

It’s not particularly beautiful or interesting to look at, but it does the job. The “lines” system works better here than on many commuter systems, which tend to be all one colour. The station spacing is nice and even, and though they might look overpowering, the system logo works well at indicating which stations are actually within West Yorkshire.

I’d be interested in hearing what you think of it!

Transit Maps says:

Overall, this is a very solid rail map, executed in a classic British style: the black bars across the route lines for stations puts me very much in mind of this classic British Rail Greater London map from 1965 (May 2012, 4.5 stars). I don’t mind the use of the “M” logo for certain stations, as it serves a very definite informational purpose on the map. If anything, I would have liked to see the “6″ and “7″ station dots presented in another colour to help differentiate them from the “M” symbols a little better.

Speaking of colour, the background zones are a little too bright for my tastes, but it’s only really a problem when the purple Zone 3 interacts with the light blue Pontefract Line – they’re quite tonally similar and the contrast between them is way too low. I also think the black zone borders are quite heavy-handed and believe that a thin white border would separate them just as well, and also lend a lighter feel to the map as a whole.

There’s only one glaring error that I can see: the orange Huddersfield Line disappears behind the blue Zone 1 area instead of continuing to its terminus at Leeds. Use layers in Illustrator to keep elements like this where they should be!

Side note: the old-school tram silhouette to indicate light rail connections at various stations is kind of adorable, if not exactly an accurate reflection of modern LRVs.

Our rating: As Lyle says, gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. Neat and legible, if not particularly memorable. Three stars.

Source: West Yorkshire Metro website – link no longer active

Before and After – Montreal Metro Map, 2015

October 2, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps, Visualizations
Tags:

Pursuant to the last post, here’s a little GIF I screen grabbed from the STM video of the old map versus the new one. Farewell, iconic 37-degree tilt!

Also of note: the type is much, much smaller and – strangely, given how much they tout the awesomeness of mixed-case type in the wayfinding system – is still set in all-caps. I’ll reserve my judgement until I see the whole map, however.

Video: New Wayfinding Signage and Map for the Montreal Metro!

October 2, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Sent my way by Patrick and Steve, here’s a short video from Montreal’s STM agency explaining the new wayfinding system that’s starting to be rolled out across the Metro system.

The major talking point (for me, at least) is the replacement of Univers with FF Transit as the system’s main typeface. It’s a very complementary choice, and I doubt most people would even notice the difference in passing. However, I think there’s definitely enhanced legibility, and the use of the typeface’s “front” and “back” variations for front-lit versus back-lit applications is very smart. 

The move to lowercase lettering is also welcome, as all-caps Univers always seems very stiff and formal to me. I am glad that they’re retaining historical typographical elements throughout the system, however.

The Metro map also seems to be getting an extensive make-over (just three years after the last minor revision), although the video glosses over the subject pretty quickly, saying just this, starting at around the 3:07 mark.

The iconic system map was simplified, presenting information in a more organized way. With its schematic approach and less clutter, the map is clear and easy to read.

Watching the video closely, most of the changes look good, bringing some simplicity and hierarchical structure to the map. However, I’m very sad to see that the distinctive 37-degree tilt has seemingly been replaced with the more standard 45-degree angles used by transit maps around the world.  Even more than the black background and all-caps typography, this was the unique and iconic defining feature of the Montreal map, and now it’s gone. The map hasn’t yet been updated on the STM website: I’ll be watching with interest for its debut!

Source: Official STM website

Submission – Official Map: Rail Transit of Rome, 2015

September 30, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Kevin McElroy, who says:

The Rome Metro has only had 2 lines for quite sometime. For such a famous European capital the metro system is pretty simple. Metro C is a new line opened in the southeastern portion of the city and extends out into the periphery. It is planned to eventually cross the historic center, though for now isn’t all funded.

They updated the Metro map with lines, A, B, B1 (a spur in the northwestern part of the city, which opened in 2012), and C. In addition they included trams, metro-like services (Roma Lido, Roma Viterbo, Roma Giardinetti), and regional rail connections (“commuter rail” 30 minute headways).

Overall, I think the map does a good job of showing the different services and helps you understand their utility in the overall network. I think the details and design of the map are much improved and show some real thought was given to how best display the network for the metropolitan region of Rome. Everything seems cohesive from fonts, colors, to weights and text orientation.

I’m going to assume you won’t like the the large circle (GRA, a large highway ring road) which may not mean much to a tourist, but to an Italian it really gives a good idea of geography.

Transit Maps says:

Surprisingly, I’ve never featured a full system map from Rome before, only bits and pieces from different parts of the network (#rome). So it’s a real pleasure to see how excellent this new version is. 

I have no problems with the inclusion of the ring road at all: its perfectly circular shape is very visually pleasing, and it gives a good sense of scale to the whole map. 

Informational hierarchy is good, although I’d perhaps like to see the Metro lines thickened up just a tad to help them stand out a little more, especially in the busier parts of the map. If there’s one minor concern with the map, it’s that the right-hand side seems a little crowded in comparison to the left, with much tighter station spacing. This seems to reflect the real world situation (Termini station really is slap-bang in the middle of the ring road’s circle), but a little bit of tweaking and nudging could perhaps have created a little more space on that right hand side. Things will get a little better when the superseded stations on the Roma Giardinetti line are removed entirely, instead of being struck through as they are now.

One glaring set of errors in the legend: the coloured boxes behind the urban railroad and regional railroad names are too far to the right, cutting off the first letter of those names: “ROMA” becomes “OMA”, and “FL1″ is just “L1″. On the map, FL6′s route line doesn’t have the dashes in it that other regional lines have to indicate that their final destinations are off the edge of the map.

Our rating: Despite the few flaws noted above, this is a superbly confident map that almost feels more German in style and execution than Italian. Really quite excellent: four stars.

Source: Official ATAC website

Historical Map: July 22, 1974 Sketch of the Washington DC Metro Map by Lance Wyman

September 29, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

Here’s a fantastic bit of Washington Metro history that I hadn’t seen before: an original working drawing of the now-iconic map from 1974, two years before the system opened (see the opening day map here). Interestingly, it looks like Wyman was experimenting with textural treatments for the route lines at this time – stripes for the Red Line, stars for the Blue, etc. – an idea I’m ever so glad he abandoned, because it would have looked so busy and hideous.

Source: Peter Lloyd’s MetroMapArt website – link no longer active. Photo by Reka Komoli.

Submission – Unofficial Map: Oslo T-Bane by Simon Heidenreich

September 29, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Simon, who says:

Hey there! I read your blog for a while now and, being sort of interested in graphical line maps, I made my first own one. I recently moved to Oslo and I saw you already had the official one on here, and a reinterpretation. The corporate identity of Ruter, the transit authority here is already pretty nifty; the metro map sort of falls short a little on that behalf (in my opinion). 

I tried to keep the big font size, as I think it is a quality of the original one; I made the “Ring” more… well, “ring-like” and slightly redesigned the line signets and the T-Bane-Logo. I also tried to make a short, comprehensive info- and legend-section, which up to now is sort of just thrown onto the map. I would love your feedback!

Transit Maps says:

I reviewed the official Oslo T-Bane map way, way back in November 2011 (when this site was just one month old!), so I note with interest that Simon’s map reflects an almost complete restructuring of the routes that has taken place since then. Almost every line has either changed colour or number, with only Line 1 remaining as it was previously. Simon’s map also doesn’t show the current temporary bus replacement service along Line 3 while it is modernised, but I guess he wanted to show a perfect representation of the system, so that’s fair enough.

The map is quite elegant and flowing, with nice large arcs and corners used throughout. This is very successful for the inner “ring”, which looks fantastic, but I’m not so fond of the curves at the western outer ends of Lines 1 and 2. All the other outer line ends are straight, so the two exceptions to this rule look slightly out of place. This is exacerbated by some uneven spacing of station name labels – Ringstabekk, Bekkestua and Gjønnes on Line 1 are very close together, for example – and the need to alternate some labels on opposite sides of the route lines because of these curves.

I do love the simplicity of Simon’s reworked circular line numbers – nothing hugely original, but they are implemented nicely, with some very consistent positioning at the ends of each route line. This simplicity perhaps makes the combined 4-to-6 icon look a little overworked and fussy, however. I’d like to see a simpler solution to that design problem than this.

Simon’s legend is also very nicely laid out: certainly much better than the official map, which just fits it into the only remaining space left on the page. There is one oddity, however – the only line that extends its services in the middle of the day is the eastern end of the lavender Line 1, but Simon instead uses the red Line 5 as the example of this service pattern in the legend, which is a little confusing.

Our rating: A really nice reinterpretation of an already lovely diagrammatic map. With a few reworkings and minor tweaks, this could be truly excellent. Three-and-a-half stars.

Reader Question: What are the Most Common “Line Colors” for Transit Lines?

September 29, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Questions
Tags:

Question: What are the most common “line colors” for transit lines? I’ve heard of blue lines, red lines, yellow/green/silver/purple/orange/pink lines, but is there anything I’m missing? Once a transit system gets over that amount of colors, do they usually switch to Line 1/A Train/etc.?

Answer: To answer your question, I’m going to point you towards Nick Rougeux’s excellent “Global Subway Spectrum” web page, which breaks down the route colours used by rapid transit systems around the world very comprehensively. I featured it on Transit Maps back in 2013, but Nick’s made some improvements since then, including giving RGB hex values for all the colours. Design resource, anyone?

The most colours used by a single system that Nick has listed is 15, for the Seoul Metro. This is closely followed by the Paris Metro and the Beijing Metro, both of which use 14 colours. Overall, red, green and blue lines are the frontrunners, although the spread around the colour wheel is actually surprisingly even. There’s also quite a lot of variance between different interpretations of the same colour: one system’s “Orange Line” can be decidedly different to another’s, while “blue” can range from light cyan all the way up to deep navy.

Once the number of colours becomes unwieldy, there are a couple of choices that can be made. You can group routes by their main trunk line with all of those lines sharing a common colour (like the New York subway map does), or simply reuse some colours for shorter lines that don’t interact with each other (the Paris Metro map uses this technique).

Bus maps – which often have far more routes than rapid transit maps – are increasingly using colour to denote service type (regular, express, limited, etc.) rather than individual routes, which greatly reduces the number of colours required.

Photo: “Transit Maps” Business Cards!

September 28, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Miscellany
Tags:

I made some Transit Maps business cards! Printed by Moo, they feature one common front with all my contact details, and 25 different backs with artwork from all the many and varied maps that I’ve created over the years. They look absolutely gorgeous, and the satin finish card stock is superb: no flimsy “almost paper” card here!

(Now to remember to carry them with me.)

Submission – Photo: Hand-painted Wooden Tube Map by Camilla Barnard

September 26, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Steve Collins. This lovely hand-painted Tube map is just a small part of an impressive installation at the designjunction exhibition in London. Artist Camilla Barnard, in conjunction with TfL, has built an entire Tube Station replica out of wood, including ticket machines and barriers, a newspaper stand and both eastbound and westbound stations. Fun!

Source: Creative Review – link no longer active.