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

October 2, 2015
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.

“Light Rail” – A Real-Time Boston ‘T’ LED Map by Ian Reynolds

September 25, 2015
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Taking transit map wall art to the next level is this piece by Ian Reynolds, an electrical engineer and computer science student at MIT. Not only does it light up and look cool, but it actually queries the MBTA API to show the real-time position of trains on the system. Very awesome.

As Ian himself describes it over on Reddit, “The MBTA is a big part of life in Boston, and I built this as sort of a love letter to the transit system that we all know and love (to hate).”

Ian’s also written a longer article on Medium describing the process behind the map’s creation, which also has a short video of the finished piece. Hilariously, while I was watching the video, I was trying to work out which map Ian had used as his starting point. Was it the current official map? No. How about the old official map? Not that either. Hmmmmm… what could it be?

Turns out he’d based it off my map of the MBTA and I didn’t even recognise it. Talk about embarrassing…

Source: Ian’s Medium site via Reddit/r/boston

Future Map: Grand Paris Express Line 15 Circular Map

September 24, 2015
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Spotted by Theo Ditsek, here’s a lovely circular representation of the planned “Grand Paris Express” Line 15, which will eventually circumnavigate greater Paris. I believe the first phase (shown above as the bolder arc of the circle) is meant to be operational by 2022, although it’s reportedly already two years behind schedule.

The map itself was part of an exhibition about the project that was held in Vitry-sur-Seine, seen at the bottom right of the map. It featured renderings and models of the stations planned for the first phase (mostly designed by different architects for each station, artwork inspired by the project and more. Here’s an article in Liberation about the exhibition, complete with a nice big picture of the French President, Francois Hollande, standing next to this very map. It’s in French, but Google Translate does a decent enough job.

The map itself is definitely more conceptual than accurate, but it’s also wonderfully stylish. Connections to other rail lines – Metro, RER, Transilien and tram – are shown at each station, and connecting routes that run from Line 15 to and through the centre of Paris are shown as sweeping arcs, reinforcing how the new circle line will interface with the rest of the (already extensive) transportation network. About the only minor letdown is the treatment of the rivers. The idea is good – a stylised ribbon running through the map – but the execution looks a little stiff compared to the fluidity of the arcs used in the rest of the map.

Our rating: It’s all about connections! It’s a simple concept, but very deftly realised. 4 stars.

Submission – Official Map: Central London Night Bus Routes

September 22, 2015
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Submitted by ruddlesrocket, who says:

What do you think of this?  I think it’s probably the worst map that TfL produce, having neither the benefits of geographically accurate maps (it’s difficult to know what streets the buses run along), and diagrammatic maps, in that it’s almost impossible to trace the route taken by one bus.

Transit Maps says:

I totally agree with this assessment! I’ll never understand why some night service maps completely eschew the principles of good network map design. You know what I mean: black backgrounds, one colour used for all the route lines… that kind of stuff. Instead of showing routes from end to end, like a proper map would, this one makes every route the same “night-time blue” and overlays every service along common route lines. There’s not even any differentiation between 24-hour standard routes and night-only services.

As a result, I have absolutely no idea where any of the buses go. The “shield hunting” – a term that dates back to old road maps, where you’d have to search for the next highway shield on the map to follow your desired path – that is required to read this map is some of the worst I have ever seen, and I’ve basically given up trying to work things out. There are sometimes up to 17 buses travelling along the same section of road, which then split into multiple directions at the next intersection – this is repeated again and again in a seemingly maze-like manner. It certainly doesn’t help that the roads that the buses travel along aren’t named, although Tube station labels can help add a little bit of context here.

People who use late night buses may be unfamiliar with the options available in the wee small hours, drunk, or both. This map certainly isn’t going to help them get anywhere.

Our rating: Even the owl looks frustrated and cranky. Almost unbelievably poor, especially when compared to the high standard of bus spider maps that TfL produces for its regular services. Seems to have been produced almost as an afterthought. 0.5 stars.

Source: TfL Buses web page (no longer listed)