Submission – Unofficial Map: MARC Commuter Rail Network by Peter Dovak

July 5, 2015
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Submitted by the prolific Peter, who says:

Like you, I was disappointed with the official MARC system map, but recently I stumbled on a concept while working on another project, so I had a go at turning it into a standalone map. Apologies for spamming your submissions box, but I really like how it turned out and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts!

Transit Maps says:

Peter, you can spam my submissions box all day long if you keep sending me work this good. Basically, this is everything that the official map (June 2014, 1 star) is not – clear, easy to understand and nice to look at. I particularly like the grey toned-back treatment of the Washington and Baltimore Metro/light rail systems: it looks great and works fantastically in terms of the informational hierarchy, and interchanges between MARC and those other systems are highlighted in an understated but firm way.

About the only major issue I have with this map is that Peter doesn’t show which stations offer parking, which is important information with commuter rail systems. A quick look at the official map seems to indicate that all stations have parking lots, so words to that effect in the legend might suffice. Or maybe some differentiation between free and paid lots could be made: the map is clean and spacious enough to add this little bit of extra useful information.

Minor point: The white label for Chesapeake Bay is almost illegible on the light blue background, and many of my cartographically-minded colleagues would insist in that label being set in italics.

Our rating: Should really replace the official one with immediate effect. Yummy. Four stars.

Submission – West Coast Electric Highway Map

July 3, 2015
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Submitted by “Sounder Bruce”, who says:

A quasi-transit map that shows electric vehicle charging stations in Washington and Oregon, centered around the Interstate 5 corridor.

Transit Maps says:

I really like the idea behind this map – a simplified road map much in the vein of many of my own mapping projects – but I feel like the execution lets the concept down a little. 

Because of the stylised “transit map” format, the distances between many points on the map get horribly distorted, with, say, 20 miles represented by very short lines, long lines and pretty much everything inbetween. Yes, the mileage is often shown on the map by red numbers, but a quick, reliable visual aid to distances would be preferable. The distortion is so great that Ellensburg in Washington is shown far further west than The Dalles in Oregon, when in reality it is further east.

The big white circles with green keylines used to represent metropolitan areas work fine when they’re superimposed over the dark green Interstate highway route lines, but make it look like the road splits to circumnavigate Corvallis – the green stroke on the circle is exactly the same colour and width as that used for minor highways!

The placement of Tesla charging stations is a little problematic: the icon used looks much like a Google Maps location marker, complete with a little shadow where they “touch” the ground. We’re so used to this style of marker being used to point precisely to an exact location that it seems weird when its used as loosely as this. The chargers are in a nearby named town, not at the exact location shown… and even that can be a little hard to discern. Is the Tesla station on I-5 between Portland and Seattle in Centralia or Tumwater?  

I also wonder why the city of Bend in central Oregon isn’t shown: it has charging stations and is just a short distance from both Sisters and Redmond, making it a logical “end” to the route in that part of the map. For those wondering, this map really does show pretty much the full eastwards extent of charging stations in Oregon. After The Dalles on I-84, there’s another charging station in the town of Arlington… and then nothing until you hit Idaho.

Our rating: Perhaps I’m being a little hard on this map. As an introduction to the electric charging stations in Oregon and Washington, it actually does a pretty decent job. I certainly had no idea of where chargers were located outside of Portland, so I’ve definitely learned something! Two-and-a-half stars.

Source: West Coast Green Highway website

Unofficial/Future Map: Denver RTD Rail Transit by Theo Ditsek

June 29, 2015
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Having just complained about how depressingly average the new official Denver RTD rail map is (June 2015, 1.5 stars), it’s rather wonderful to see an unofficial map that raises the bar as much as this one by Theo Ditsek.

Unlike the real map, this one has a pleasingly compact shape, compressing the outer reaches of the map while expanding the central part. It’s a classic diagrammatic transit map device, but it’s employed particularly well here, with very little “dead space” throughout the map.

There’s some nicely understated mode differentiation as well: while all the route lines share the same stroke width, light rail uses black station dots and commuter rail uses white dots. The line letter designations also get different treatments – solid colour with white letters for light rail, keylined white boxes with coloured letters for commuter rail. It works well, although the similar circled “P” symbol for parking could perhaps be initially confused as a line designation. Perhaps this is one time where a car pictogram could be more effective at immediate communication of an idea.

The absolute best part of this map, however, is the treatment of Union Station: a “so simple, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it!” diamond of station symbols that allows all the route lines to head off in the required direction with a minimum of fuss. It’s a lovely little visual device that works incredibly well; a fantastic solution to a very difficult design problem (believe me, I’ve toyed with a few Denver map redesigns (see here, for example) and Union Station is definitely one of the hardest parts to represent well).

A few minor problems… some of the line colours used seem unnecessarily similar to each other. While part of this problem is the Denver RTD’s choice of colour designations, I think Theo could have made some better choices to differentiate lines from each other. In particular, the “G” line should be far more “gold” than “orange”, especially as it’s right next to the traditionally orange “C” line at Union Station. My old-school CMYK breakdown for “gold” (taught to me by a senior designer at my very first job way back in 1993) has always been C0 M30 Y80 K20, which I think would work well here. I also prefer RTD’s lime green for the “R” line to Theo’s apple green.

I also think that the station labels are sometimes just a little too close to the route lines, with descenders actually hitting them on occasion.

Some people might also say that the decision not to show fare zones allows Theo a lot more design freedom than the official map allows, but I think it’s a fair trade here: the loss of a secondary or even tertiary piece of information for a much clearer, more legible map. I’ll take that!

Our rating: I may or may not have squealed like an excited child when I first saw this map. Great stuff! Four stars.

Source: Theo Ditsek’s website

Submission – River Rail Streetcar, Little Rock, Arkansas by Peter Dovak

June 28, 2015
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Submitted by Peter, who says:

Ages ago, after you posted a tutorial on highway interchanges on your McKinney Ave streetcar map, I was inspired to try and practice the technique on what ended up being a very very similar project–definitely too similar to take any credit for.

I left it incomplete for so long because it was just uncomfortably reminiscent of your map to finish, but for the sake of completion and appreciation for the guide, I thought I would make it presentable and share, perhaps only just to add a new city to your collection!

Transit Maps says:

Peter, I wouldn’t worry so much about any perceived similarity between the two maps. A base map is just that – a base upon which the important information is overlaid. Your route lines, station treatment, typography and legend are all very different to my McKinney Avenue Streetcar map, so the two end up looking completely dissimilar. 

Your map is also certainly better than the official map, which contains a lot of extraneous visual detail and hides important information in the verbose text to the left of the map. Your concise legend contains all the same information, but in a much more digestible, easy to understand format. Nice work there! 

About the only addition I’d really like to see to your map is a scale, so that people can get an idea of the area they’re looking at. A problem with this streetcar system – as with many others in the US – is the wait time. While the two lines combine for an acceptable average headway of 12 minutes (assuming properly timed operations) in the shared loop section south of the Arkansas River, they’re running 23 to 25 minutes apart in North Little Rock and out to the Presidential Library. This basically means that if you just miss a streetcar in these areas, you’d probably be better off walking than waiting for the next one. Having a scale that lets people know that it’s perhaps only a quarter-mile or so to the stop they were intending to get off at could be very helpful.

All in all, I think this is a neat little map, and it certainly illustrates my technique for drawing highway interchanges nicely – just look at that tangle of on/off ramps for I-30! Thanks for sharing!

Unofficial Map: Boston MBTA by the American Automobile Association (AAA), c. 2008

June 23, 2015
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Sent my way by Andy Woodruff, this map is all kinds of wrong. As it’s from around 2008, it shows an older configuration of the Silver Line routes, with an SL3 route going to City Point. However, the underlying base map hasn’t been adjusted to accommodate the diagram, so SL2 and SL3 appear to take you to destinations deep in the outer reaches of Boston Harbor, while Kendall/MIT is located in the middle of the Charles River. Climate change, perhaps?

The numbered legends for difficult-to-label Green and Silver Line stations is one solution, I guess… but it sure as heck ain’t pretty!

Official Map: London Night Tube Services, 2015

June 23, 2015
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It’s almost bizarre to think that an enormous cosmopolitan city like London doesn’t have 24-hour rail service. Yes, there’s an extensive night bus network, but the Tube is such an integral part of the city that it seems odd that it just stops after midnight. 

However, that’s about to change on Fridays and Saturdays from September 12, as shown on this new map from Transport for London. I’ve already seen some positive commentary on it from the CityMetric site, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to completely disagree with them here.

Like many night maps, this map utilises a dark background… just in case we don’t get that it’s a night map despite the enormous title and the super obvious owl logo. However, the background is a dark blue, which leads to a bit of a problem when there’s also a blue River Thames, a blue Piccadilly Line, a blue Victoria Line and a black Northern Line. Although the problem is mitigated somewhat by keylining the routes in white, it still leads to a very low contrast map where the red Central Line stands out like a sore thumb in comparison to just about everything else.

Next, it’s obvious that the starting point for this map was simply the standard Tube map, and objects were then deleted until only the night network remained. I’ve actually overlaid the two maps in Photoshop, and many elements have been changed, moved or modified, but there’s still a lot of commonality between them. This leads to the rather ridiculous situation of route lines ducking and weaving all over the place to accommodate other route lines that simply don’t exist as a part of this network. The newly introduced bumps in the Central Line – designed to accommodate new Crossrail lines on the standard map – are still there, even though there’s no Crossrail to be seen. The incredibly convoluted fare zone boundaries are still there, wiggling hypnotically across the map like a bad psychedelic trip, even though most of the stations and route lines that force the zones into that configuration aren’t on the map at all.

You might argue that this configuration gives a sense of familiarity and continuity with the standard map, but I’m not buying that. This is a different, simpler network than the daytime map has to show. It really should be completely redrawn to adhere more closely to the principles that guided Beck’s original diagrams: evenly spaced stations and an absolute minimum of changes in direction along a route. A diagram like this should show the network it represents as efficiently as possible, and shouldn’t have to accommodate parts of a completely different network that aren’t even present.

Our rating: I’m pretty certain that H.C. Beck is turning in his grave right now. An ugly, nonsensical map that clings stubbornly to its daytime roots despite the absence of a huge portion of that map’s necessary detail and services. 1.5 stars.

Source: TfL’s Night Tube web page

Submission – Portland MAX Light Rail Yellow/Orange Line Interlining Graphic

June 23, 2015
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Submitted by Breck, who says:

Here’s a neat little animated map and explanation that show how the new MAX Orange Line will tie into the rest of the system in downtown Portland. Like many other transit fans, I too have wondered how the Orange Line will work and why it won’t just be a simple extension of the Yellow Line. It is all explained here, and the reasoning seems to make pretty good sense.

Transit Maps says:

Like Breck, I’ve also wondered how the Orange Line will tie in to the downtown part of the MAX system, and this neat little GIF confirms what I’ve suspected for a while: most of the time, the Orange Line will simply act as an extension of the Yellow Line. The reason it isn’t officially Yellow is two-fold: flexibility of operations (interlining with the Green Line or turning back to Milwaukie at Union Station if required); and… marketing. Basically, it’s easier for TriMet to promote a “new” line to the public (exciting!) rather than an extension of an existing one (yawn!). As the TrIMet blog itself says:

We think the Orange Line deserves its own recognition as a pioneering endeavor. Besides showcasing the first bridge of its kind in the U.S., the Orange Line features a host of sustainable elements like eco-roofs, eco-tracks and bioswales to capture stormwater runoff. And it serves a distinct corridor stretching from the region’s urban core to growing communities, setting it apart as our region’s newest light rail line.

While i’m still not sure if I agree with the decision to not make the whole thing Yellow and be done with it, at least the changeovers between Yellow and Orange as shown in the GIF make decent sense. Coming from the north (Expo Center), trains are Yellow until they reach Union Station. Presumably at this point, riders from the north will mostly disembark at the downtown stations (still believing they’re on a Yellow Line train), while new riders from Union Station onwards will see incoming trains as Orange Line trains to PSU and Milwaukie. Similarly, Orange Line riders from Milwaulkie will mostly get off in the city centre, and any new riders will instead be greeted by a Yellow Line train to Expo Center.

Source: TriMet’s “How We Roll” blog – link no longer active

Submission – Future Official Map: Denver RTD Rail Map for 2016

June 18, 2015
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Submitted by Steve Boland, who says:

Cameron, as long as you’re talking about the new Salt Lake City map, I thought you should know that Denver has just adopted a new, updated but unfortunately only slightly amended version of their map, which of course was/is nearly as comically awful as Salt Lake’s old map. I wish it were possible to shame them into shape.

Transit Maps says:

Oh dear. 

Denver’s map has never been as utterly bad as Salt Lake City’s previous efforts, but it’s also been curiously unwilling to change and adapt to the massive expansion that is has been undergoing in the last few years. A map style that was fairly compact and usable – if not that well drawn – when there were only five light rail lines heading south of the city (October 2011, 2 stars) has become incredibly unwieldy and spread out with the proliferation of new rail lines to all compass points under the FasTracks program. What once somewhat worked clearly no longer does.

The main problem with this map is the insistence on having perfectly circular fare zones with Union Station at the exact centre of the concentric rings. This creates some ridiculous levels of spatial distortion, especially on the new B and G lines to the north and northwest of Union Station. If concentric circles are a requirement, I’d suggest that a centre based on the radius of the loop around the western edge of the city would be a better starting point – it would certainly reduce the distance the B and G lines have to travel before reaching the edge of Zone 1!

I personally find the need to show the R Line’s quick little detour off I-225 to the Aurora Metro Center station completely unnecessary in a diagram like this, while downtown is a complete mess with the addition of the second MetroRide shuttle bus down 18th. Not only is the colour used for it very similar to the Green Line, but it also interferes with the directional arrows on the downtown light rail lines.

Our rating: A design that hasn’t moved with the times or the rapid expansion of Denver’s rail network, this map seems to be a slave to the decision to force the route lines (arguably the most important information) to conform to its concentric zone rings (secondary information) – not a great design choice. Getting worse, unfortunately. One-and-a-half stars.

Source: RTD website – link no longer active

New Official Map: UTA Rail Services, Salt Lake City, 2015

June 17, 2015
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Sent my way by Mike Christensen.

Long-time readers of Transit Maps will know that I have long deplored the abysmal quality of the UTA’s rail services map. I first reviewed it way back in July 2012 (where I awarded it one measly star), and things have only gone downhill from there. 

By April 2013, I was calling it “the most embarrassing transit map in the U.S.” and gave it a big, fat ZERO. I basically pleaded for anyone to make a better map, and showcased a whole slew of alternative maps that actually were.

Now, finally – finally! – the UTA has done something about it, unveiling this new schematic diagram on their website recently. It’s a solid, workmanlike effort – not fantastic by any means, but still infinitely better than the dross that preceded it.

The typeface used is Hoefler & Co.’s Whitney Condensed, a definite step up from Arial! I imagine that a condensed typeface was used to allow the labels for the Planetarium and Old GreekTown stations to fit into their limited space. This works well enough, but does make the rest of the map seem oddly empty. Almost as if to compensate, the designer has put in an enormous north pointer, which at least looks nice. I do think the grey locality labels could be a little larger: they’re only just bigger than the station labels!

The placement of the parking icons is a little odd: it seems like a decision was made to put them on the opposite side of the route line from the label… except when there’s no room to do so, which just makes the placement look a little random. I also would have liked to see a better visual distinction between the two different parking icons than just colour. A “P+” icon for multi-day parking could work well, for example.

Our rating: By no means world-class, but so much better than before. Three stars for making the switch to a better approach!

Source: UTA website

Historical Map: Polish Airlines LOT Route Map, 1939

June 16, 2015
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An absolutely phenomenal airline route diagram from 1939, which is both map and schedule in one. 

The thicker route lines represent the routes that belong to Polish Airlines LOT – one of the oldest continually operating airlines in Europe; they still use the beautiful flying crane logo today – with thinner route lines representing partner or connecting airlines. Red lines show daily service, black lines show weekday or irregular service. The departure and arrival times for each flight are indicated within the circles at each city – for the most part, the bigger the circle, the more flights serve it, although Warsaw’s importance is overstated somewhat as LOT’s main hub. Red times show the different schedules for Sundays. The flight/route number for each flight is superimposed over each route line: you can see that some flights “hop” from city to city along the way.

Ominously, a legend at the bottom states: “The services on all lines passing through PRAHA (Prague) are suspended until a special notice is given.” Czechoslovakia had, by this time, been occupied by Nazi Germany, and WWII was about to break over Europe like a wave.

Our rating: Information-rich and weirdly beautiful in a very abstract way. I love this so much: five stars!

Source: histmag.org (in Polish)