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)

Submission – NEW Official Transportation Map of Szeged, Hungary, 2015

June 14, 2015
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Submitted by barnade, who says:

Two years ago, you reviewed the transit map of Szeged, Hungary (September 2013, 0.5 stars). The conclusion was the map is a mess, as we here in Szeged thought so. Also, you’ve been pointed out that it would be much better, if a circular schematic form had been applied, based on the town’s triple-boulevard structure. Now, the day has come, the new official transit map of Szeged have been applied on trams, trolleybuses and buses, thanks to electric public transport company SZKT and the new local bus and coach provider DAKK. Besides of the foregoing circular scheme, it’s also a new thing to have every line (bus, trolleybus, tram) on a single map. There is another version of the new map, which is based on the real map of the town, with natural scale, having the main sightseeing points on it [the second image above – Cam]. This version can be found on SZKT’s website, and will be placed in the stops.

Transit Maps says:

Wow, what a difference a few years can make! This is so much better than the previous map I reviewed (which, sadly, is still hanging around on the SZKT website). The circular diagram is a natural fit for the city’s shape – as shown by a comparison with the geographical map above – and it’s implemented quite well, with a nice hierarchy from trams (thick yellow lines), through trolleybuses (thinner red/magenta lines) and down to the downtown and suburban bus lines (dark blue and light blue lines, respectively). And I love that the same style of mapping and hierarchy has been carried across between the two different maps – visual continuity that can only help the end user to understand and navigate the system.

The excellent work of the diagram itself is let down a little bit by the typography and placement of the legends, which aren’t quite up to the same standard. This is a pretty minor point, though.

Our rating: Much better! The diagram by itself is nice enough, but it’s in combination with the geographical map that the new mapping system really shines. Probably one of my favourite Eastern European maps now. Three-and-a-half stars.

Source: dakk.hu website (PDF)

Reader Question: Are there any resources available for exporting city map data to vector format for importing into Illustrator?

June 14, 2015
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Question: Are there any resources available for exporting city map data (similar to Google Maps, etc) to vector format for importing into Illustrator? Do you utilize any pre-existing data for your projects, or do you simple start from scratch? I’m thinking of your Dallas streetcar map in particular.

Answer: To be honest, most of the time, I just start from scratch. My very low-tech workflow is to quickly grab some screenshots from Google Maps or similar and just start drawing on top of it in Illustrator. I figure that if I’ve drawn it myself, I’ll get a map that does exactly what I want it to do, and I’ll set it up right so that I can edit it easily in the future. It also means that I can simplify things as I work, like straightening out roads a bit for clarity.

I actually do have a copy of ArcMap at work and I can use it well enough to find data, make and export a basic unstyled map for further editing in Illustrator, but most of the time I just end up horrified by the poor quality of paths that it creates – millions of points, unconnected line segments, and so on. Basically, clean up of these files can take longer than just drawing a simple base map myself. For an idea, it only took me 7-8 hours to draw the underlying roads, waterways and parks for the McKinney Avenue Streetcar map, and that included all the fiddly freeway interchanges!

To the other part of your question: I don’t think it’s permissible under Google Maps’ license agreement to export their data for reuse, and I’m not even sure that it’s possible to get vector output from Google Maps.

That leaves GIS (either paid ArcGIS, or freeware like QGIS – but as I say above, results can be less than impressive), or – perhaps more promisingly – exporting as SVG or PDF from OpenStreetMap.org, which has the added bonus of being completely open-source.

Their Wiki has some basic information here, and this seems to be a great walkthrough on getting quality, layered, unstyled SVG exports from OSM using a command-line utility, Maperative.

Note: Unstyled exports are important, because most of the time you want to bring an SVG into Illustrator to apply your own styling. Not having to remove or edit previously existing styles is a huge time-saver!

I hope that this at least starts you on your way! I feel sure some of my readers know far more about this subject than me, so please leave a comment if you think you can shed some more light on the topic.

Submission – Official Map: Bike Network Map of Houten, The Netherlands

June 13, 2015
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Submitted by Bertram Bourdrez, who says:

I ran into this while reading about Houten (the Netherlands), a town celebrated for its high cycling rate (about 52% of all journeys):

Translation of the first paragraph: 

“Houten is a true cycling town, but all of its red cycleways look alike. Not everyone knows how to find their way around the different neighbourhoods. To solve this problem, the town council and the local chapter of the Dutch Cyclists’ Union have created a wayfinding system, based on a transit map.”

I actually quite like the map, for the gimmick that it is. It has very few of the inexplicable inconsistencies that tend to plague transit maps made for non-transit uses. Apparently they’ve marked lampposts along each route with coloured and numbered indicators to show what “line” you’re on.

On a transit-related note, the main destinations in a Dutch sleeper town like this would definitely be the train stations, which are at the core of the network and easily reached by routes 1, 4, 6 and 7. Both stations have extensive free and guarded bike parking for easy interchange.

Transit Maps says:

First off, Houten looks like an amazing place to get around by bike – cycle paths that are largely separated from roads, a very clear differentiation between arterial and local streets, low local speed limits, and curving streets to effectively deter speeding. It all adds up to that amazing 52% bicycle journey rate that Bertram quotes above. By comparison, my city of Portland, Oregon – often held up as a leader in cycling here in the US – has a bike commute rate of just 6%.

The map itself works well for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t overdo the “transit map” concept, remaining true to the actual layout of the city, albeit in a nicely simplified form. Secondly, the numbered routes actually seem to cross the city in a useful, logical manner, rather than just being created in an effort to push the transit map metaphor (something I’ve seen other bike and walking maps do, overcomplicating things to make the map look more impressive).

I also quite like the logo for the network, which has a stylised bike made out of “route lines”. Its rear wheel looks like an interchange symbol from the map, and sits at the intersection of a Blue Line and a Green Line. On the map, these lines (routes 1 and 4) intersect at the main train system: the heart of the city and the network.

Our rating: Simple is better sometimes! Three stars.

Source: Municipality of Houten website