Reader Question: Do You Know What the Organizational Principle is for Layering Subway Lines on the NYC Map?

February 12, 2015
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Question: Do you know what the organizational principle is for layering subway lines on the current NYC map?

I received a question from meltedchandelier​ yesterday that asked:

Hi, I’m hoping you can solve a query that a friend and I have been able to figure out forever. Do you know what the organizational principle is for layering certain NYC subway lines on top of others where they intersect on the current version of the map is? It’s not just BMT/IRT (I don’t think) and it’s not alphabetical/numerical. We’ve been trying to solve it forever, but can’t come up with a solution that satisfies all the intersections.

Now, I can’t definitively answer this question – as I’m not the designer – but I would hazard a guess that it’s simply based on what makes the route lines easier to follow, rather than any BMT/IRT/number/letter formula. This is the approach that I use myself when designing transit maps – it’s more important for the user to be able to trace their route easily, rather than trying to replicate the actual physical placement of intersecting lines. Once you’re in the subway, does it really matter that your tunnel passes above or below another tunnel? Not really: you just want to know what the next station is.

While examining the subway map while pondering this question, I did come across one rather nonsensical arrangement of lines that I feel really should and could be depicted more accurately. As seen above, the “D” and “N” lines interchange in Brooklyn at the New Utrecht Avenue/62nd Street complex. In real life, the “N” is in a trench that runs below the elevated “D”, and New Utrecht Avenue station is located to the south-east of the 62nd Street station. 

However, on the subway map (rotated to put north at the top of the image), the “N” inexplicably crosses above the “D” and New Utrecht station is shown to the north-west of 62nd Street. I suspect the odd placement of the station is because of its label, which wouldn’t fit very neatly on the other side of the avenue (clashing with other labels, etc.). However, there’s no reason at all why the two route lines can’t be placed in their correct stacking order, with the “D” sitting properly above the “N”. In this location, there’s only one route line crossing one other, so there’s no design advantage to be gained by stacking them incorrectly for the purposes of legibility.

Historical Map: Proposed Trolley Subway, Pittsburgh, 1951

February 11, 2015
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Sometimes ideas take a while to come to fruition… the subway section of Pittsburgh’s light rail line finally opened in 1985 and is not as extensive as this grand vision.

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via Mundania Horvath on Twitter

Official Map: Sydney Ferries Network, 2015

February 11, 2015
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One last map from Sydney (for now!). 

One of the great pleasures of summer in Sydney is catching a ferry across the beautiful harbour to destinations like Taronga Zoo and Manly. This is the current system map, introduced at the same time as the train and light rail maps that I’ve previously featured. 

The seven routes, which used to be depicted in a rainbow of colours on previous maps, are now various shades of green, the colour used in the new “F for Ferry” circular symbol seen at the top left of the map. Blue might seem to be a more obvious colour for waterborne craft, but Sydney ferries are renowned for the deep green paint on their hull. Also, blue route lines on a blue (water) background could potentially cause some legibility problems.

Stylistically, the map matches the others in the series perfectly, although – like the light rail map – it lives in a complete mode vacuum, with no connecting services indicated at all. That great big train station right behind the Circular Quay wharves? Doesn’t exist according to this map. Same for all the connecting bus services at many of the other wharves. On a map with this much empty space, leaving out information like this is criminal.

The other thing I really miss from previous versions of this map is an indication of which wharf at Circular Quay each service leaves from. The F1 Manly service always leaves from Wharf 3, the F3 Parramatta River ferry always leaves from Wharf 5, and so on. Again, there’s plenty of room to work with, so I feel that this type of information could be incorporated easily.

One weird thing with the route lines is the way they join onto the main trunk line out of Circular Quay. The F4 Darling Harbour route forms a nice wide curve as it joins, but all the other routes have a much smaller joining curve, almost appearing to join straight on with no curve at all in some instances. It makes the design of the map look a little inconsistent. I’d also like to see a directional arrow on the two loop routes, just to make it clear which order the stops are in.

Finally, this map is a victim of a route designation scheme that works well enough on the main train map, but terribly here. Almost every line has a duplication of labels at the far terminus because the line name and the wharf name are the same. It’s redundant and ugly and creates visual clutter where there is no need. If the F7 Eastern Suburbs route was renamed as F7 Watsons Bay (the final destination) and the F3 Parramatta River line simply became F3 Parramatta, then all the names and lines would match, and only one label for each would be needed.

Our rating: More style than substance. Could easily show more useful information than it does while retaining the current look and feel. Two-and-a-half stars.    

Source: Transport NSW Timetables and Maps web page

Official Map: Sydney Olympic Park Major Event Buses

February 10, 2015
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Following on from yesterday’s post, thanks to “adros47” who left a comment noting that Transport NSW does in fact have an official map of Olympic Park special event bus services. Unlike Jimmy’s semi-geographical approach, this map is completely and unapologetically diagrammatic, and it actually works pretty well for me. 

About the only thing that I’d really like to see (as on Jimmy’s map) is an indication of how long a bus trip might take from each of the termini. Google Maps tells me that Warriewood to Olympic Park via St. Ives takes 45 minutes “without traffic” – my experience with driving in Sydney tells me that this would easily take over an hour in real world conditions, and that’s without stopping to pick up passengers along the way.

The map also reveals some oddities in the numbering system for these buses. What happened to Route 3? Also, there doesn’t seem to be any real logic to the numbering: counting clockwise from Route 1, they number 1, 2, 4, 7, 6, 5 and 8. A little odd, but not really a problem.

There is one little design oddity that bugs me: the stops along the blue Routes 1A/1B after they join together near Olympic Park (from North Ryde Public School to Rhodes) are all coloured as if they interchange with another line. In reality, only the Rhodes stop is shared with the red Route 2, so the other four stops should just be a blue tick, not an interchange lozenge. One could also argue that an interchange symbol is somewhat redundant on this map, as everyone only ever travels between their point of origin and Olympic Park.

Our rating: A very competent diagram that conveys a lot of information in a compact space. Three stars.

Source: Transport NSW’s Sydney Olympic Park web page – link no longer active

Unofficial Map: Sydney Olympic Park Special Events Map by Jimmy Liu

February 9, 2015
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Having just returned from a family trip to my hometown of Sydney, here’s a very relevant map designed by Jimmy Liu. Of the map, Jimmy says:

I drawn a Sydney Olympic Park Major Event Transport Guide which includes special events buses and trains, as well as regular services operated around the SOP premises. There is no such guide exist in any authorities website and I think this should provide some real benefits for people who is interested to use public transport to the location. I have tried to minimize the size of the image but it soon prove to be not quite realistic. 🙁

Transit Maps says:

I absolutely love the ambitious goal of this map – to show all the transport options available for people trying to get to Sydney Olympic Park for special events (football and cricket matches, the Royal Easter Show, etc.) – but I’m not so crazy on the execution. As Jimmy himself says, the huge size of the map becomes an impediment to easy understanding of the content as type becomes too small, etc.

I feel that Jimmy could do worse than taking a look at the spider maps that Transport for London uses for bus services, which feature greatly enlarged central areas and diagrammatic outer regions. In the case of this map, I’d enlarge the Olympic Park complex greatly – clearly showing the relationship between all the venues, the two main bus terminals and the railway station – and simplify the outer region to a more diagrammatic form that could use much less space. Users of this map don’t need to see every twist and turn in the road along the way: all they really need to know is whether there’s a stop/station near their home that takes them to Olympic Park and how long the trip might take (the special buses from the Northern Beaches seem like they’d take forever to me!). An idea of frequency of service might be nice as well. Like the London maps, locality/suburb names in larger type could help users orient themselves on the map quickly. I do like the way that Jimmy has added the street address of all the stops as a subtitle beneath each stop’s name: this is very useful information!

I query the need to show most of the regular Sydney Bus routes: none of them seem like a very efficient way to get to the venue compared to the special services, as they have to stop far more often. Case in point: the 401 bus leaves from Lidcombe station and winds slowly through the back streets to reach the Olympic precinct, while frequent shuttle trains that also leave from Lidcombe go directly to the Olympic Park train station in a matter of minutes. The 526 bus, which connects the Park with the nearby ferry wharf, is an exception to this observation.

As a whole, depiction of the ferry service could be better. I think that it should show all the wharves between Olympic Park and the city (as many, many people could come up the river), and the map also needs to depict which side of the river each wharf is actually on. The marker for the Meadowbank wharf just sits in the middle of the river, for example, which isn’t that useful.

Finally, the map is littered with misspelled names – “Iran Cove” instead of “Iron Cove”, “Rozella” instead of “Rozelle”, “Delvin St” instead of “Devlin St”, and so on. Proof reading is important, people!

In short, the concept behind the map is great, but I feel it needs to be reworked and tightened up to get the best out of the idea.

Historical Map: Go Transit Timetable Map, June 26, 1974

January 25, 2015
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Pretty bare bones and basic, as timetable maps often are, reflecting the extent of service, not the actual details. Only three rail lines compared to today’s six. For some reason, Thornlea is set in a much more condensed version of the typeface than every other label, even though it looks like it would fit easily. The agency still uses the groovy 70s “GO” part of the logo, but has wisely dropped the similarly-styled “TRANSIT”.  

Source: mpar21/Flickr

On Digitally Restoring Vintage Maps

January 23, 2015
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Restoring the vintage transit maps that I’m now selling in my store is a laborious, time-intensive task, but I think that it’s definitely worth it in the end. The major task is getting rid of blemishes: age spots, ink smears, tears, creases, dirt, dust, and even hair or other fibres that are between the print and the scanning surface.

Obviously, Photoshop’s Clone Stamp, Spot Healing and Patch tools are the main weapons of choice here, but they need to be used intelligently and appropriately. I find that harder brush edges actually work better than soft edges, which tend to make an unpleasant 50/50 border where the original background fades into and merges with the new texture above. The Patch tool works well in discoloured open areas, but is lousy when the patch abuts an area of contrasting colour. The Spot Healing tool is great for removing dust spots with one click, but isn’t so good in areas with a lot of texture. So I definitely find myself flicking between  the three tools a lot as I work.

To make sure that I clean the whole map properly, I use a grid in Photoshop to divide the map up into even squares (a 2-inch grid works nicely for me), and then work through each and every square one after the other, like I was on an archaeological dig. I think it’s the best way to ensure consistency, otherwise I’d just flick through the map at random to fix the “big” problems, missing some of the more detailed work.

Once this is done — and depending on the map, it can take quite a while! — the rest is pretty simple. Some colour balance/white point adjustment to counter the yellowing of the paper while still retaining the “vintage” feel to the map, a general brightening of the image to get a better print, and some moderate high pass sharpening to finish off. The results speak for themselves, as seen in these before and after images of two of the completed maps (use the scrubber to compare).

The 1880 Washington DC Streetcars map is the oldest in the collection, and had a lot of problems relating to its age. I definitely spent a long time cleaning all the dust, ink and scuffs off this map!

This 1902 map of Chicago was in pretty fair condition apart from the fact that it was in two separate pieces. I carefully realigned the two pieces, then painstakingly clone stamped away the remaining crease and fold marks. Definitely worth it!

This gorgeous 1895 map of the Long Island Rail Road was, to put it bluntly, absolutely filthy. Huge streaks of dirt and discolouration covered much of the map and required dedication and patience to remove. Additionally, the original map was in two separate pieces which needed to be rejoined.

A lot of clean up for dust, age spots, fold lines and errant ink was required for the full restoration of this awesome 1931 map of Berlin and its railways, as seen in this before-and-after view of a section of the map just south of Spandau.

This wonderful pictorial map of railways in Germany had a lot of yellowing from age that required extensive colour correction, as well as the usual spot and crease/tear removal.

Historical Map: Surface Car Lines of Manhattan Island, August 13, 1915

January 16, 2015
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Via the now inactive nyplmaps Tumblr:

Map showing surface car lines of Manhattan Island, August 13, 1915.

This 61 x 185 cm color map with an approximate scale of 1:12,500 shows the streetcar lines operated by NY Railways, the Third Avenue System and the Second Avenue Railroad Co. that once roamed the Isle of Manhattan. 

I’ll reblog just about anything transit-related from the New York Public Library’s map collection, but this is even more special than usual. What a beautiful map!

Historical Maps: Rail Transit in North America, 1984 by Dennis McClendon

January 16, 2015
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I thought I was all done with “to scale” maps of North American rail systems, but then Dennis McClendon (see previous posts from him) sent in this beautiful series of maps that he produced for Planning magazine back in 1984. Dennis himself says:

Given this week’s Tumblr theme, I thought you might be interested in these maps that I did in 1984, when I worked for Planning magazine. The “new wave” of modern light rail systems was just getting started. My initial idea was to do them all at the same scale, but integrating them with the text into a two-page magazine layout eventually required a compromise of doing them at two distinctive scales.

No GIS or even Illustrator in those days: I created these using Rubylith and Chartpak flexible line tape.

Of note is the large number of systems that were either brand new or still under construction: Portland’s “Banfield” line – now the main section of line between downtown and Gateway – being especially noticeable to me. Also – massive extensions under construction for the Washington DC Metro, and the parlous state of streetcars in New Orleans, with service on the historical St. Charles line only.

And just to throw further fuel onto the fire regarding the categorization of certain systems as either light rail or streetcar, which many commenters on Matt Johnson’s map brought up. In 1984 at least: Pittsburgh and Boston’s Green Line were classified as “light rail” while Philadelphia and the San Francisco Muni were seen as “streetcar”. Make of that what you will.

Source: Dennis McClendon via email.