Unofficial Map: Belgian Rail Network by Arne Nys, December 2014

November 20, 2014
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Submitted by Arne himself (and others). Arne says:

I started my own diagram of all the regular rail connections in Belgium that will be active after the schedule change coming in half December. I got the feeling there was so much noise around this schedule change (train lines being canceled or rerouted), but at no point the rail company had any nice visual representation of what the network would look like in the future. So I decided to make one myself and after a month, this is the result. I would love to know what you think about it! (you will find more background information about how my map was designed on my blog if you want to.)

Transit Maps says:

I do love a massive transit map project, and this one is a beauty! It’s definitely designed to be viewed on-screen as a PDF and zoomed in close, as the printed size would be around 28″ x 25.5″ with teeny-tiny 5-point station name labels. The labels that denote individual route numbers are even smaller, at just 2.5 points.

The first thing to notice is the huge hub of Brussels, which seems to sprawl across a huge portion of the map. While I appreciate the effort to show every route from end to end, I do wonder if there’s a workable way to compress all the routes of a particular type that stop at the same stations into one (perhaps thicker) line as it passes through the city. The main drawback of the style currently used is that some stations in Brussels that only have a few trains call at them – like Kapellekerk/Chapelle and Congres – have their dots a long way away from their labels. There’s eighteen blank route lines between Kapellekerk/Chapelle’s label and one lone dot! An approach I used on my Amtrak as Subway Map poster was to draw a thin line across the route lines that led the eye from the labels to the relevant dot.

The biggest problem I see with the map is the use of red and green as two of the four route line colours. These are almost indistinguishable from each other for colour-blind users, which presents a serious usability problem for the map. It’s ameliorated somewhat by having the service type labelled within each route line (IC versus L in this case), but as I’ve mentioned, these labels are tiny and not the easiest to read.

The only other little legibility edit that I would make would be to have all the little terminus discs that contain each route number/letter rotated so that they all read from the bottom of the map, rather than being aligned to the angle of the route. The less head-turning, the better!

Our rating: A comprehensive and attractive look at passenger rail in Belgium, although meant for close and detailed examination on screen, rather than as a printed map. Needs work to make it accessible for colour-blind users. Brings back memories of travelling Brussels-Gent-Brugge-Ieper-Brussels way back in 2003. Three-and-a-half stars.

See also: this official map from back in 2012.

Source: PDF from Arne’s project website

My Journey on the London Underground by Tom Davies, Age 6

November 20, 2014
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If you ever wonder just how much the Tube Map is ingrained into British culture, then I think we have the answer here: drawn (and drawn well) by a six year old, complete with National Rail interchange icons. Fantastic!

This is my representation of the London Underground map (which I am very interested in) and shows the journey from my house to my Daddy’s work near Waterloo (identified by the star – which is unfortunately on the north side of the Thames!)

Source: Steer Davies Gleave/Flickr

Unofficial Maps: Maxwell Roberts’ Variants on the Boston MBTA Map

November 15, 2014
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Thanks to pretty much the entire Internet for sending me a link to Boston Magazine’s story about Maxwell Roberts’ work on alternate MBTA “T” maps. I’m not going to review them all, but I would recommend that you click through and evaluate them yourself. Personally, the rotated hexalinear version shown above is my favourite.*

What I’m interested in talking about is Roberts’ approach to transit map design. Whereas most designers will automatically gravitate to a standard 45°/90° diagram, or maybe consider one or two slightly more unusual options, Roberts explores every variant he can think of, and then some more. Octolinear, hexalinear, tetralinear, concentric, curvilinear… every one is put to the test and designed in full, regardless or not of whether it’s actually a good idea to do so (his rotated tetralinear Boston map really doesn’t work, for example). Although a heck of a lot of work, this approach certainly allows a full and honest comparison of the benefits and drawbacks of every approach, side by side. As he says in the article:

If you don’t try to exhaustively explore a city like this, I don’t think you can really say that you understand how a network fits together, what its key challenges are, and how best to address them.

Roberts is very interested in the psychology of using transit maps – how our brain perceives and processes information presented to us – so his method makes a lot of sense. For example, he strongly believes that curvilinear maps (made up of long, curved lines with no straight segments) have good usability, while I believe that they simply don’t look good from an aesthetic point of view.

*I will point out that all of his maps would have to be reworked when the Green Line extension north of Lechmere opens, as none of them line up properly with the Lowell commuter rail line (which the extension will share right-of-way with). Future-proofing a map is also an important part of the design process!

See also: all posts about Maxwell Roberts

Source: Boston Magazine via everyone who reads the blog!

Project: 1926 Map of U.S. Highways, Digital Restoration

November 14, 2014
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A recent article on CityLabs commemorated November 11, 1926 – the day when all the old national road trails were first renumbered as the U.S. National Highways System that survives pretty much intact to this day. The article also featured this great map that was produced at the time, and a link to a very high-resolution scan of it over on the Wikimedia Commons.

Being a subject close to my heart (as this highway system is the basis of not one, but two of my “subway map” projects), I downloaded the map and began perusing it eagerly; seeing where the system had changed and where it remained the same. As I looked, I began to see that while the quality of the scan was good, and the content of the map was fascinating, the map itself was in a pretty sorry state. Basically, it looks like you’d expect an 88-year old map to look – dirty spots, fold and crease marks, ink that had rubbed off on other parts of the map when the map had been folded, and so on.

So I thought I’d do a bit of restoration work and clean this awesome old map up a bit. I used to do quite a lot of photo retouching and image compositing in former design roles, so I’m certainly no stranger to the tools available in Photoshop for this type of work. Most of what I’ve done is a combination of the Spot Healing Brush (for easy spot and line removal) and the Clone Stamp tool for more detailed work, or where blemishes were right up against actual printed parts of the map. After that, I applied a High Pass sharpen to the whole map, which both sharpens edges and adds a little more contrast, and finally added a Curves adjustment layer that just brightens the map up just a bit.

The important thing was to not overdo anything: I erred on the side of caution when deciding to remove any element, and I haven’t removed that “old map” feel from the piece. I’ve included a gallery of before (to the left) and after (to the right) images below, so you can get an idea of the work involved. There was a lot of ink that had rubbed off into other areas of the map where it had been folded, including the whole title of the map, which appeared in reverse across much of Mexico. This and crease marks were what I worked hardest on to remove. All up, I’ve probably spent 40–50 hours lovingly restoring this fantastic map.

As the map is out of copyright (produced by the Federal government and also more than 75 years old), I’m also offering prints for sale in my online store for $39. The prints are 34″ wide by 22″ deep, printed on a 24″ x 36″ sheet. It’s also the perfect complement to my U.S. Highways as Subway Map poster, so I’m also selling them as a combo pack: both maps for $68, a savings of $10 compared to buying them separately.

36″ x 24″ Print – $39 + shipping
U.S. Highways Combo Pack – $68

Historical Map: New North-South All-Express Service, Chicago, 1949

November 11, 2014
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From a brochure introducing the now-infamous A/B stopping pattern on Chicago’s “L”.

A trial run of the (mostly) alternating stopping pattern—designed to speed up operations on lines where there was no extra passing track for express services—had been carried out on the Lake Street Line in April 1948 and had been deemed a success. The next two lines to receive A/B service were the Ravenswood Line and the North-South Route as seen here. The revision to service also closed a total of 23 low-use stations on these lines, which also helped to improve service times.

The map goes to great lengths to explain the new patterns, with very clear explanatory text which details the system and its hours of operation. The idea of “speed” is not so subtly reinforced by the appearance of Hermes/Mercury on the front cover, awkwardly transporting a train along through the clouds at a godly pace.

More information on the history of Chicago’s A/B stopping pattern here.

Source: mister_scantastic/Flickr

Official Map: Metro and Tram Network, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2014

November 10, 2014
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Submitted by Bruno Heemskerk, who says:

Railkaart (dutch for rail map) of Amsterdam. Train, metro and tram only, no buses. Consider the big airplane as icon for Schiphol Airport (no tram or metro connection). And the ‘Vondelpark’ with strong typography.

Transit Maps says:

This is one of those maps that has all the ingredients of a good transit map, but somehow ends up being much less than the sum of its parts. As Bruno suggests, much of this comes down to the lack of polish on the final product.

He rightly points out the oversized aeroplane icon for Amsterdam Schiphol airport (why indicate it so prominently on the map if neither of the two modes shown on the map actually go there?), but I also take issue with most of the other icons, which tread a very uneasy path between detailed “3D” drawings of landmarks and strangely “clip art-y” lion heads, buffalo (!) and tulips. Some of the landmark icons are thickly outlined in black, making them look a little cartoon-like, while others—like the Amsterdam Arena—are not. From different original sources, perhaps? All in all, they’re a pretty inconsistent bunch that really don’t gel very well with each other.

The rest of the map is full of other little problems that—for me, at least—just detract from the overall quality. An example is the inconsistent placement of labels at the termini of the Metro lines: there’s simply no reason for all of them to be placed completely differently in relationship to their line numbers. There’s also some poorly nested corners with some of the route lines, especially to the immediate west of Overamstel station. There’s more, but you get the idea.

Our rating: I realise that I’m probably making this map sound a lot worse than it is—the routes are easy enough to follow and the map certainly isn’t hideous—but all these little niggles just add up to an unsatisfying experience. It’s certainly a far cry from the beautiful diagrammatic map Amsterdam had in the 1980s. Two-and-half stars.

Source: Official GVB website

Historical Map: Texas and Pacific Railways Route Map (c. 1950s)

November 9, 2014
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Great little system map from the back of a ticket. Amtrak’s modern-day Texas Eagle route is a direct descendant of the route shown here.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Submission – Official Map: MetroWest Bus System, Framingham, Massachusetts, 2014

November 8, 2014
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Submitted by Miles Taylor, who says: 

Here’s a pretty awful map I found of the MWRTA bus system in Framingham, MA. I can’t make heads or tails of these crazy routes.

Transit Maps says:

Yeah… this is pretty bad. It’s pretty much anyone’s guess as to what’s going on at the northwestern end of the red Route 7, as it looks like the bus just loops around aimlessly until it finds a way back east. In reality, there’s actually three different Route 7s – 7A and 7B travel both travel from Framingham to Marlborough, while 7C does all the tedious looping around Marlborough itself – but you’d never know that from the map.

Some of the other routes are almost as confusing, and the whole thing has a “slapped together” feel about it: lots of random angles, acute direction changes, angled type… and so on. The numbers shown on the map along the routes aren’t actually route numbers, but the route designation number for the roads that the buses travel along. This took me a few minutes to work out, especially because there’s a Route 9 and a Highway 9!

And while we’re at it: the agency logo is a good idea executed really poorly. You can’t just take a straight-sided “M”, turn it upside-down and call it a “W”!

Our rating: Pretty terrible, but better than some (although not by much). One star.

Source: Official MWRTA Website

Map/Infographic: Overnight Ferry Routes of Japan (2013)

November 8, 2014
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Well, this is pretty much the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. An awesome map/infographic combo from Japan showing overnight ferry routes in that country. The map uses a grid of dots to define the shape of the Japanese islands, and the routes are beautifully stylised, but clear and easy to follow. The minimalist colour scheme is quite lovely and is used sensibly to enhance understanding of the information presented. Note how the blue and purple alternate in the list of routes below the map, logically breaking the information up into chunks.

The list of routes seems to be very informative, showing fares and stops along the route, all of which are shown in a straight line along some sort of a scale (which seems to indicate hours) to allow for easy comparison. The fantastic technical illustrations of some the ships are just an added bonus.

How good is this infographic? Well, the fact that I can interpret much of the information shown, despite not being able to read one single character of Japanese says it all.

Our rating: Looks great while being packed with information. Five stars!

Source: Tripadvisor Japan/Tripgraphics

Submission – (Near) Future Map: Taipei MRT, Taiwan

November 8, 2014
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Submitted by Brandon Huang, who says:

The Taipei MRT is extending the Green Line soon and has come up with a redesigned map. What do you think about this redesign? The most notable change is the introduction of a numbering system.

Transit Maps says:

I reviewed the Taipei MRT map way back in November 2011, so it’s definitely time to take another look at it. It’s not entirely true to say that this version introduces a numbering system, as the one I reviewed also gave numbers to lines, but it’s certainly streamlined and implemented better. All the single-station branch lines are not numbered, bringing the total down to five (from nine), and the numbers are shown on the map as well as in the legend, which makes them a lot more useful.

The opening of the new line also does away with the awkward Red Line/Green Line colour swap that used to happen south of Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall station: the new Line 3 runs all the way through the centre of Taipei. The intersection of Lines 2 and 3 at that station is a little awkward, with both lines abruptly changing direction, but the new numbering at the end of each line prevents things from becoming too confusing. I initially thought that the red/green combination here would cause huge troubles for colour-blind users, but I proofed the image in Photoshop and the two shades seem to have enough difference between them to be distinguishable from each other.

Another positive: the addition of icons for airports and other rail services to the actual map. Previous maps had the icons and a lists of relevant stations in the legend only, meaning that a user unfamiliar with Taipei had to scan the map for a relevant station name – not always the easiest thing to do! I also like the addition of a subsidiary route line for main line rail services. However, the blue used to denote rivers is now so light as to be almost invisible, which isn’t great.

Our rating: Some nice usability improvements over previous versions, while retaining the same visual style. A solid update: three-and-a-half stars.

Source: Official Taipei Metro website – link no longer active