Submission – Unofficial (But almost official) Map: Integrated map of Mexico City by Pedro Avila

July 2, 2021
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Submitted by Pedro, who says:

So… long story short: By the end of 2018, I submitted to Mexico City official transport authority called SEMOVI (Secretary of Mobility) a proposal for the integrated transport map, which did not make it to the end, and here’s why:

  • Time: The government wanted to introduce its “Integrated Mobility” plan within the first 100 days in office and even though my map was almost ready to go, they were already working with another designer whose work was more in line with what they wanted to do: Merge the Metro’s identity with the rest of the capital’s transport systems. (Official map reviewed in April 2019, 2.5 stars)
  • Highly ambitious: Although the map was not designed by Lance Wyman, he did design the “Movilidad Integrada” image and one of the biggest changes that I proposed was to lose his original Metro typeface and create a new one using Frutiger, DIN and Parisine (Paris’ Metro font) as base, but they felt that the change was too risky as “people are used to the Metro font.” This would’ve also taken a lot of time to complete and again, time was running.

While I wasn’t expecting that much resistance in changing the font, I did have a second proposal in case money/time were an issue: adopt Fira Sans as the new typeface. A huge family of 74 fonts (between weights and styles) that exceeded what I was looking for: legibility, weight variation and condensed/compressed versions (whispering “I’d love to be used in a map” at me).

I used Fira Sans to show how much easier the map will be to read with a non-all-capital font, but Mexico’s love for Lance and all his work won this time.

The map you’ve reviewed is actually the Metro version. There’s a second version where the BRT system (Metrobús) is the star (with all the stations) but because of the font, the Metro lines are arranged differently and become a second lighter colored layer in the back.

As you can see, the only thing we agreed on was an integrated map was needed. I went with a head full of ideas (like changing Line B to one single color, for example [Fun fact: nobody there knows why 2 colors are used]) and even though they were like, “yeah you are right about almost everything here” they were not open to change anything as the clock was ticking.

Transit Maps says:

This is a fascinating “what if?” diagram, as it uses a lot of the same symbology and design framework of what became the official map, yet looks almost entirely different. There’s no doubt that Fira Sans is vastly more legible than the distinctive but hard-to-read Tipo Metro, and it’s great to see that most of the labels on this diagram are set horizontally as well. Maybe some more could be horizontal though: the west end of Metro Line 2 looks like it would work pretty easily, for example.

For such a complex network, Pedro has done a great job of getting everything looking clean and tidy, with a nicely expanded central section. Spacing feels even and harmonious throughout, which is always a good indication of how well the design is working for me.

Our final word: In an alternate reality, this is the current diagram in use in Mexico City, and everyone is happy. Nice work, and a real shame that it wasn’t implemented.

See also: Eric Léon’s unofficial map (June 2020)

Submission – Official Map: Stockholm Archipelago Ferry Network Diagram, 2021

June 30, 2021
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Submitted by Matias, who says:

Waxholmsbolaget is a big ferry operator in Stockholm, connecting most of the small islands in the Stockholm archipelago. They have recently updated their line map to a very diagrammatic style. The idea is good, to make it easier to find the lines and where you are going, but it massively distorts the network and the omission of geographic features makes it very difficult to orient yourself. What do you think?

Transit Maps says:

I commented briefly on this diagram on Twitter last week, but I’ll record my thoughts here in a little more detail as well.

First off, it looks to me like the design of this diagram has been heavily influenced by the current Stockholm rail network diagram (PDF link), as it uses similar typography, design elements and symbology. The deep blue background colour is a nice touch (and an improvement over the flat grey of the rail diagram), as is the way that the route/timetable numbers are presented on little nautical pennants. Overall, it’s very nicely designed – it has a solid set of design rules that have been applied consistently as well as a comprehensive legend and annotations on the map.

Despite all these positives, I just don’t think the diagram actually really works for trip planning. As Matias says, the massive distortion of the network and the lack of any geographical cues makes it very difficult for a reader to orient themselves. In reality, the network is much taller than it is wide, spread out as it is along Sweden’s eastern coastline, but the diagram is landscape instead of portrait. Any sense of distance or spatial relationship between the different stops is lost completely. There’s also the whole problem of what actually constitutes a “route” in the context of this diagram, but that’s better dealt with in this Reddit thread, which has a similar view of this diagram and its usefulness.

It’s worth noting that the previous map was fully geographical, and I’m not sure that’s the right solution either. It gives a much better idea of how the system physically fits together, but there’s a lot of empty, wasted space as well. Maybe a hybrid simplified map with the more complex areas enlarged somewhat for clarity would be a good compromise?

Our final word: Looks very stylish, but is it actually useful? I’d say not, and I have my doubts about a full “subway diagram” design like this being appropriate for a complex ferry network like this.

Source: Official Waxholmsbolaget site

Official Map: Sydney Trains Bankstown Line Closure Bus Services Map… and a Better Unofficial Alternative

June 7, 2021
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Sydney’s Bankstown Line is closing for two weeks at the end of June as part of its conversion from standard heavy rail to a new and fancy high-frequency Metro line. Sydney Trains has produced the following map to help people navigate the many train replacement bus services needed to get riders around, and it’s… not great.

While I understand that producing this type of map often involves a rapid turnaround with very little budget, this effort just doesn’t convey the required information quickly and coherently. The biggest problem is that the diagram bears very little resemblance to the official map – going so far as to split Sydenham and Redfern stations into two separate parts! – so there’s nothing visually familiar for users to relate the changes to. The starkly angled type is hard to read, and the affected stations of the Bankstown Line take up far too much vertical space to be read coherently. The depiction of the Airport branch of the T8 line is almost embarrassingly bad, as is the jaunty angle the Eastern Suburbs line takes out to Bondi Junction.

As a contrast, here’s an alternate version whipped up by @RoamingZephyr on Twitter that’s just so much better:

It fits into the same shell as the original map, so there’s no cheating here – just a far more unified design that’s easier to read and understand. Note that it takes far more design cues from the full system map, so it’s much more immediately familiar to users. The grouping of the bus routes – to Central and Sydenham above the closed line, and to stations on the T8 line below it – is immediately intuitive and works really well. The inclusion of the L1 light rail line is nice for the sake of completeness, although I doubt that it would be a valid alternative to the buses for getting to the city in a timely manner. Great work that’s a definite improvement over the original in my book!

Official Map: Klang Valley Integrated Transit System, Malaysia, 2021

May 28, 2021
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I recently came across this new diagram of rapid transit in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area, and thought it interesting enough to review. Previous official maps of this network have been very generic and slipshod, so it’s good to see an attempt to make a more distinctive and memorable diagram, though I don’t think it’s entirely successful.

Overall, I think it does a decent job of depicting a sprawling network – the labelling of stations is clear (using URW DIN, an excellent update to that venerable type family), and the route lines are easy to distinguish from each other. It’s interesting to note that there’s no distinction between transit mode (commuter rail, LRT, MRT, monorail, and BRT!) on the diagram – this is an integrated rapid transit network, so all the routes get equal visual treatment. You have to look to the legend below to ascertain which mode corresponds to which route (though it looks like the monorail icon that should belong to Line 8 has been transposed with Line 9 – oops!).

From a technical viewpoint, I do wish there was more of an underlying grid to hold the diagram together a bit better – lots of things almost line up with each other, but not perfectly so. Similarly, the distance between parallel routes could be more consistent, and none of the corner radii nest within each other properly, which always looks weird. Some more consistency in those radii would be good as well – some lines have lovely big swooping curves, while others have very tight corners. It’s particularly jarring on Line 5 where it immediately transitions from the biggest curve on the diagram to the smallest!

Like many Asian transit maps, this one uses numerical station codes in addition to names. Unfortunately, those numbers are contained within the small station marker dots, and are thus too small to be readily legible. I think these numbers are set in 4-point text on the printed map, which is just tiny.

Strangely, two future routes (Line 11 and Line 12) are shown with little indication that they’re not yet open. Line 11 has a “Coming Soon” note in the legend, but it’s actually opening well after Line 12 – which has no note at all! Peculiar.

Our final word: While this is much better than previous attempts, and starts to give the diagram its own unique look, there’s some work to be done to make it truly excellent. Still, a promising beginning!

Source: MyMRT website

Official Map: Melbourne Tram Network, 2021

May 26, 2021
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Here’s a review that’s definitely very overdue: the official Melbourne tram network diagram.

Overall, it’s a very pleasantly stylised depiction of the network using 30-degree angles, though it probably takes diagrammatic expansion of the downtown area to extremes. The distance from Harbour Esplanade to Spring Street is just 2.5km (or 1.5 miles), but it takes up a huge portion of the map, shrinking Melbourne’s expansive suburbs substantially. I will say that the extra room for the CBD is used well, however – I particularly like the inclusion of the physical footprints of the city railway stations and how they interact with major downtown tram stops.

The main axis of routes along Swanson Street/St. Kilda Road is the major compositional device of the map, and it’s a strong design element. I’d probably like to see the single routes that cut across this road be brought to the top of the layer stack to make them a little easier to follow: the 6 and 58 in particular could benefit from this, but the east-west routes in the downtown zone would also look better if they were in front, I think.

I believe that the labels for the roads that the trams run along are new to this version of the diagram, and they certainly help with navigation and general orientation, especially as not all the interchanges are named. The inclusion of major landmarks and points of interest is also very welcome, though not quite so much when they get shifted out of their proper location by other labels. For example, the Docklands Observation Wheel (yet another giant Ferris Wheel, branded as the Melbourne Star) is just 200 metres north of the Waterfront City Docklands stop, but that very label pushes the marker for the Wheel much further east, looking like a lengthy trek to reach.

Aside: It tickles me pink that in a city renowned for sports that need oval playing fields – cricket and Australian Rules Football – the venue used for the rugby codes and soccer is simply labelled as the “Rectangular Sports Stadium”.

The striped blue water is a pleasant design feature, although it does clash a bit with the similarly striped Zone 1/2 area to the top right of the map. As the zone area has to be striped to convey the idea that it’s “between zones”, I’d probably have looked for a different texture for the water (subtle waves, perhaps?), or just used a flat blue instead.

A clean, no-nonsense legend and neat integration of the night tram network and weekend route deviations are other highlights of the map.

Our final word: Once you get over the initial shock of the massive enlargement of the downtown area, this is actually a very competent diagram with a very consistent design language. More care could perhaps be taken with the order that the routes cross each other, but that’s not a deal breaker by any means. The addition of labels for the roads is a great evolution over the previous version.

Source: Yarra Trams website

Video: History of the MBTA’s Rapid Transit Map

May 21, 2021
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I came across this on YouTube the other day, and thought it was definitely worth sharing. It’s quite long (clocking in at well over an hour if you include the Q&A session at the end), but there’s a lot of great insight into both the history of the MBTA map, and of Ken’s personal journey designing the map over the years.

Of particular interest is how the whole redesign via a crowd-sourced contest a few years ago played out behind the scenes – Transit Maps gets a little name-check here as Ken notes my disdain for competitions like this.

Ken also once and for all definitively states why you can’t use an icon that represents the absence of accessibility at a station, as well as delving into a lot of other Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) design rules for maps that many designers may not be aware of. He definitely casts a lot of light on how these rules, stakeholders, and even politics affect the way the map is designed and produced – fascinating stuff! Give it a look if you can.

Source: YouTube

Submission – Historical Map: M6 Bus Route Sign, New York, c. 1975

May 13, 2021
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Submitted by Shaul Picker, who says:

I have a Flickr and save these images from eBay listings and elsewhere. This is a sign from the former New York City Department of Traffic showing the M6 bus route, which was eliminated in 2010.

Transit Maps says:

What a great little map! While the M6 may have been eliminated in 2010, this map is much older, as evidenced by both the very 1970s typography, the use of “Avenue of the Americas” instead of 6th Avenue, and the references to the Penn Central Railroad at both Penn Station and Grand Central – this last dating the map to pre-1976, when Penn Central went bankrupt.

The map itself is really quite lovely, doing a lot of work with just tints of blue and white: the featured route gets the darkest shade, while all the other Manhattan routes get tinted back to be subsidiary to it. It’s hard to see on the image, but the legend suggests that eastbound and westbound routes have a slightly different treatment to differentiate them from each other. Interestingly, the map highlights Penn Station, Grand Central, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and PATH stations – but doesn’t mention the Subway at all.

Our final word: A great monochromatic diagram that highlights the M6 well, but also provides good context at how it fits into the bus network in Manhattan.

Source: Union Turnpike/Flickr

Submission – Unofficial Map of All Transmilenio Services, Bogotá, Colombia by Sergio Mejía

May 7, 2021
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Submitted by Sergio, who says:

Hi Cameron! Some months ago I designed a map of my city Bogotá where it shows all of the services in the system in the shape of the map we know. As you know, there are a ton of services in Transmilenio, so a standard map wouldn’t work – thus each station having strip maps of the lines. However, I wanted to see how a full map would look. Of course I knew from the beginning that it would not be useful because the sheer amount of lines but I made it nonetheless. Hope you enjoy it! The north is to the left as accustomed to Bogotá related maps.

Transit Maps says:

In my review of the official Transmilenio zone map (May 2018, 1 star), I noted that the insane complexity of the network made making a full system map or diagram that was actually useful almost impossible. But Sergio’s given it a red hot go here, and the results are certainly interesting.

I definitely appreciate how he’s managed to keep a similar overall shape to the official map despite the incredible number of routes that are being shown. The gradients between the zone colours are nicely done, though some colour combinations are obviously more aesthetically pleasing than others. A little more care could have been taken with how the routes criss-cross each other, as the layering seems a bit random in places – most obviously where the brown “E” and red “F” lines cross.

The most obvious problem with this map (apart from information overload at the sheer number of routes!) is that the labels for the routes are far too small to be read easily. It can also be difficult to “follow” stops along a line, just because there are so many parallel routes of the same colour.

However, with some modifications, I could perhaps see this map working as an online interactive route planner, where the user inputs a route name (or starting point/destination) and the relevant route is then highlighted. I also wonder if there’s a way to reduce clutter a bit by grouping routes into trunk lines based on stops within the zones, but it really does look like each route has its own distinct stopping pattern!

Our final word: An excellent attempt at a difficult mapping problem. Probably not really usable as a printed map, but still a worthwhile design exercise!

Project: Diagram of Amtrak Rail Services, May 1971

April 27, 2021
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May 1, 2021 marks Amtrak’s 50th anniversary! On that day in 1971, most regional and long-distance trains in the United States either disappeared or became part of the new national rail carrier’s network (there were some exceptions to this rule, which we’ll get to later). While there are plenty of maps out there that show the general extent of Amtrak’s nascent system — including one that I made myself as part of an historical series — there aren’t any that break things down to the actual routes that were available from that day. I’ve been meaning to make just such a map for a while now, and the silver anniversary finally gave me the kick in the pants that I needed to get it done! Read more and see the map after the jump.

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Submission – Fantasy Map: West Palm Beach LRT by Adam Susaneck

April 7, 2021
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Submitted by Adam, who says:

Here’s my proposal for a low-floor LRT system in Downtown, West Palm Beach, FL (pop. ~110,000). It’s fun to think about as West Palm actually grew up as a fairly dense railroad town in the 1920s around the Seaboard and FEC stations. Wedged between two large lakes and the intercoastal waterway, the downtown is a fairly dense north-south oriented grid, with a mix of historic homes and apartment towers. The higher-speed train system Brightline has recently started operating between Downtown Miami and West Palm Beach on the FEC tracks, though it shut for COVID (however Brightline is using the closure to expedite resignalling and track work for an ongoing extension to Orlando).

On the Blue Line, through downtown this system travels on Olive Avenue and Dixie Highway. A redesigned traffic pattern would discourage drivers from using these two roads, and would instead encourage them to use the much wider Quadrille Avenue. This would entail a series of required turnoffs at every intersection, such as is used on Market Street in San Francisco.

On the Pink Line, as it exits the airport it utilizes the space around the existing Tri-Rail ROW to cross the very-wide Belvedere Blvd. After crossing Belvedere, it proceeds at-grade underneath the elevated I-95 ROW, at which point it starts street running on Belvedere Blvd.

Transit Maps says:

As always, I can’t really comment on the feasibility or likelihood of such a project – although it’s definitely nice to dream of a future where Brightline, Tri-Rail and Amtrak services in southern Florida are complemented by comprehensive light rail “feeder systems” in the major cities along their routes.

The first thing I noticed about this map was the superb treatment of the aerial photography base map. It looks like Adam has made great use of the Gradient Map effect in Photoshop to create a stylish dark grey-to-black effect that really allows his route line colours to pop out of the background, but still retain a lot of detail in the photo. I love it, and I’m totally using this look next time I have to make a map using aerial imagery. The white labels stand out nicely as well, the yellow Brightline route and text is acceptable, but the green Tri-Rail line and text is just a little hard to make out. Some minor tweaking/brightening of colours will solve this in no time, however.

Adam has chosen to represent one-way sections of the routes with thinner lines, which is a perfectly acceptable solution. However, he’s kept the thinner lines centred on the thicker part and has also reduced the thickness of the white keyline that separates the background from the route lines. This makes the transition between the thick and thin sections very abrupt as the line weight suddenly “steps down”, and the thinner white outline makes the narrower lines disappear into the background a bit. I always prefer to offset the thinner sections a bit to line up with the outer edges of the thicker line on both sides. Keeping the white border the same apparent thickness also helps a lot to ease the transition and keep the thinner route lines nicely separated from the background. See the image below for an example.

Our final word: A simple little fantasy system well rendered on a striking background image. Some minor improvements in colour contrast for legibility and the depiction of one way sections could be made, but this is still rather lovely.