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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Hi Cameron — hope you’re staying well these days. I’m pleased to submit two maps I made to capture the North Atlantic Rail System. The system is a proposed high-speed rail network to connect New England’s major hubs. In my map, I imagine it connecting to and interacting with the existing CT Rail, MBTA Commuter Rail, and Amtrak systems throughout the region. Taken in totality, you see a much more transitable version of New England. (I also added in some other proposed upgrades and extensions, like the Danbury Branch to New Milford).
This map obviously has some Vignelli inspirations, and this presented some unique challenges. Major termini (like Boston’s stations, but New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield as well) become unwieldy quickly with so many lines converging. I also ran into a number of perpendicular transfer points that can lead to awkward and messy solutions. I think I’ve resolved these about as well as can be — just primarily by how easy it is to scan and understand which lines go where — but I don’t know if I’d ever be entirely pleased by some of these transfer points. And I unfortunately had to include some angled text; I tried to ameliorate my own issues with angled text by ensuring all angled text points in the same direction (so nobody would have to flip their head back and forth) and by being thoughtful on where and how it’s deployed.
The first map (below) is what I call the “System Diagram.” This map helps you visualize coverage, but places extra emphasis on being able to quickly understand how to get from Point A to Point B — while considering all needed transfer points — over everything else, and sacrifices some readability and ease of use.
“System” diagram.
If the other version is a “System Diagram,” I called the second one a “Coverage Diagram.” Unlike the first version, this one sacrifices a good deal of usability — there are a number of places where the need for a transfer, for instance, is obfuscated — but presents a much more legible view of the system. It’s now far easier to scan through and get a sense of the full system and where it goes.
“Coverage” diagram
In addition to your thoughts on these two maps, I’d be interested on your thoughts on which presents the greatest utility for the average user. Perhaps the second version, while simpler, is better — unlike a subway system, the average user won’t be making travel decisions by a map these days! Or perhaps the full system diagram better conveys the breadth of options available. They both obviously have their own usefulness, but exploring the differences was a fun part of this project.
Transit Maps says:
These are both really good diagrams, Nick – definitely evocative of the Vignelli style, and nicely executed. I like the slightly muted colour palette you’ve used: the green, purple, and red work really nicely with each other and the light yellow background. The blue water is perhaps a little dark for my liking, but it’s not too bad. And I really appreciate that you took the time to explore both design alternatives here: this is how we grow as designers!
Some comments that are applicable to both maps before we move on to the question of which is “better”. Overall, these are very solid, though I’d really like to see larger labels throughout. Your canvas is a 36 inch square, and your main station labels are set in 10-point with secondary labels are as small as 6-point. In my experience, this is a little too small to be readable at a reasonable distance when printed out. Obviously, fixing this would require quite a lot of work to respace the map – enlarging the Boston area to accommodate the bigger labels and probably moving it up a bit to get rid of some of that empty space at the top right of the map would be my priority. The more rural areas can get compressed a bit to compensate. Even getting the labels up to 12-point would make a big difference, I think. And I’d come up with a different solution to labels for lines leaving the edge of the map: having tiny labels set within the route line is always going to be too small to be useful.
So, which of the two diagrams works better? While I’m always an advocate of a diagram or map showing each route in its entirety from beginning to end, I think you’re right in saying it doesn’t matter too much for this type of diagram. Network coverage is probably all a prospective rider needs to see, and it definitely presents a simpler, cleaner overview of the network. That’s not to say that I don’t think you’ve done a good job with those major interchange stations on the system diagram, because you totally have. I think there is room to remove some of the ambiguity on the coverage map about routing for the Providence to Worcester Atlantic Rail line by separating it out more like the system map so that it doesn’t look like you can catch a train all the way from New York to Worcester: the radial or separated nature of the rest of the Atlantic Rail lines makes it pretty clear where they all go.
What do you think, readers? Do you have thoughts on which approach is more successful? Leave a comment below.
Our final word: Kudos for taking the time to explore different design options! Get those labels up a bit bigger and these are both really solid diagrams!
I’d like to submit the official map of the tram network of the Upper Silesian urban area, also known as Katowice urban area. The network currently consists of 29 lines spanning 13 cities and over 300km of single track, making it one of the largest in the world. The map in addition to trams also depicts a few bus replacement services due to extensive renovations of rail infrastructure. What is particular about this map compared to other tram network maps in Poland is its emphasis on borders between cities as the ticket price depends on how many cities you travel through.
Transit Maps says:
An intriguing diagram of a network that I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing about – an extensive tram-based network that acts as both city service and interurban connector. It’s perhaps important to note, however, that no one line extends the full length or breadth of the system, meaning you’d have to transfer a few times to get from one end to the other!
For such a sprawling network, the diagram is laid out reasonably well, with a nice chunky design style and clear labelling. The amount of angled labels are perhaps unfortunate, but almost unavoidable given the amount of stations. The black bar for major interchange stations is unusual, but certainly effective at drawing in the viewer’s eye. For the most part, the routes are clear and easy to follow, though the 23’s little turnaround down to Katowice Plac Miarki is very unclear. The sheer number of different travel zones is probably handled about as well as it can be, and I’m certainly glad that it hasn’t been done by using shaded background areas – that would have been a complete mess!
Initially, the most perplexing thing about this diagram is the colour scheme, which seems very skewed towards the pink/purple end of the spectrum. Pinks and purples make up pretty much half of the different routes, while greens and blues seem very under-represented. However, the diagram works surprisingly well when viewed using a colour-blindness simulator, with excellent contrast between adjacent lines… so I wonder if that’s part of the reasoning behind what on the surface looks quite peculiar? For me, the color-blind version is actually better balanced visually than the actual colours, as seen in the detail below.
Our final word: Considering the size and density of the network (over 300 stops!), this really is quite a clean and clear diagram. An apparently odd colour scheme actually works well for colour-blind users, showing the difficulties inherent in designing something attractive and usable for all users of a transit diagram.
