Official Proposed Map: “SEPTA Metro” Map and Wayfinding, 2021

September 7, 2021
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After teasing this for a while now, SEPTA has finally dropped their recommendations for a completely revamped (and long overdue!) rapid rail network map and wayfinding system. And I have to say, I’m cautiously optimistic about things so far.

Note: The image above is a screenshot of an online interactive map that omits the map’s title and legend. The printed map has this information included.

The first and most obvious difference when compared to previous versions (the map has remained largely unchanged since my review way back in 2011 – Cam) is the complete de-emphasis of the regional rail network. It’s been reduced to very thin lines right at the bottom of the information hierarchy, with only select interchange and terminal stations shown. This makes things very clear that this is a map devoted to the new “Metro” branding – rapid rail transit. Hopefully, service can live up this name in reality!

The near-elimination of the regional rail finally allows the subway-surface trolley lines (now designated as “T” for “trolley”) to be depicted with a much higher degree of accuracy, which I find very welcome. Cased lines show which segments are street running or underground, which works well for the “T” lines, though I find it less useful for the other subway lines. It just seems overly fussy, perhaps?

Breaking all the lines down into their service patterns and showing them individually works really, really well and is very intuitive: B1 = Broad Street Local; B2= Broad Street Express; B3 = Broad-Ridge Express… it’s all very clear.

The new colours for some lines will take a bit of getting used to, I’m sure, but it’s a nice vivid palette that works well together. Fuschia for the “D” lines is a welcome change from a green that was only ever-so-slightly different to the trolley lines.

As this map is just a proposal, there’s a few things that do seem less than finished: the shape of the rivers seems a bit rough, for example, and there’s a couple of non-standard angles on roads that really look out of place. I personally don’t think there’s a huge benefit in showing roads that key bus routes don’t run along: they just introduce another layer of information that isn’t that important and compete visually with the bus lines and regional rail. I do think the route numbers for the bus lines are too small and light to be read easily.

Including points of interest is welcome, but there’s only two (plus parks) on the map at the moment – the stadiums and the Museum of Art. Is this enough to warrant the inclusion of this type of information, or should a few more select locations be included?

Similarly, neighborhood designations are always a good thing to include on a diagram of this regional scale, but they all seem a bit small and and indistinct to be quickly readable to me. “North Philly” and “South Philly” also seem a bit informal for a transit map, though I’ll bow to local usage here if that’s what everyone calls them.

The spacing of stations on the D1 could be made a bit more even, and the way that some station names on the D2 have to flip sides to accommodate the Media/Elwyn regional rail line (much lower in the information hierarchy, remember?) is unfortunate.

I would expect that many of these minor problems will be sorted as the design progresses, but really, this is a very promising start. Even better is the implementation of the individual line diagrams, which takes a bunch of disjointed, inconsistent and just plain unattractive maps and turns them into a clear, cohesive suite of modern diagrams that work as part of a larger whole. Just lovely.

Of course, these diagrams don’t stand alone, but are part of a comprehensive wayfinding package that merits a detailed look. Read about the master plan here, and view an interactive version of the system map that explains a lot of the decision-making process here. You can even leave feedback on what you think of the proposed wayfinding.

Our final word: Borne out of a lot of research, this is a brave new start for SEPTA and is to be applauded. It’s not perfect by any means, but I like the direction its headed in.

Submission – Official Map: Bus Network of Leiria, Portugal, 2021

August 30, 2021
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Submitted by Tiago, who says:

Here’s the official bus map of Leiria, a small Portuguese city with around 50,000 people living inside its urban perimeter.

In my opinion, this map is a mess and completely useless since I was never able to use it while riding the bus. Although it gives us an idea of the lines, it has too little information and it’s too confusing.

What do you think?

Transit Maps says:

I’m with you, Tiago – this really isn’t very useful at all. Rather than having any sense of scale or how the network physically relates to the geography of the city, it’s just an overly stylised and simplistic overview map. In a way, it comes across more as a decorative illustration than a map – pretty, but not actually functional.

The version on the agency’s website is “interactive” in that each line highlights as you mouse over it (with the others fading down), but even that’s only slightly useful. Clicking on a line takes you to the relevant schedule page, which is nice. However, the schedules themselves are also over-designed and not immediately intuitive… everything is just harder work than it should be.

On the positive side, the icons used to indicate points of interest are generally clear and easily understandable, though I’d like some consistency on the bug bus icon used to indicate interurban bus service… only one of them has an indication of where these buses actually go. Again, really useful stuff to know! The “blobby dot” station tick is an interesting approach I haven’t seen before – it certainly fits with the style of the map.

Our final word: Simple, bright, colorful… and not really very useful. Definitely an example of form over function that can only serve as a very simplistic overview of the network.

Source: Mobilis Leiria website

Project: A Map of Electric Streetcars in Portland, Oregon, 1915

August 22, 2021
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Here’s a map that’s been a long time coming, and one that I think has been worth the wait. I’ve wanted to make a transit map of historical streetcar routes in my adopted home town of Portland, Oregon for at least five years now, but it’s always seemed like a very daunting task. The success of my historical Spokane streetcar map from earlier this year finally gave me the tools I needed to get this map done, and this map is very definitely a deliberate companion piece to it.

You can view the map in the window below, or click here to view it in a full-screen window.

Buy Prints here

At its height, the Portland Railway Light & Power Company’s city streetcar network had more than 35 routes, plus a few extra stub lines run by independent companies. Finding a way to clearly map these lines in the dense downtown area always seemed impossible to me, and I’ve made many terrible attempts at it over the years. It wasn’t until I made my Spokane map that I realised that I could simply bundle similar routes together into colour-coded trunk lines, which finally gave me the spark that this Portland map needed to work.

A City of Bridges

In Spokane, I grouped lines by the street they left downtown on, but for Portland there was an even better distinguishing feature: the bridges across the Willamette River. Each bridge had its own unique streetcar loop pattern in downtown Portland – for example, cars across the Broadway Bridge would run counter-clockwise on Broadway, Washington Street, Fifth Street (now Fifth Avenue), and Glisan Street, with the nominal “terminus” being at the intersection of Broadway and Washington.

So I simply grouped routes that used the five bridges of the time (three of which still stand today!) – from north to south being the Broadway, Railroad/Steel, (old) Burnside, (old) Morrison and Hawthorne. Remaining lines were then given other colours to denote if they ran along Washington Street on the west side, or if they were were crosstown or stub lines. The few remaining independent lines round out the forty-one (yes, 41!) lines shown on this map. Only one new streetcar line would be constructed after this date: the 1920 Municipal Terminal line from St. Johns to the city-owned docks on the Willamette. I chose to represent 1915 instead of 1920 because I came across a Pittmon Guide map from that year that included a diagram showing exactly how all the downtown loops worked and which lines used them – an invaluable aid that I’d never seen before, reproduced below.

Note: There’s one error in that Vancouver cars physically couldn’t have gone from Second Street to Glisan Street and then over the Railroad Bridge but must have used Flanders Street like the other Railroad Bridge cars, but the rest seems accurate and consistent with all my other research.

Of Streets and Avenues

Street names used on this map reflect the more chaotic Portland of 1915, rather than today’s orderly quadrant-based address system with streets running east-west and avenues running north-south. Many street names were different, there were only 20 numbers per block, and only streets on the east side had a directional modifier before their name (East Burnside, East Glisan, etc.) and then only if there was an equivalent street on the (older) west side – Belmont and Hawthorne didn’t have such a modifier, for example. In the far south-east portion of the city, a completely different system was in use, giving rise to names like 72nd Street S.E. On the west side, Burnside Street ran only from the Willamette to the intersection of 16th Street; further west was actually a continuation of Washington Street.

A Tale of Two Grids

Because of the denser network on the west side of the Willamette, this map uses two distinctly different grids – one that adheres to the city’s underlying numerical grid on the east side, and an enlarged one for the west side that also takes into account the double-width blocks west of 16th Street. The highlighted downtown area only shows streets that tracks run along or are necessary to make certain streets align properly to each other, so it really only gives a general indication of the street grid. I pondered long and hard over labelling streets here, but it just seemed too busy in the end. Your thoughts on this approach would be welcome!

Other Notes

The map also includes the two PRL&P interurban electric lines running to distant destinations like Troutdale, Gresham, Cazadero and Bull Run; the locations of the system’s carbarns and workshops (TriMet still has shops at Center Street, though they serve buses now); as well as city parks that were known to exist in 1915. Not shown are the extensive Oregon Electric and Southern Pacific interurban electric lines to Corvallis, Salem and Eugene, as they just seemed outside the scope of this PRL&P-centric city lines map.

One line to take note of is the Bridge Transfer line, which literally connects all the bridges on the east side of the river. Most sources I’ve seen have it running from the Broadway Bridge along Larrabee and Holladay to Grand Avenue and then south to its terminus at East Lincoln Street. However, I believe that at this time it actually ran south from Holladay along Union Avenue (today’s MLK, Jr. Blvd.) to East Burnside where it jogged across to Grand Avenue. This is how it’s shown on the little sketch maps that appeared in the Pittmon Guide of the time (see below, note the highlighted “B-T” marker along Union Avenue), and making use of existing track that wasn’t in use by any other line at the time (By 1920, the Vancouver line was rerouted over the Burnside Bridge instead of the Steel Bridge and it ran along Union Avenue north of East Burnside).

For the most part, Portland used letter codes on the headboards of their streetcars, and these are reflected on the route name bullets used on the map: even the strange ones like “L” for Mississippi Street cars, “U” for Williams Avenue, or “WR” and “WW” for Richmond and Woodstock cars: the initial “W” stands for “Waverly”, a neighborhood designation that was gradually dropped. Cars up to Council Crest (the most famous Portland streetcar route) were still known as “PH” or “Portland Heights” in 1915; the “CC” or “Council Crest” designation didn’t come into full effect until after World War 2, though it does seem like the terms were partly interchangeable at the time (see the map above which has both PH and CC markers).

Conclusion

The second in a series of maps showing historical streetcar networks of the Pacific Northwest, and a deeply satisfying one to make. Will there be more maps in this series? Only time will tell. I’d love to do Seattle one day – maybe! As always, your thoughts, comments and corrections are welcome below, and prints are available in the Transit Maps store.

Submission – Historical Map: Newcastle Transport Route Map, September 1949

July 21, 2021
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Submitted by Paul, who says:

A map from the Beamish Museum showing the Newcastle upon Tyne tram, trolleybus and bus network in 1949. The trams and trolleys are long gone, but the bus network is still recognisable. I used to take the number 1 through that janky Heaton route in the 2000s.

The choice of sections for the map lookup references seems very of its time too.

Transit Maps says:

A rather splendid map, with every element hand-drawn – including two charming illustrations of double-decker vehicles in the top corners. Interestingly, the main map seems to be presented at a slightly oblique angle almost as if the view was from an aeroplane high above the city. Distances along the north-south axis are somewhat compressed, and everything leans to the left a little. The bridges over the River Tyne are drawn in a way that reinforces this perspective, so the effect is quite convincing.

If you look closely at this copy of the map, you can see that someone has meticulously written in the locations of all the car barns in blue ink – I wonder who owned this map in the past?

And yes, it always amazes me how modern bus routes continue to travel over the exact same route their predecessors did so long ago!

Source: Beamish Museum

Historical Map: Prague Metro Booklet, c. May 1974

July 2, 2021
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A charming page introducing the Prague Metro, probably from around May 1974 when the first section of the Metro – Line C from Sokolovská (now Florenc) to Kačerov – opened. A diagram of the planned system takes up the majority of the page, accompanied by illustrations and text explaining how ticketing, barriers and ingress/egress from the stations would work. Altogether rather lovely.

Source: transphoto.org

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