Submission – Official Map: Copenhagen S-Tog Network, 2014

July 26, 2014
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Submitted by 1993matias, who says:

Hi there!

I am a big admirer of your reckless slaughter of bad maps – and the praise of the good ones. But, the map you got for the Copenhagen S-train network (reviewed way back in November 2011, 3 stars) is not the best you could have gotten. This one above is the official one at all stations in the area.

It has that sleek feel as the other map, but the local trains in the north take much of the focus with their dark colour. The metro has some very neutral colours, contrary to the red and green they really have. And the black and white dots make no sense to me, why not use ticks as the rest of the map? There are no transfer station, as the ticket system is “open” – barrier free. That makes every station a transfer station. 

The design has been thought through, I can’t see any glaring design mistake – maybe apart from the “merging” routes just after the central station on the big bend (purple and grey).

I wonder what they will do when the new metro circle line opens – there’s no room left in central Copenhagen…

Transit Maps says:

To be fair, I did review the previous map back in 2011, so I’m not really surprised that it’s changed since then (I do note that my source link on the previous post no longer leads to any maps).

That said, this version of the map addresses almost all of the issues I had with the older one – lack of geographical context, no indication of connecting services, no indication of the importance of Copenhagen Central station – so it’s definitely a huge improvement in my opinion.

I would agree that the dark purple colour used for the connecting “Lokalbaner” trains is far too visually strong, but I don’t really mind the light grey used for the Metro lines: it’s secondary, connecting information and shouldn’t be shown with the same importance as the main focus of the map, the S-Tog system. I’m also at a a loss to understand why the stations are white on the M1 line, but black on the M2: it really doesn’t seem necessary to me. 

And yes, it looks like a rethink will be needed once the Metro circle line opens… the centre of the city is going to need a lot more room. However, there’s a lot of empty space (Sweden) to the right of the map, so it looks like the same square format could still be used.

Our rating: A big improvement over the previous iteration. Four stars.

Source: DSB website – link no longer active. 

Replica 1958 Transit Map at the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum, Japan

July 25, 2014
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 No seriously: a museum devoted to ramen (in all honesty, it actually sounds pretty awesome). This map is found on the main floor of the museum, where nine restaurants serve different styles of ramen from Japan and around the world in a faithfully recreated Japanese streetscape from 1958 – the year that instant ramen was invented.

As to which transit system it represents, I can’t even begin to guess. The original post on Flickr posits Tokyo, but the museum is closer to Yokohama… But I’m pretty sure that one of you will be able to help out and translate/locate for me.

EDIT: And… that took all of 10 minutes to work out. Thanks to psylin for translating and finding out that the red station is “Narutobashi”, a fictional station and area that the replica streetscape represents. 

However, I am almost certain that the numbers in the station dots represent the fare from the red “You Are Here” dot.

Source: chimpsonfilm/Flickr

Photo: Incheon Airport Bus Map

July 25, 2014
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As a functional map, this is pretty much useless, as it just looks like giant balls of yarn are unravelling across Incheon and Seoul.

Source: leonardo.bonanni/Flickr

Historical Map: WMATA Metro Planning Map, 1968

July 24, 2014
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Via ddotdc:

WMATA planning map, dated March 1, 1968 and last revised by the WMATA Board on June 11, 1970. 

Please view a full-size, searchable version of the map. (Navigational tools are at the bottom of the map.)

On March 1, 1968, WMATA officially adopted a 97.2 mile regional system in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. On February 7, 1969, WMATA revisited the rapid rail plan and relocated three of the stations, calling instead for 97.7 miles of track. The total system cost was $2.5 billion ($15.9 billion in today’s dollars) consisting of $835 million of revenue bonds issued by WMATA, $1.1 billion in federal funding, and $573.5 million from local sources. On June 11, 1970, the WMATA Board adopted a realignment of 2.5 miles of a mid-city route to better serve the city center. This revised version is posted above. 

Metro originally had a future route planned to Dulles Airport—the final destination of Phase 2 of the soon-to-open Silver Line—the first half of which (to McLean, Tysons, Greensboro, Spring Hill, and Wiehle-Reston) is scheduled to begin service on Saturday, July 26, 2014.

This version of WMATA’s planning map also features a different path for a route that would materialize as Metro’s Green Line. The proposed north-south route through the District was set to feature a station near Logan Circle and run north toward a terminus in Laurel, Md. An alternate route trajectory, which was then being studied by WMATA, ran up-and-down 7th Street NW and featured station locations near what are now the Mt Vernon Sq 7th St-Convention Center and Shaw-Howard U Metro Stations. 

According to this map, Metro also planned for a Metro line along a route that is similar to one followed by the proposed Columbia Pike streetcar in Arlington, VA. 

Pro tip: Note how the Metro Station names have changed over time.

Fantasy Map: Gotham Transit Authority Map from “The Dark Knight Rises”

July 23, 2014
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It’s Batman Day! (Who knew, right?)

In honour of the world’s greatest detective, here’s a strangely familiar transit map that was used as a prop during filming of “The Dark Knight Rises”.

And here’s a link to a great article on Smithsonian.com about the surprisingly well-defined and official geography of Batman’s hometown.

Also: this.

Source: New Jersey Star-Ledger

Historical Map: Frankfurt S- and U-Bahn Map, 1982

July 23, 2014
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Here’s a great map that shows the rapid transit of Frankfurt am Main in Germany at an interesting point in its development.

The Citytunnel that carried lines S1 through S6 under the central part of the city had opened just four years prior to this, and the bridge over the Main that carried the new S14 and S15 lines was constructed in 1980. The year after this map was produced, the Citytunnel was extended from Hauptwache to Konstablerwache, transforming it from a small station that only served the U4 and U5 lines to the second-busiest station in the network.

Also of interest is the strong divide visible in the network north and south of the Main river. Only one coloured S-Bahn route (the S15) makes it south of the river, and then only just. The rest of the routes that service the south are all shown in black, and all depart from the mainline platforms at the Hauptbahnhof. In effect, they’re really regional trains, despite their “S” numbering, and actually appear to be indicated as such in modern maps of the network.

The map itself is a great example of nice, clean, 1980s German transit map design, apart from the oddly large and out-of-place asterisk used to mark short-turn stations.

Our rating: Good-looking map of a system that was expanding rapidly at the time. Three-and-a-half stars!

Source:Dennis Brumm/Flickr

Unofficial Map: Istanbul Railway Network by Bertan Kılıçcıoglu

July 22, 2014
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I’ve already featured an excellent unofficial map of Istanbul’s transit network by Kerim Bayer (June 2012, 4 stars), but here’s a new one that’s worthy of some attention.

First, let’s note that Istanbul’s transit network has expanded considerably in the last couple of years, and there’s now finally a rail connection across the Bosphorus, as well as a new Metro bridge over the Golden Horn (with a station in the middle of the span, no less!).

Although there’s a revised official map to go along with this expansion (see the second image above), it’s pretty poor. Weird non-standard angles are employed to shoehorn new routes into the existing framework of the map and the whole thing has a very tired, amateur feel about it.

Apparently, Bertan felt so strongly about this poor, sad map that he decided to rework it in his spare time. A man after my own heart!

What’s interesting about his map, though, is that it’s not really a new design at all. Bertan has taken all the elements of the old map – the same colours, route line thicknesses, symbols, icons, and legend information – and has simply used them in a far more attractive, considered way.

Route lines are strictly limited to 45 degrees, all labelling is horizontal (and he’s taken great care to stop labels from overlapping his route lines), interchanges are shown more cleanly… and more! It’s a great example of how a little bit of care and effort can transform an ordinary map into something much more cohesive and user-friendly.

For those who are interested, the (rather nice, if a little quirky) typeface used on Bertan’s map is the open-source Google font, Titillium Web.

Our rating: Using the same building blocks as the official map in an intelligent way, Bertan has transformed this map from dowdy to diva: four stars!

Source: Bertan’s portfolio website – click through to read more about his design process, as well as see some more comparison images.

Historical Map: Nicholson’s Complete London Guide Bus Map, c. 1980

July 18, 2014
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Unusual and potentially confusing bus map that chooses to colour-code routes by the major thoroughfare that they travel down: all Oxford Street buses are orange, all Farringdon Road buses are lime green, etc. However it’s all a bit of a mess, made more so by the strangely yellow/orange-heavy colour palette. Westminster Bridge is crossed by six routes; five of them are way too similar to each other (orange-brown, yellow, orange, another orange-brown and lime green). Only the dark green Victoria Street route line provides sufficient contrast with the other lines here.

The map also requires the user to have more than a passing familiarity with London bus routes, as it only lists their route number as they leave the map, not their destination. I know that Route 9 passes through Piccadilly, but where does it go after that? A travel-savvy Londoner might know, but a tourist may not.

Reminiscent of this similarly confusing central Sydney bus map from 2000, although at least the Sydney map tells you the final destination of the bus routes!

Our rating: Idiosyncratic, strange and not actually terribly useful. One-and-a-half stars.

Source: grepnold/Flickr

Photo: Tassenger (sic) Traffic Circuit Sketch Map

July 17, 2014
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Putting the “net” in “network”. Long distance bus map in Qingdao, China.

Source: chrisdrum/Flickr – link no longer active

Submission – Historical Map, Boston Elevated Railway System, 1932

July 12, 2014
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Submitted by emotingviamemes, who says:

This is an old Boston Elevated Railway Company map from a user guide I purchased at the wonderful Ward Maps store in Cambridge, MA. It’s a lovely relic of its time! The rest of the guide gives transit directions to landmarks and points of interest. I’m not exactly sure why the modern day Blue and Red Lines are the same color on here, unless some color had faded with age.

Transit Maps says:

Yep, it’s a beauty alright!

I’ve given up trying to comprehensively date Boston maps (one of my readers always comes up with more accurate dating than me!), so I’m just putting it in the rough range of 1928 to 1938, mainly based on the existence of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated line.

Note: Steven Beaucher from Ward Maps has identified this as the 1932 map for me (see, I told you someone else would know!).

Regarding the route colours as shown, I’d just say that it was done in an effort to minimise the number of colours used in the print job. The “yellow” and “red” lines on this map run concurrently with each other between Haymarket and North Station and thus need some visual differentiation to make them easy to follow, while the two “blue” routes only cross other routes and don’t interact with each other, so they can safely use the same colour. Assignation of route colours back in those early days of transit map design was quite random: even early pre-Beck London Underground maps could never really decide which line got which colour. And remember that Boston’s modern route colours were only defined in the late 1960s when the famous “spider map” was introduced.