Here’s an interesting little infographic (clearly based off the official Translink map) that’s making the rounds on Reddit/Twitter/etc. at the moment, showing average weekday ridership on rapid transit in Vancouver, British Columbia. Created by u/Mobius_Peverell on Reddit with “Excel, GIMP, and two afternoons” (in their own words), it’s quite a striking graphic. It definitely shows the dominance of the SkyTrain, and the Canada Line in particular. However, it’s important to note that the 99 B-Line, running from UBC to Commercial-Broadway, is in fact the busiest bus route in either Canada or the United States, with an average weekday ridership of over 56,000 passengers – it just looks small in comparison to the even busier SkyTrain lines.

If there’s one improvement I’d make to this graphic, it would be the inclusion of some ridership and/or boarding numbers on the map itself. Yes, there’s a scale at the top, but it’s not easy to transfer that down to the map itself with any accuracy. The dot sizing for each station’s boarding is particularly hard to calculate mentally. As it is, the graphic lets you compare general ridership trends, but not the actual numbers behind those trends.

Compare to this 1954 flow diagram of subway lines in Manhattan, where all the data is shown directly on the map.

Source: r/vancouver on Reddit