Submitted by Moritz, who says:
I’m an architecture student from Zurich who has also been a (public) transport and map geek for quite some time now. The town of Plauen in Germany has had a quite horrible map for its tram and bus system, so I created a new one privately, which I then offered to them for use. They indeed agreed to pay for it (which they haven’t done yet, but I’ll be on that …), so I sent the files to them and the map is used there now at the stations, in a by the transit agency slightly altered form – they just couldn’t help it to add some unnecessary icons and mix fonts, but to be honest, I’m not keen on discussing with them over that over hundres of kilometres of distance, so I’ll just let it be. However, as I’m a fan of your map reviews and the blog in general, I’d like to hear your opinion on my (original) work! (I’m doing this via mobile and don’t quite understand whether I can add documents to this text, so I’ll send you separately: the old map, which can somehow still be found on the operator’s website; the new one (which shows bus line B slightly different because they changed the route after I finished work); and a photo one of my relatives in Plauen took from the altered version hanging at a tram stop.) I used a 30-degree grid as it allowed me to make a visual hook (literally) out of the lines going to the south-east while avoiding unnecessary curves in the lines after they successively leave the hook. Also, it makes it possible to set the type at an angle at which it is still easily readable. I included the railway and night bus lines, which the original map doesn’t (for the night buses, they had an even worse separate map which also still can be found on their website). On the colours of the tram and bus lines I didn’t have any influence. The “lace” pattern at the edge of the map is derived from the station markers and seemed adequate to me because lace is the only thing this 60’000 inhabitants city is somehow renowned for (they replaced it by a boring simple edge, though). What do you think?
Transit Maps says:
As seen in the first image above, the previous version of Plauen’s transit map was a very dowdy, old fashioned – almost generic – diagram, with some odd angles and overpowering accessibility icons. It’s not hideous, but neither is it particularly memorable.
Moritz’s map, however, is definitely memorable – with swooping curves and a strong, dynamic, 30-degree axis that underpins the whole map. It perhaps simplifies things a little too much in some parts: while the stop order on the A/Ax bus route is the same on both versions, knowing that the bus takes a little one-way detour through Chrieschwitz is actually useful information to have.
The strict adherence to the 30-degree angles also causes a few spacing problems here and there, especially because all the main line railway lines are dead straight lines which can force some stations and their labels out of position somewhat. I’d personally prefer to have the six stops at the northern end of Line 5 evenly spaced, for example, even if that meant the rail lines had to bend a little bit more. The rail lines are subsidiary information on a local map like this, and shouldn’t really bend the more important parts of the map to their needs quite so much. It’s specially noticeable along the main horizontal axis of the map: the stops on Lines 1/3/N2 are spaced perfectly evenly, while the rail line forces the stops to the right of it on the A/Ax bus line into a very tight area. While this could be justified because there is a bit of a gap between Plauen and Chrieschwitz in real life, that’s not really a consideration in a diagrammatic map like this.
On balance, however, this is definitely a massive improvement over the previous map, and it looks like changes between Moritz’s original version and the final one seen in the photo above were fairly minimal – the addition of icons to more clearly indicate the stops which are not accessible, darker/black linework for the night bus lines instead of the soft grey that Moritz used, and some minor labelling edits (setting “Capitol” on one line instead of hyphenating it over two, for example). All of which are probably changes I agree with, so everyone’s a winner!