Submitted by Jon, who says:

I’m curious to get your thoughts on the full RideKC Regional Transit Map. RideKC debuted in 2015 as part of the KC Streetcar project [review of the original Streetcar diagram here – Cam], and the RideKC branding is now used for the buses on four transit systems across the metro area, in order to better unify transit across five counties and two states. This map does not show the streetcar extension from Union Station to Country Club Plaza, which will replace the MMAX bus rapid transit route when it opens in 2025.

Transit Maps says:

Before we get into the review proper, it’s interesting to note that even though is the current official system map available on RideKC’s website, it seems to be out of date. There should be three red MAX bus lines (Main, Troost and Prospect), but the map only shows the first two, with bus route 71 running along Prospect instead. Prospect MAX started running in 2019, so it’s pretty poor that the map hasn’t been updated since then (note the January 2018 date at the top right).

As for the map itself, one really has to wonder just why it’s so blue? It seems to me that the RideKC branding – which is predominately blue – has influenced this look, but not really for the better. The background is two different tints of blue (one for each state!), rivers are blue, highway shields are blue, the streetcar line is blue, bus lines are blue… the whole map is almost entirely monochromatic except for the afore-mentioned MAX lines, which cut overly-dominant red slashes across the map. For me, an instant improvement to this map would simply be to make the background a warm light yellow: it would give some much-needed colour contrast to the map, and the blue route lines would then have more “pop” against it.

Although the map is obviously meant to be viewed as a large printed poster (the PDF dimensions are 36″ x 48″), elements do seem to be very thin and spindly throughout. The sprawling nature of the network doesn’t help and creates a lot of dead space around the edges of the map, despite the welcome presence of inset maps for the far-flung destinations. I’d probably have liked to see a darker blue used for the titles of these insets to draw the eye to them better, and perhaps even a subtle drop shadow behind them to lift them off the page a bit.

Our final word: A competent system map that’s let down somewhat by the insistence on using blue for just about everything on it.

Source: RideKC.org website