Submitted by Pedro, who says:

This is an unofficial map for MetrôRio, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I find the official map hideous (May 2012, 2 stars), so I made this one. I haven’t yet ridden this subway, so I based my map on the maps I could find online. Because lines are hard to be distinguished if you are color blind, I have decided to put the line number on their last stations. I know that colors for the Metrô na Superfície subway bus are too close to be told apart, but I have decided to keep the original colors anyway.

I have also chosen to decrease geographic accuracy in order to make the map easier to read. The older map seemed geographic accurate, but it wasn’t that perfect: Pres. Vargas station was shown as almost on the bay, when it actually is just as far as Uruguaiana or Carioca stations.

I designed Line 1 as an open circle because I have found that it is planned to be a circular route when the system is better developed. Whether those plans are still real or they have changed, I can’t assure you, but as far as I have seen, those are the most recent ones.

I also plan on redesigning the map for the subway and commuter rail system in São Paulo, but that’ll take longer as it’s much more complex.

Transit Maps says:

This is a really nice effort from Pedro, with a lot of sound reasoning behind most of his design choices. I especially like the circular shape he’s used for Line 1 – the “design hook” that I often like to see in a diagrammatic map. I do think he could have taken this thought a little further by making the top part of Line 2 a long, curving arc instead of a straight line, but this is a good start!

The rest of my comments really have to do with visual balance and informational hierarchy – I find some elements too large (the legend box and the name of the bay, which isn’t really a hugely important piece of information in the context of a transit map) and others too small (the names of the stops on the Metrô na Superfície bus routes). I also feel that the green “Todas (all)” text box at Central station could be placed above the station label: this would allow the “Pres. Vargas” label to be placed outside the circle like all the other stations around the right half of the ring. The placement of the “Cantaglo” label is a little trickier, but perhaps the whole map could be moved upwards to help accommodate it outside the ring. Note that there’s a lot of empty space above the map, while the bottom is jammed up hard against the edge of the page.

Our rating: Better than the official map and with a lot of good ideas. Needs just a little tweaking to make it really good. Three stars.