Submitted by Jan, who says:
Hi Cameron, thanks for the amazing work you do on this site! I just noticed that one of the maps that I see the most often in real life has not been featured here (as far as I can tell): the regional train network map of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state. It can be found here [PDF link].
Looking at it after perusing your site for a while, it is easy for me to see the flaws – first of all, the map seems very messy, even if that is somewhat understandable since it covers a big area. Particularly the area covering Hamburg (which is not part of Schleswig-Holstein but still a major transport hub for the area) is confusing. I have to say that I like the way that multi-line stations indicate which train will stop and which won’t – the system itself is pretty confusing in that regard and I regularly see passengers on RE7 or RE70 that have no clue whether their train will take them to their destination or not, but at least the map is pretty straightforward on that. Other than that, I’d be curious about your thoughts!
Transit Maps says:
I pretty much agree with Jan’s assessment here in that the overall appearance of the map is a bit messy, but there are some nice design touches as well. The messiness seems to have two main contributing factors: the afore-mentioned problems with cramping (especially around Hamburg) created by the geographical layout of the map; and the uninspired labels for stations.
Lots of different angles are deployed to fit station names into the layout, and the service icons don’t really relate that well to the labels they’re attached to – perhaps being a little too large and clumsy. Worst of all is the white box around the labels when they’re on a grey background: it just looks amateur – almost like someone literally pasted them on top of the artwork. It’s been done because the type would have poor contrast against the dark grey water background, but could have been avoided if a light blue background had been used instead.
Overall, I think the routes could be simplified a little more – we don’t need to see every twist and turn the lines make on their way – and this could allow for a little more flexibility for expanding the crowded parts of the map and taking up the slack in the less dense areas.
On the plus side, the distinctive station markers where more than one service stops are – as Jan says – quite delightful, and the list of services to the right of the map are comprehensive and easy to understand.
Our final word: Could use some simplification and polishing to make it easier to use, but it’s not terrible by any means. Based on the PDF, this is meant to be printed as an A3-sized poster, a size it would work quite well at, I think.
The line labels at Hamburg Altona (RE6, RB71, S1) look like they belong to the S3 line to Stade.
It is absolutely inexcusable for a map like this to not have a legend in English. You shouldn’t have to understand words like “Bedarfshaltepunkt” (request stop) to use transit. Even worse is that the agency’s English language website have no links the map. They only link to a “interactive map”, which naturally is just as awful as almost every interactive transit map (and of course, that one too is in German only).
I don’t really understand the need for geographic correctness on regional maps like this one. The map would need some distortion to show the Hamburg area more clearly, also agree that the routes could be simplified.
The S-Bahn should probably be omitted from the map. Only a few of the stops are shown anyway, and for this area you would use the HVV map instead. One the other hand, the U-Bahn is completely absent, which make it seem like the A2 ends in Norderstedt Mitte with no connections to Hamburg. Maybe it would be better with S and U icons for the stations with connections to S-Bahn and U-Bahn, but without showing the actual lines.
One thing I noticed is that the Neustadt station on the RB85 is a bit to the right of the line. First I thought this was just a mistake, but digging further into this made me realize that Neustadt is actually on a separate branch line. The timetable I found (on the German site of course, the English site only features outdated timetables!) tell us that most trains split at Sierksdorf, where the front cars goes to Neustadt and the last cars continues on the main line. This definitely needs to be shown more clearly.
There is actually a diagrammatic map on the German language website, but it’s very hidden. You need to first go to “Liniennetzpläne für Schleswig-Holstein”, there not click where you naturally would, on “Bahnlinienplan für Schleswig-Holstein”, but instead on “Interaktiver Liniennetzplan für Bahn und Bus”. Then you come to https://www.liniennetz.nah.sh/ which is not the same interactive map as the one the English site links to. No, here you can actually choose between several layers, and one of them are, believe it or not, a perfectly designed diagrammatic map of the rail network. One could only wonder, why don’t they feature this as their main rail map?