As promised, here’s an unofficial map of Singapore’s rail transit that takes the future extensions and integrates them far more effectively and attractively than the official future map. This map was created by Andrew Smithers, who runs the quite excellent Project Mapping website – well worth losing a few hours to all the maps he has over there!

Immediately, you can see how design is used to simplify and clarify the routes – the Thomson Line becomes a north-south axis for the map, while the new Downtown Line now describes a perfect diamond-shaped loop. This motif is echoed beautifully by the larger loop of the yellow Circle Line – which visually lives up to its name far more here than on the official map – and even by the little double-crossover between the Downtown and North East lines at the bottom centre of the map. Repetition of design themes in a transit map is a lovely thing, and it really helps to hold a map together thematically.

That’s not to say that everything is perfect, however. The station codes – used to help non-English speakers buy tickets and navigate the system – are just as problematic here as they are on the official map. Andrew has opted to place them on the opposite side of the route line to the station name; while it works well in the less-crowded parts of the map, it can get a little messy in places, especially where the Downtown Line runs close to the North East and Circle Lines in the densest part of the map (just to the right of centre).

Our rating: A lovely example of how repeated design elements can thematically tie a map together. Four stars.

Source: Via email discussion with Andrew