Submitted by Kristofer Kåring, who says:
Stockholm Transit (SL) has made official a new railway/metro/tram map. News article (in Swedish) about it here.
I think the new gray design is more appealing, and I like that they don’t stretch short branches any longer (like T14 to Fruängen and T17 to Skarpnäck), but the extra bends on T10 are ugly.
Transit Maps says:
The new map (the second of the two images above) is certainly very striking with its elegant grey background and multitudinous coloured lines, but is it actually more usable? I have my doubts.
It would seem that the emphasis of the map has changed drastically, as the previous map had the Tunnelbana (metro/subway) squarely front and centre in bright colours, with the light rail/tram and commuter rail in secondary roles. However, the new map seems to take more of a “complete rail transit” approach, with every line getting its own colour. I feel this actually works against mode differentiation, as it’s now much harder to tell the three different modes apart. Yes, there’s a very thin lighter stroke down the middle of the tram/light rail route lines and a very thin darker stroke down the middle of the commuter rail lines, but it’s a lot of hard work to tell those apart, especially at any distance (I’ll bet you can’t see them at all in the image above, right?).
Compare this to the simplicity of the previous version. Tunnelbana: colours. Tram/light rail: grey. Commuter rail: black. Got it. Very few of the light rail lines actually interact with each other (acting for the most part as feeder lines to the main Metro system), so the introduction of colours doesn’t actually add much useful meaning to the map.
A potential future problem: the L12 light rail line is shown as yellow: the same as the colour that was voted in for the planned Tunnelbana extension to Arenastaden. Other planned future extensions – including the new commuter rail tunnel under central Stockholm – could be problematic for this map to accommodate without extensive redrawing.
One thing I will defend on the new map is the “ugly” extra bends on the T10 line. As noted by Daniel Firth, the previous map shows the Huvudsta Metro station as being directly adjacent to the Bällsta bro tram stop, when in reality there’s a good 20 minute walk between them. The extra curves in the T10 line correct this error and place Huvudsta in a much better position relative to Bällsta bro.
Our rating: Shiny and new, but seems to have more colours just for the sake of it. Mode differentiation is far more difficult than on the old map, and could lead to unrealistic service level expectations from visitors unfamiliar with Stockholm, especially for the commuter rail services, which have much longer headways than the Metro or light rail/tram. Doesn’t seem to be very future-proofed. Two-and-a-half stars.