Submission – Unofficial Map: Transit of Sumy, Ukraine by Kostya Cherepovskyi

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Unofficial Maps

Submitted by Kostya, who says:

I’d be happy if you reviewed my new piece, unofficial transit map of Ukrainian city of Sumy featuring:

  • trolleybuses in the foreground and buses in the background,
  • close to real topology,
  • landmarks, city center map and other smaller features.

I’m sorry about Cyrillics but I feel like it shouldn’t matter much. Looking forward to what you think and thank you!

Transit Maps says:

Hey everyone, it’s the first published submission via the new, improved Submissions page, and isn’t it an absolute beauty? Seriously, I’m struggling to find things to critique about this – the contrast between trolleybus lines 13, 18 and 15/15A is a little low when they run concurrently towards the top of the map, and the light blue for the bus lines is perhaps just a little too recessive, but that’s pretty minor stuff.

The huge diagonal slash of the main routes through the city is just gorgeous, and – as Kostya notes – actually does reflect the real topology of the city quite well. Also of note is the hard drop shadow underneath the white station markers on the lighter-coloured route lines, which helps define them better than if there was no shadow. It’s a subtle but important addition that works nicely.

The more detailed central part of the city is well done, with its visible streets and softly-faded edges. The point-of-interest icons are serviceable enough, though perhaps the Central Market building needs a little more work to make it look more like the actual structure instead of a plain circle.

Our rating: Rather wonderful, and a great first post to launch the “new” Transit Maps. Four stars!

6 Comments

  1. harvey says

    IT is a pretty map. The main issue for me would be colour contrast. There are too many (beautiful) colour rainbows where similar colours sit side by side. This makes it difficult to identify routes for the surprisingly high number of people with vision issues.

    • I have been to Sumy and I am sure he is following the actual color of the lines, so it would be strange to change them but maybe rearrange a bit???

  2. Kostya says

    Thank you so much for the review! I’m so pleased to see my work appreciated, especially here.

    For the record, I forgot to mention one more feature: color brightness actually indicates service levels (trolleybus lines only): the darker color is, the more vehicles are there on the route. This might seem like an overkill or totally obscure feature but I kind of like the idea. Even though it’s one of the reasons I ended up with sub-optimal contrast here and there.

    Another reason is me being lazy 🙂

  3. Garth Forrest says

    A nice map, but compared to other maps of trolleybus networks in Ukraine and other countries, it does not show where the trolleybus depot is. One report says there is one in the district of HIMGORODKA, which does not appear on any map, and there is another depot being built in “UL. KURSK”. Where is the depot?

  4. PERFECT MAP, and I checked it (I can read Cyrillic) except one error: in the buses and marshrutkas section you wrote 51 instead of 61. Otherwise it is perfect.

    Response to Garth Forrest: I am aware that the depot is in HIMGORODKA, but I don’t think there is one on KURSK STREET.

  5. And one more thing, there apparently is now a route 20 from Aeroport to Prokofjeva, according to Wikipedia.

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