With the removal of intercity train routes from the new Sydney Trains map, the question is – where did they go?

The answer: onto a new map of their very own! Aesthetically, it’s very similar to the Sydney map, part of what I understand is a major effort to unify all transit services that Transport for NSW provides. The layout of the lines is very clear and easy to understand, and having separate maps makes a lot of sense to me: the people who commute into Sydney on these Intercity lines have very different needs to those who use the main Sydney network. I’m especially pleased that the Hunter Line out of Newcastle is off the standard Sydney map, as it serves a completely separate urban area!

However, because of the long, linear nature of the routes, there’s a lot of empty space left on the map to fill with something… and I’m not sure that an amorphous “Blue Mountains” shape is the right approach. It’s highly simplified, but there’s some overly precise shapes in it: the triangular cutout to the west of Campbelltown looks particularly weird.

The simplified representation of the coastline also presents some problems. The area around Sydney looks good, although I do wonder if the tiny representation of Port Hacking is really necessary. The Hawkesbury River is fine as well, as it intersects the Central Coast Line and is generally considered to be the border between Sydney and the Central Coast region.

However, the representation of Lake Macquarie is both poorly handled (it actually has an outlet to the ocean, and is separated from it by land that’s less than 2 kilometres wide) and unnecessary. If it’s included to help reference stations to geography, then why not also include Tuggerah Lake near Tuggerah and Wyong stations, or Lake Illawarra near Port Kembla at the bottom of the map? The (completely imaginary) spit of land that the Port Kembla branch of the South Coast line currently sits on just looks weird. Even in a stylised map like this, geography should be included to inform the user, not to simply fit around your route lines.

Again, I’ll reserve final judgement until October 20th when the map is officially released, but this map is currently a bit of a mixed bag. The route lines look great, the background is less inspiring.