All posts tagged: 1.5 stars

Historical Map: PATCO Hi-Speed Line (Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey), 1983

June 6, 2014
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An odd little map from the Fall/Winter 1978 PATCO timetable brochure. While the Hi-Speed line itself is nicely shown in a lovely strong red, the absolute tangle of highways shown in New Jersey is somewhat bewildering, and really not that helpful. The other bit of strangeness is the way that the map shows highways and towns all the way out to the Atlantic coast – some 45 miles past Lindenwold, the easternmost PATCO station. The […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: The Internet Tube (worldwide submarine cable network)

April 4, 2014
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Submitted by idleberg, smileandburn and others. Idleberg says: Something I came across by accident, the “Internet Tube”, a map of the world’s network of submarine fibre-optic cables. Looks terrible to me, especially since one of the main point of interest, the geographical context, is barely noticeable. Transit Maps says: While I feel that the goal of this diagram – the simplification of a vast and complex nodal network down to its basic elements – is a […]

Official Map: Integrated Transit of Südtirol (Alto Adige), Italy

March 1, 2014
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Sent my way by a reader known only as “mmmaps”, here’s a map of the transit system of the northern autonomous Italian province of Südtirol (South Tyrol in English, or Alto Adige in Italian). The system is mainly made up of buses (dark blue), but there’s also a backbone of rail services between the major cities (shown in light blue) and aerial cable-cars as well. While the restrained colour palette (just blues and greys) looks quite […]

Submission – Official Map: Metro de Medellin, Colombia, 2014

January 30, 2014
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Submitted by Daniel Echeverri, who says: Medellin (Colombia) transit map. Downloaded from the official website of Metro de Medellin. It shows Metro Lines, Articulated Buses lines (Metroplus) and Aerial Tram lines (Metro Cable) Transit Maps says: Medellin’s transit system is fascinating because it’s one of the first places in the world to implement aerial gondolas as part of a mass transit system. Other cities may have gondolas and aerial trams, but they’re almost always deployed […]

Official Map: Tri-Rail Commuter Rail, Southern Florida, 2013

October 11, 2013
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I’ve had a couple of requests to review this one, so here goes… For me, this map is an excellent example of the overwhelming averageness of a lot of transit mapping here in the US. Yes, it does the job – you can work out how to get from here to there and where to make connections – but it’s just so completely bland and unmemorable. Everything about the map seems to be completely generic, […]

Official Map: Gauteng Metrorail, South Africa, 2013

September 30, 2013
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Submitted by scsj, who says: Metrorail in Gauteng (Johannesburg/Pretoria/Soweto/Germiston), South Africa. I don’t know, I find this map monumentally confusing. There are way too many colors and none of the lines have names, there’s no scale or anything to indicate location other than station names, it’s so cramped, and it sacrifices too much geographic accuracy for the sake of the design – for example, the offshoot of the dark blue line between Johannesburg Park and […]

Official Map: San Francisco Bay Area Regional Transit Map, 2013

May 30, 2013
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Submitted by Reed Wagner, who says: This map appears to be part of a greater “wayfinding” campaign by the SF Bay Area MTC – it appears at major Caltrain, Muni and BART stations and presumably is elsewhere (I took this picture at Caltrain 4th & King. In comparison to the maps made by Calurbanist, it seems that the official MTC map is falling short in every regard other than information overload in a messy form. Transit Maps says: It’s pretty […]

Photo – Official Map: Opolskie Voivodeship Railway Network, Poland

March 27, 2013
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The whole map is a bit of a mess, with all sorts of random angles everywhere (both route lines and station labels), but what really takes this map into the land of the bizarre are the big photos of trains superimposed over it. It’s like someone said, “Hey, there’s a bit of white space left over – what can we fill it up with? I know! How about some shots of our trains, and we’ll rotate […]

Submission – Official Map: Des Moines DART Bus System, 2013

January 17, 2013
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Submitted by “ZMapper”, who included a link to the full map on the official DART website. Have we been there? No. What we like: At first glance, this looks like a nice, clean, modern-looking system map – a breath of fresh air that stands out from the usual geographically-based “road map” bus maps. However, there are some serious usability issus that detract from the light and airy look, which I’ll discuss below. I do like […]

Official Map: Bus and Tram Network Map, Strasbourg, France, 2012

April 27, 2012
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In general, I hold European transit maps in better regard than maps from other parts of the world. Crisp, clear European graphic design and transit maps just seem to be made for each other! Of course, there’s always exceptions to the rule, and this map from the Compagnie des Transports Strasbourgeois (CTS) in Strasbourg, France is one of those exceptions. Have we been there? Yes, in December 2003. I found the trams pretty easy to […]