The reverse side of the British Rail Network SouthEast map, showing the detailed view of the area surrounding London. While this map is designed in a very similar style (at the same time, by the same people) to the regional map, I feel it’s slightly less successful for a few reasons. The inclusion of the London Underground introduces many more colors to the map, which instantly makes it feel much busier. After using all these […]
Submitted by Justin Tran, who says: This is a redesign I did of the University of Virginia’s University Transit Service (UTS) map. It won’t be live until permanent repairs are done to a certain bridge on Grounds that has vastly detoured more than half of these routes. Transit Maps says: This is pretty nice work here from Justin. It’s definitely been hugely influenced by the London Underground map, but works nicely in this context. I […]
Having touched briefly on the Brussels map with this previous post, I thought it was time to take a proper look at the current official map. Have we been there? Yes, back in 2003, but I walked pretty much everywhere and didn’t use the Metro/tram system. I did catch trains from Brussels to other cities in Belgium, however. What we like: The treatment of the Metro part of the system is excellent, with a nice […]
As promised, here’s the second map of Naples’ Metro system. Unlike the previous example, this one shows all of the rail transit options available in the city, which presents a much more complete picture. Like the previous map, this map also presents something that I’ve never seen before on a transit map: a “Rainbow Line” (arcobaleno in Italian), where each station on the line is assigned its own colour. However, this map and station signage […]
Here’s a different type of transit map altogether… if one could really call it a “map” at all. Showing commuter rail services out of Finland’s capital, Helsinki, this matrix instead focuses on showing stopping patterns on the four colour-coded commuter lines. Each pattern is clearly denoted with a letter that corresponds to a train – not unlike the local/express services on the New York subway – making finding the correct train to catch easy and […]
Hot on the heels of Miami’s new Orange Line comes another one: this one belonging to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) system. This new line will eventually bring light rail to DFW airport, an essential transportation link in any large city, I feel. Have we been there? No. What we like: Relatively clean and simple compared to many American transit maps. The street grid is visible, but subsidiary to the main information. The downtown […]
This map is at the request of an anonymous follower, who wrote this about this map: Truly terrible transit map that deserves a lashing: the AirTrain JFK. Way too complicated for something that should be fairly simple. Even worse are the TV screens in the stations showing information about where the train at each platform is going, which completely obscure the most important information. Now, I can’t comment on the info screens, as I’ve never […]
Here’s another example of a metro map overlaid on a city’s street grid – this time from Santiago, Chile. This system has some marvellous innovations, with a bike sharing program (BiciMetro) and libraries (BiblioMetro) integrated at many stations, but the map somewhat fails to live up to those modern, forward-thinking ideas. Have we been there? No. What we like: Clean layout, with large easy-to-read (if not particularly stylish) text. The roads are given the right […]
Not every transit map has the multiple lines and complex interchanges of the London Underground, Paris Metro or New York Subway. Many systems have but a few lines which interact with each other in very simple ways: either crossing at a central point, or – as in this map’s case – sharing a common alignment for most of their length. But just because the map is simple doesn’t mean the designer shouldn’t pay attention to […]
Some transit maps are geographically based, others are diagrams. But what happens when you get a map with too much diagram? That’s what we have with Copenhagen’s S-Tog (S-Train) map: it looks gorgeous, but at what cost to usability? Have we been there? Yes, but I didn’t use the S-Tog system. I arrived and left by long-distance trains from/to Berlin, and caught a regional train out to Roskilde to visit the Viking Ship Museum ( […]
