Photo: Istanbul Metro Station Sign
Well, I guess that’s one place to put your map. It’s nice and visible from both platforms, at least! Source: SpirosK photography/Flickr
All posts tagged: Europe
Official Map: Budapest Metro and Suburban Rail, 2014
With the recent opening of Budapest’s Metro Line 4, there’s been a rethink behind the city’s transit map. The previous version (July 2012, 2.5 stars) tried to show everything – Metro, suburban rail, regional rail, tram and key bus routes – on one map, but it was all a bit of a mess. With so many thin, colour-coded lines (using a strangely limited palette), things became very difficult to understand. Hence this new approach, where […]
Illustration: Southern Rail’s “Southern Adventure” Ad Campaign by Rod Hunt
Extremely nifty isometric “pixel art” illustration showing all the family-friendly adventures that can be had on England’s Southern Rail network. Probably not much use as an actual map, but it does name/highlight a lot of the useful stations and the activities that can be had in the region. A lot of fun to be had poring over the detailed illustration, and I love the pencilled rough for comparison. The artist, Rod Hunt, is perhaps best […]
Unofficial Map(s): Atlas of Italian Rail Transit by Andrea Spinosa
Occasionally, I get in a bit of a rut with Transit Maps – I feel like I’ve seen everything there is to see, or that I’m just treading water – and then something like this comes along that just blows me away. This poster, designed by Andrea Spinosa of the CityRailways blog (in Italian), provides an incredible look at rail mass transit in Italy, and it’s simply superb. The centre of the poster gives a […]
Photo: Old Rome–Pantano Railway Map, Italy
Submitted by Chris Bastian. An old, out-of-date wall map of the Rome–Pantano railway. Until 2008, the line ran from the Roma Termini station out to Pantano, a suburb to the east of Rome. Since then, the line has been cut back to Giardinetti (the station near the ring road shown on this map), as the eastern portion of the line is being converted into part of the new Metro Line 3. Also of note is […]
Historical Map: Austrian Edition of Airey’s Railway Map of London, 1876
Simply beautiful rail line and junction map from the earliest days of what would become the London Underground. Extremely notable for its use of colour-coding to differentiate between the lines of all the different operating companies. In the days of chromolithographic printing, using this many different colours would have been an expensive, highly technical and time-consuming task. The following text is taken from the raremaps.com description of this map: Extremely rare early Austrian edition of […]
Official Map: Schwäbisch Gmünd Stadtbus, Germany, 2014
Let’s continue our recent look at small- to medium-sized German bus networks with this network map from Schwäbisch Gmünd in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, submitted by Bert. I find this map interesting, because it really shouldn’t work as well as it does. While simplified, there doesn’t seem to be any real logic or unifying design principles behind the angles used for the route lines: they just seem to be drawn to make the routes fit together. Despite that, the […]
Submission – Official Map: Bus Network of Göttingen, Germany, 2014
Submitted by Hubert at the same time as the awful Marburg map. Of this map, Hubert says: Check out the intertwined lines in the city center! I find this approach very interesting and useful and I would really like to hear your thoughts about this. Transit Maps says: The intertwined (or “candy-striped”) lines in the city centre are definitely the most interesting thing about this map. The rest of it is a competent, if unexciting, […]
Submission – Official Map: Bus Network of Marburg, Germany, 2014
Submitted by Hubert, who says: You really should review more ugly, messed up maps as they serve as deterrent examples. This eyesore of a map is what made me aware of the fact that transit map design is not as easy as it seems. I once sat in line 7 and it took me twenty minutes to figure out whether the bus served the Elisabethkirche Station in my direction of travel. This is literally the […]
Historical Map: The “Zéró” London Underground Diagram, 1938
Although clearly based on the H.C. Beck diagram of the period (which was only five years old at the time), this diagram was created and printed entirely without Beck’s knowledge. Although the work is unsigned, it is now known that this map was designed by Hans Schleger – perhaps better known by his pseudonym “Zéró” – who had already created a number of memorable posters for London Transport. Beck was furious, and he wasted no […]