I first came across this project last November, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. An obvious work-in-progress with a lot of half-finished ideas and only part of the map visible in the preview image made things very hard to judge properly. Fast forward six months and the finished product has been unveiled at last. It’s definitely been worth the wait, as I think this is a very polished, well-considered map. The central […]
Submitted by Alain, who says: The latest iteration of my Amsterdam tram map. I’ve been working on this map almost continuously since its inception in 2004. I made the original map in MS Paint and switched to Adobe Illustrator in 2007. When I did, I also decided to upload the map to Wikipedia. It featured on almost all Wikipedia lemmas about the Amsterdam tram system until earlier this year, when someone decided to replace the […]
Submitted by the map’s creator, who says: After having tried for a long time to find a schematic route map for Sydney’s historical tram network without any success, I decided that the only option was to make one myself. This was a particularly tricky task as all of the maps I could find online showed only the tram tracks, but not how the routes functioned. After many hours going through many different websites, trying to […]
Submitted by cellardoor85, who says: As special educator, I work with a 7 year old boy who has memorised the complete Berlin S-/U-Bahn, bus and tram network. Every day, he draws exactly one section of the network (without any mistakes, of course) and gives it to me as a present. Last month I started to puzzle all the parts together into one big map on the wall of my office. The common project is not finished […]
Big news out of Germany, where Karlsruhe’s KVV becomes one of the first European transit agencies to adopt a fully curvilinear diagram instead of the almost ubiquitous octolinear “Beck-style” diagram. The new map is shown here, with the old map for comparison beneath it. The old one is a solid, well-executed map, very much in the usual German style of transit map design – although perhaps a little too indistinguishable from many other very similar […]
Submitted by mactire, who says: I’d be interested to know your opinion of the updated Manchester tram map, a different version of which was featured earlier this year (August 2015, 4 stars)? Personally, although I can see the need to accommodate increasing complexity in the system, I don’t think the route indicators are easy to follow, and the placement of symbols and labels seems just a bit messier in fitting around them. Transit Maps says: […]
First published in the United Kingdom as Metro Maps of the World in 2003, this book has long been an indispensable reference book for graphic designers, train aficionados, cartographers, and geeks alike. However, its last major revision was in 2007 – and much has changed in the world of transit map design since then. More transit systems, new maps, revised maps, digital and web-based maps, the rise of the amateur map designer and more. Like […]
Sent my way by Nick Stylianou, here’s a map out of Melbourne, Victoria designed to support a major revamp of weekend night time transit in and around that city. For me, this piece continues a worrying recent trend of night service maps that have poor contrast and legibility, simply for the sake of pushing a dark “night” colour theme. This one even has freakin’ stars in the background, which is starting to verge on the ridiculous. […]
Submitted by Milan, who says: I’m from Germany and wanted to share this map of my hometown’s streetcar/light rail system I created this week. I wanted to share it with you before my thirteenth birthday, which is tomorrow (October 12). Greetings from Potsdam. Happy birthday, Milan! It’s just about to roll over to the 12th here in Portland, Oregon, so I hope you’re having a great day! I really like your map, which reminds me […]
Submitted by Kevin McElroy, who says: The Rome Metro has only had 2 lines for quite sometime. For such a famous European capital the metro system is pretty simple. Metro C is a new line opened in the southeastern portion of the city and extends out into the periphery. It is planned to eventually cross the historic center, though for now isn’t all funded. They updated the Metro map with lines, A, B, B1 (a […]
