Yesterday morning, I got an interesting email from Viteks Bariševs in response to my assertion that transit maps rarely show completely different transit modes (bus and rail, mainly) on the same map due to their differing natures. He is working on a totally unified transit map for Riga – and that includes showing a staggering 53 bus routes, 19 trolleybus routes and 9 tram routes – a monumental task!

His map certainly looks impressive, showing a dense network of routes and stations. Interesting aspects include the inner city inset, which switches to a traditional geographically-accurate map with numbered stops. The legend then cleverly tells you at which of these stops different routes call at, thus preventing the central part of the map from becoming a twisting spaghetti-like maze of route lines.

I’m not entirely convinced by Viteks’ method of differentiating between different services by using white dashes of different lengths within each route line (as seen in the detail image): it interrupts the flow of the routes, and can look a little messy when multiple lines are running parallel. My preferred method would be differing line thicknesses (probably tram as thickest, trolleybus as a line the same thickness, but with a solid white line down the centre, then buses as thinner lines). Failing that, you could simply rely on the letter prefix on each route to clue people in as to what type of service that line represents.

If the representation of all of Riga’s transit wasn’t enough, Viteks has also produced a map of night bus services that is nicely overlaid on a ghosted-back version of the daytime services, allowing travellers to relate one set of services to another.

Viteks has big plans for his map, telling me that he hopes to have it become the official map for Riga in the future. It certainly shows a lot of promise, even from these few preview images. Click through on the source link below to view more images from this intriguing project.

Source: Viteks Bariševs’ Riga Transit Facebook photo album