Submitted by Henry, who says:
Hi, my name is Henry, and I’m a senior in high school. I made this map of Philadelphia’s rapid transit services (mostly SEPTA but including PATCO). This is the first transit map I’ve made, for my home city, Philadelphia, a map which I know you have much distaste for.
I know it has several problems (alignment mostly I think) but I think it’s a huge improvement over what’s there now. I consciously made the decision to eliminate the entire Regional Rail network from the map and only include the connections, so I could flesh out the Trolley lines, which are not featured on the original map. I hope you’ll think that overall it represents a better designed improvement over the original. I love this city and anybody that knows it well knows that it’s a fantastic and underrated city, and I can only hope that maybe if it had a better map maybe some people’s perception would change.
Transit Maps says:
I definitely agree with Henry’s thoughts on the importance of a good transit map in shaping people’s opinions about transit in a city. And his map is a good, solid effort as well. It fits nicely into a compact shape and deals well with the huge number of stops/stations found on the 101/102 trolley lines and the Norristown Line. The “dotted line” interchange marker used to indicate a pedestrian connection is intuitive and nicely executed – certainly better than the yellow interchange/dashed connecting line used on the official map (Dec. 2011, 1.5 stars). I even quite like the cutesy little “Liberty Bell” north pointer.
About the only problem I really have with this map is the way the subway-surface trolley lines are drawn. In real life, Lines 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36 all start at the 13th Street station and travel together through the Market Street tunnel, emerging to the surface at the western end and spreading out to their eventual destinations. Thus, a user of this map should be able to easily and intuitively trace their path from 13th Street all the way along their desired route to the end point. On Henry’s map, this just isn’t possible for most of the lines.
The 10 just needs a little curve where it joins onto the main trunk line to indicate that southbound trolleys turn east toward the Market Street tunnel. Line 34 is fine as it is, but the 11, 13 and 36 all join onto the 34 at a counter-intuitive angle that suggests they all head out to Angora, rather than heading back towards the city. It would work much better if the 13 headed directly towards the 40th Street station (as it does in real life), with the 11 and 36 then joining onto it near there.
Still, there’s a lot to like about this map: an very solid effort, especially from someone still in high school.