Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s an unofficial map of Salt Lake City’s TRAX and FrontRunner rail system. I’ve feautured another unofficial map of this system previously (December 2012, 3.5 stars), but this one is interesting because it contains a message seemingly aimed at the UTA, almost pleading for better map design. It reads:

This map was created by CLF as an attempt to show how a UTA rail map can be laid out clearly while avoiding unnecessary bends in the lines, and extra lines connecting station names with the station dots.

Transit maps should be simple and easy to route.

For clarity, some station names that had only only numbers were replaced with an hypothetical neighborhood name.

The lines were drawn for black-and-white printing and accessibility for the color-blind.

In the grand scheme of things, this map is really pretty standard – there’s nothing truly memorable about it, nor is the design particularly outstanding – yet it’s still streets ahead of the current official map. The extra space afforded to downtown SLC works wonders for clarity and usability – gone are the ugly lines pointing to stations from awkwardly placed labels. The labelling could still use some work – different sizes of type are used, and the labels on the south-western leg of the Red Line could easily be set horizontally instead of at an angle. The tiny labelling of route names within their respective route lines is next to useless: another approach should be used to identify routes for color-blind users.

Finally, a tweet from the UTA in response to this map seems to suggest that things could get better in the future – here’s hoping!