Submitted by Browne, who says:

UTA, the primary transit provider for northern Utah, has officially launched its newest BRT service, and with it, a new transit map. The OGX is a new BRT route from Ogden Central Station, downtown, Weber State University, and down to McKay-Dee Hospital.

Besides the new BRT line, there are subtle changes to the map’s design as well, such as rounded corners, which had been angular in the previous design. I’m curious to know what you think about the representation of geographic scale between the various lines and how all mode types are presented with similar hierarchies.

Transit Maps says:

Perhaps a little surprisingly, we haven’t checked in with the UTA map since 2015, when it was just taking its first baby steps towards becoming something befitting a transit agency of its scope. I’m pleased to note that the improvement has continued since then and that this is now a more-than-decent effort – clean, simple, easy to read and in line with the agency’s corporate design standards. All to be applauded!

That’s not to say that there aren’t some issues, though – I still think that the weight of the labels (Whitney Condensed Book) are a little light and spindly, and the locality labels are so small and insignificant as to be barely noticed at all. These either have to be larger and bolder (though still a light grey) or dispensed with. When many of the outer stations bear the same name as the locality labels, you really do wonder whether they’re actually needed at all. There’s an uncomfortable mix of condensed and regular thicknesses of Whitney throughout – even though they’re technically the same font family, they don’t really work that well together – the legend looks particularly clumsy.

Some station names are set with angled type. These days, I normally let that go if – and only if – they’re all angled the same way, but there’s a lot of different orientations here. There’s some width left in the canvas, so it really shouldn’t be too hard to tweak things to allow for horizontal labels throughout.

The purple FrontRunner commuter rail line still takes a strange, wobbly path through the map and that little jog in-and-out at Murray Central makes my eye twitch. I personally see the FrontRunner as the central thematic “spine” of the entire system, and I’d love to see a version where it just runs straight down the centre of the map with no deviations at all (even at Murray Central!) until it gets down to Orem, where the inclusion of the UVX BRT necessitates a turn across to Provo [more on that version soon! – Cam, being a big tease].

Talking about the BRT brings us to Browne’s ideas of scale and mode representation. Let’s be honest: scale on a diagram like this is always going to be tricky – the FrontRunner commuter rail extends for some 88 miles, while the entirety of the light rail service area (while still extensive) is only 17 miles from north to south. That said, I feel there should be two clearly delineated scales on the map: the light rail area, and the areas outside that to the north and south. For example, the Draper FrontRunner station should line up horizontally with the Draper Town Center light rail stop, instead of being higher than it. Of course, this diagram’s hand is forced by the space needed to show the Orem–Provo BRT lines at the same level of detail as the rest of the map – this needs that bottom third of the space, so everything else gets forced upwards, and the space between Orem and Provo on the FrontRunner line gets massively enlarged as a result.

At least Orem and Provo form a “closed loop”, where the enlarged scale only affects those two stations. However, this “BRT scale” becomes more of a problem with the Ogden BRT line at the top of the diagram, where it looks like the line extends almost all the way back to Salt Lake City! In reality, the entire line is contained within Ogden, and the southern end of it is only about as far south as the Roy FrontRunner station. Other approaches to this problem could be thinner route lines and smaller labels for the BRT lines so they can be shrunk somewhat in relation to the main diagram; or generalised representations of the lines that are more to actual scale, perhaps supported by inset maps that label everything properly. Of course, this diagram does have a “not to scale” disclaimer, and the information is still easy to understand, so maybe it’s not even a massive problem for general use.

As for the representation of the different modes, the only one I have a problem with is the FrontRunner, which runs far less frequently that the other services and should be indicated as such instead of just lumping it in as “Rail” with other, more frequent services. Everything else is rapid transit with decent frequencies.

Our final word: Getting better! Tries its best at representing networks with vastly differing scales all on the same diagram, though the solution won’t please everyone. Still feels a little too “light” and ungrounded, like it’s floating on the canvas a bit.