Submitted by Roberto, who says:
I just wanted to share with you the official map of the buses (MetroBus) that link the city of Valencia (Spain) with towns of its metropolitan area. Map by the Valencia Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATMV).
Transit Maps says:
Oh dear. This is… bad.
MetroBus (a collective term for all the metropolitan buses run by various operating companies in and around Valencia) operates over 100 routes, but you’d be hard pressed to see that from this desultory diagram.
For a start, there are no route numbers on the map at all, so it’s almost impossible to do any kind of route planning. And then there’s the different colour coding for the routes, which has no apparent or useful meaning because the map doesn’t have a legend.
There’s absolutely no reason for any of the stop labels on this map to be set at an angle, and yet so many are. The label for El Saler doesn’t even sit on its route line, missing it by a good margin.
What exactly happens to the routes when they enter Valencia itself? The map seems to imply they all just suddenly terminate near the edge of Zone A, but I seriously doubt that’s the reality of the situation.
A very minor positive: the zones are at least drawn relatively competently and aren’t too distracting. I like the way that the zone letters are stacked neatly down the right edge of the map.
Our final word: Seems almost half-finished. Almost completely useless for any form of route planning.
Source: ATMV website
Whilst of virtually no use to see where individual routes go or for any travel planning the site does describe this as a zone plan. Like an increasing number of other operators and providers they do not provide a route map. The whole website is much more of a corporate statement with details of operations not immediately obvious. Even their homepage photo stream includes one of a London bus so maybe their whole way of telling the public about their services needs a rethink.