Thanks to everyone on Twitter alerting me to this new map! While there’s a lot of Washington, DC content on the blog, I haven’t fully reviewed the official WMATA map since 2013, so this revision seems like a good time to look at again.
First off – let’s set it out of our system, everyone… SILVER LINE! SILVER LINE! Finally extending all the way out to Dulles Airport and Ashburn, and surely opening any time now, right? As is usual for WMATA, the map uses the longest name possible for the airport station: “Washington Dulles International Airport” – while the airport’s official name – is an absolute mouthful. Here in Portland, the TriMet MAX map just says “Portland Airport”, not “Portland International Airport” and everyone still knows exactly what they mean.
There’s plenty of other new names apart from those on the Silver Line extension, with five stations getting new names: Downtown Largo (from Largo Town Center), Hyattsville Crossing (Prince George’s Plaza), North Bethesda (White Flint), West Falls Church-VT (removing UVA from the secondary name), and Tysons (Tysons Corner). The future in-fill station at Potomac Yard also makes an appearance with a hollow white dot for its station marker. Apparently, this will be a sticker placed on top of the final version of the map at Metro stations – a clever way to prevent having to replace maps again when the station actually opens.
Once the Silver Line extension opens, the 5A bus service to Dulles Airport will cease, and the map reflects this by removing the connection icons at Rosslyn and L’Enfant Plaza. The B30 to BWI no longer runs, so that’s the end of bus representation on the Metro map.
Stylistically, nothing much has changed now for many years – this is still very recognisably and unmistakably a WMATA map. However, there’s some inconsistencies and room for improvement in places. First off, WMATA really has to work out how they’re going to treat subtitles for station names consistently. We have “Virginia Sq–GMU” and “Ballston–MU” (among others) on one line, but “West Falls Church–VT” and “Potomac Yard–VT” get their secondary names placed in the subtitle. Why? It mainly looks like it’s because the station dots for Virginia Square and Ballston are placed too close together to allow for subtitles, but it just creates inconsistency in the design. Personally, I’d vote for having all of these two- or three-letter abbreviations moved up to the main title, saving the subtitles for the longer station names that need that space saved.
The DC Metro map has always been visually busy, with lots of background colours and detail leading to some poor label placement (look at U Street and other stations on the Yellow/Green line just laid down right on top of the route lines), but that doesn’t mean that new elements need to make things worse. Look at the way that all the new Silver Line station labels overlap the Potomac River, when there’s absolutely no need for them to do so. We don’t need to see the twists and turns of a river on a simplified diagram like this, and it’s not even a particularly accurate interpretation of the geography anyway. If the river just extended straight out from the District border at a 45-degree angle, it would avoid all of the labels completely and dramatically improve legibility.
And one tiny little technical error I spotted: the Fairfax/Arlington county border encroaches into the white keyline where the Silver Line crosses over the Orange Line: all other borders respect such keylines.
Our final word: An obvious evolution of previous versions – there are no surprises here! – that continues and perhaps compounds some previous flaws. But… SILVER LINE! SILVER LINE!
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Source: Jordan Pascale/Twitter
So, part of the reason for Dulles’s full name is because of National Airport’s full name. Congress basically shoved the Reagan moniker down our throats years ago over much local objection and many of us bitter locals STILL refuse to call it Reagan (those who call it Reagan Airport around here are quickly identified as Republicans or out-of-towners). As a compromise WMATA just used the full name to skirt the controversy, requiring it to follow suit with Dulles as well for consistency.
For a while now, maybe since last year, westbound Silver Line platforms have been marked “Ashburn.” If only it were true!
I am good with most of the current station name changes and would also like to see some consistency with the short acronyms in the main station name lines. I do not like the shortened “Tysons” new name change. It creates three consecutive one word Station names and should be broken up. Since “Tysons Corner” won’t be replaced, I would’ve like to have seen McLean station add the “Capital One Hall” to its moniker.
In addition, I think there could be more room made between station names on the blue/yellow line stretch between the Pentagon and Eisenhower stations. The Crystal City station can be brought up a little, creating less of a gap between its station, Pentagon City and the Pentagon stations. And, the blue line turn south of the King St. station can be brought farther south, as well.as the Eisenhower station being moved closer to the beltway line. That station virtually sits on the beltway anyway and yet appears slightly farther away from it then does the Silver Spring station icon. Giving more space in this section between the station names would improve the map’s readability.
I have no problem with the shortened “Tysons” name.
I was under the impression that West Hyattsville Station would be renamed as Hyattsville Crossing, and renaming Tysons Corners has a history: “originally” it was spelled as Tyson’s Corner, then future Metro service was promised, but swung in the other direction to Dunn Loring and Vienna; Tyson’s Corner was collapsed as Tysons Corners (note spelling) finally after The Silver Line arrived with four station names after the area (Tysons East, Tysons Corners, Tysons Central, and Tysons 123–I hope I’m correct), now it will be simply Tysons [?]
A far as I know, the renaming of Tysons Corner is park of a multi-year effort to rebrand the area and not WMATA specific: https://wjla.com/news/local/tysons-corner-to-become-simply-tysons (2015), https://www.ffxnow.com/2022/09/12/delegate-race-inadvertently-reignites-tysons-corner-name-debate/