The MTA’s new geographically accurate (left) and diagrammatic (right) subway maps, now being tested at nine stations. (MTA)
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority is experimenting with new network maps that adopt a diagrammatic design that harkens back to Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 design, or (frankly) to designs used by most other transit systems. The new maps appear in nine subway stations side-by-side with geographically accurate maps of the MTA system, and embed QR codes so riders can submit feedback. If the maps are positively received, they could replace the MTA’s current network map—but New York being New York, and New York’s map wars being what they’ve been for the past fifty years or so, it’s anyone’s guess how this will shake out. More at Gizmodo.
Back in 1978, Massimo Vignelli and John Tauranac debated the future of New York’s subway map. That debate—which in many ways never quite ended—is now the subject of a book coming out later this month. Edited by Gary Hustwit, The New York Subway Map Debate includes a full transcript of the debate and subsequent discussion (thanks to the discovery of a lost audio recording), plus contemporary photos and new interviews. Paperback available for $40 via the link.
The Google My Maps Android app is being closed down in October. You may remember that My Maps is a feature allowing users to create custom maps on the Google Maps platform relatively easily. To be honest I wasn’t aware that it had its own Android app; once that’s closed it will be available via the web. Andro4all worries (Spanish) that this is a sign that My Maps could be discontinued, which on the one hand seems a bit premature, but on the other, well, Google does have a track record. [Alejandro Polanca]
San Marino is the fifth smallest country in the world, but it’s large enough to have a bus network, for which Jug Cerovic has created a map. It’s a network diagram that includes not only San Marino’s domestic bus routes, but its connecting bus line to Rimini, Italy (where you can connect to/from trains and planes) and its funicular railway (Wikipedia: Transport in San Marino). It’s also something we almost never see in a transit map: an oblique view. Adding perspective makes total sense: with San Marino and its hills in the foreground and the Adriatic Sea in the distance, we get more detail where it’s needed and connections to the rest of the world in the distance.
This interactive map, created by Sean Marshall, compares the extent of Canada’s passenger rail network in 1955 with what was left of it in 1980 after decades of service cancellations and line abandonments. By 1980 the various railways’ services had been taken over by VIA Rail; VIA’s network would face the first of a series of cutbacks the following year (there’s a lot less of it extant today), so this map represents the public rail network at its maximum. More about the map from Sean here.
The French state railway company SNCF has a lot of nice maps of their rail network, some of which I’ve posted here before; of particular interest, though, is the Atlas du réseau ferré en France, which gathers them into an 86-page booklet, and includes a lot of diagrams showing, for example, passenger and freight volumes. It’s available here as a flipbook and can be downloaded as a PDF if you give them your email; I’d be over the moon if it existed as a hard copy.
Metropolitan France—mainland France without Corsica and its overseas territories—is often referred to colloquially as l’Hexagone. Jug Cerovic, whose work we are familiar with here, has taken that metaphor and run with it with this network diagram of France’s main passenger train lines: the grid is hexagonal, and it works. Lines are colour-coded: TGV lines are blue if they start in Paris and red if they route around it or connect regions directly (a relatively new development; intercity lines are blue-grey, regional lines are orange, and night trains are grey. International routes are also included. It’s actually quite easy to see what cities and towns get what kind of train service, and what services exist between two points—exactly what a network map should do.
RMTransit, a transit enthusiast YouTube channel, looks at some of the shortcomings of transit maps: how maps tend to fail at things like mode (tram vs. subway) or frequency. Very much from a rider perspective rather than from the perspective of map design.
Once a design classic, the map has been ugly, and getting uglier, for a while. The rot started to set in with the baffling decision to show the fare zones using a series of irregular grey polygons that make it look like the familiar shape of the Tube network had been painted against the backdrop of the sort of artwork you’d find lining the corridors of a Gatwick Airport hotel sometime in the late 1980s.
But the bigger problem is that Transport for London have thrown more and more services onto the map without any apparent consideration for what it might need to change in order to accommodate them. Most of the map is still given over to the northern half of London, even though a growing share of the services it shows (the Overground, Tramlink, now Thameslink) are south of the river.
New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has released a beta of a new digital subway map that aims to solve several problems at once. It shows train positions in real time and provides service bulletins in a single location. It also promises, says Fast Company’s Mark Wilson, to bridge the long-standing (and often acrimonious) divide between geographically accurate transit maps (Hertz) and diagrammatic network diagrams (Vignelli).
Here’s a video about how the new digital map came to be:
On Transit Maps, Cameron Booth has some criticisms of the map and its approach. “The main selling point of this map is that it has the clarity of a diagram but the fidelity of a geographical map—‘The best of both worlds!’ the articles happily proclaimed this morning—but the reality is more like ‘Jack of all trades; master of none.’ As much as I try, I simply can’t see any real benefit to this approach.”
Another point Booth makes, and I can confirm, is that the map isn’t just slow; it’s profoundly slow. On Safari it makes my current-generation, eight-core Core i7 iMac with 40 GB of RAM and a Radeon Pro 5500 XT feel like a snail; it’s a little better on Chrome, and on my third-generation iPad Air, but it’s still slow and janky and not very pleasant to use. Well, it’s a beta. But a beta that crawls on hardware faster than what most people own is, I’d gently suggest, not ready for release.
Mark Ovenden has made a career of publishing books about transportation systems and their maps that are both comprehensive and copiously illustrated. These include books about transit maps, railway maps and airline maps, as well as books about specific transit systems like the London Underground and the Paris Metro.
His latest, Underground Cities (Frances Lincoln, 22 Sep), is in some ways a natural progression from his past work: in the introduction he muses on the link between transit geekery and wondering about “what else lies down there beyond the walls” (p. 6). But in other ways this is quite a different book.
Harry Beck’s original London tube map was inspired by circuit diagrams, so it’s only fitting that TrainTrackr’s tracking maps showing the real-time positions of trains on the London Underground and Boston MBTA are literally circuit boards, using LEDs to indicate train positions. (They also have an LED map showing rainfall data in the British Isles.) Prices range from £99 to £249 (US$149 to $315). [Mapping London]
Michael Hertz, whose design firm created the map of the New York City subway that in 1979 replaced a controversial (though critically acclaimed) design by Massimo Vignelli—a map that today’s map design largely follows—died earlier this month at the age of 87, the New York Times reports. See also BBC News, CNN, NBC New York, the New York Post—that’s rather a lot of attention.
That 1979 map that has been critiqued, fulminated against and re-imagined over and over again has nonetheless managed to become iconic; however much the map offended various design aesthetics, as the Times obituary (and previous coverage) shows, it was created with care and purpose: the curves were deliberate, the references to aboveground landmarks were deliberate. It was a team effort, but the Times obit had this interesting item about who should get the credit:
There has been some sniping over the years as to who deserves credit for the 1979 map, with Mr. Hertz taking exception whenever Mr. Tauranac1 was identified as “chief designer” or given some similar title.
“We’ve had parallel careers,” Mr. Hertz told The New York Times in 2012. “I design subway maps, and he claims to design subway maps.”
In 2004, the Long Island newspaper Newsday asked Tom Kelly, then the spokesman for the M.T.A., about who did what.
“The best thing I could probably tell you is to quote my sainted mother: ‘Success has many fathers,’” Mr. Kelly said. “That’s not to disparage any work that anybody else put into the map. But, in all honesty, it’s Mike Hertz that did all the basic design and implementation of it. In all fairness, the father of this map, as far as we’re concerned, is Mike Hertz.”
MTA
The 1979 map isn’t quite the same as the current version. Transit Maps posted a copy in 2015, and has this to say about it: “It’s funny how we call this the ‘same’ map as today’s version, because there’s a lot of differences, both big and small. The Beck-style tick marks for local stations as mentioned above, no Staten Island inset, the biggest legend box I’ve ever seen, the colours used for water and parkland … the list goes on!”
James Niehues is legendary for his pictorial maps of ski resorts—a collection of them was published last year—so it’s no surprise that when Amtrak approached him to create a route map for their on-train magazine, The National, he remained true to his particular idiom, “taking a few liberties to highlight the country’s major ski regions—the Great Plains are shrunken, while the Rockies loom large. ‘I hope nobody takes it too seriously,’ he cautions.”
Back in 1978, Massimo Vignelli and John Tauranac debated the future of New York’s subway map. That debate—which in many ways never quite ended—is now the subject of a book coming out later this month. Edited by Gary Hustwit, 
The French state railway company SNCF has a lot of nice 
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