Submission – Official Map: Chicago ‘L’, 2025

December 10, 2025
comments 3
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Scott (among others), who says:

CTA updated their iconic ‘L’ diagram earlier this year, and now that the temporary station outages for the Red-Purple Modernization project have been completed, figured this would be a great time to get your thoughts since the new version is a pretty dramatic departure from the previous iterations.

Transit Maps says:

Well, this one has sat in my queue for way too long – sorry for the delay in getting to this interesting new development in the world of Chicago rail maps!

The big and obvious difference here is that the Loop has now been integrated into the main diagram, rather than appearing in an inset. I’m generally in favour of this approach, as it reduces cognitive load and allows routes to be traced from end to end more easily. However, the execution lets the concept down a bit for me – everything feels a little unfinished, and perhaps even a little old-fashioned. Overall, I feel like there needs to be a bit more separation between all the concurrent lines around the loop: there is a gap between all of them, but it’s very thin and doesn’t help much. It’s especially problematic on the west side of the loop where the Pink and Orange lines – which have very little visual contrast – run next to each other. A bigger gap would help separate them and make them easier to follow. On diagrams with a coloured background like this, I often like to put a white keyline on all my route lines, just to separate them from the background and give a little extra boost to the contrast. Having to break the Red and Blue lines to fit the station labels in seems avoidable with a little reworking, and the snaking path the pedestrian interchange takes from Lake to Washington is particularly unfortunate.

The other big change is that this is now a true diagram, rather than the old map, which was definitely more of a map which just happened to look diagrammatic because of the regular street grid of Chicago. That street grid used to appear on the map but has now been removed, which certainly makes the diagram look cleaner. However, it’s absolutely baffling that some of the same-named stations now no longer line up properly. These stations are often named after their cross-street, which – being Chicago – are very long and very straight. So all “Cicero” stations should line up vertically, all “Kedzie” stations should line up, and so on. The old map got this right, because the visible grid forced it to. Now we have a Kedzie on the Brown Line that’s way out of alignment with the others, and there are lots of other examples. This diagram still places stations unevenly along routes to somewhat approximate their real-world location (as opposed to the normal diagrammatic approach of evenly spacing all the stations along a line), so this really is something they should have paid attention to.

As far as labelling goes, the vertical labels are definitely a stylistic choice. It seems that there’s space on many of the lines to place a lot of these labels horizontally, but they have chosen to be consistent – they can’t place all of the vertical labels that way, so they’ve decided to not do it at all. It’s certainly distinctive, if nothing else!

I’m definitely not a fan of labelling each line using the actual colour of that line – having to put a black keyline around some of the labels because you know that the contrast isn’t good enough is basically admitting how poor this solution is. Have the icon in the right colour, but the text should all be the same: not necessarily black, but definitely something with good, readable contrast.

Some other questions: Is showing the city limits of Chicago necessary for a transit diagram? Does it perhaps help with scale? Should the thin darker blue keylines on the rivers extend down the shore of the lake? They just end at the moment, which is unsatisfying for me. Why do the two ends of the Blue Line have branch names but the two ends of the Red Line don’t?

Our final word: Now a diagram that looks like a map instead of a map that looks like a diagram! Chicago’s regular street grid makes the distinction between the two very small, although this diagram now adheres to that grid less than the previous map. It’s good to see the Loop integrated into the design properly, though stylistically the whole thing just feels a little dowdy compared to a lot of modern diagrams.

Source: CTA website

Submission – Fantasy Map: Honolulu Skyline by Justin Kunimune

December 8, 2025
comment 1
Filed Under:
Fantasy Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Justin, who says:

Hi, I’m a big fan of this blog! I’ve been working on a fantasy diagram for the Honolulu rapid transit system, Skyline, and wanted to submit it for you to review. As of this year, the system has one line that runs from East Kapolei (Kualakaʻi Station) to Kalihi (Kahauiki Station), with plans to extend it into downtown Honolulu. The current maps are fine, but obviously mapping it is pretty simple when there’s only thirteen stations. This map imagines a scenario where the system is greatly expanded into multiple branches on either end, and also the Superferry connecting the islands is revived. It’s not very realistic in the short-term, but I think a lot of this is likely to be built eventually. I would be curious to hear what you think!

Transit Maps says:

I think what I like most about Justin’s diagram is that I can definitely see the official one evolving in this direction if it ever has to show more than the current single line. The use of 30-degree angles works well, especially the way the western end of the blue Ocean Line frames the shape of Pearl Harbor neatly, and the color palette is suitably bright and tropical. I do wonder what feats of engineering would have to be done to get the Mountain Line across to the other side of the island, but I bet it would be a spectacular ride!

Generally, the bilingual station names are handled well, although the three labels set at an angle right in the middle of the diagram—the only ones!—are perhaps a bit unfortunate. Getting rid of them isn’t an easy problem to solve, but it could be worth exploring as they really do stand out at the moment.

Our final word: 30-degree angles have been deployed to great effect on this simple, clean and attractive diagram, with some angled labels being about the only real issue I can see. Nice work, Justin!

Submission – Unofficial Map: Trams of The Hague, The Netherlands by Hugo von der Thüsen

October 27, 2025
comment 1
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by the designer, Hugo, who says:

I have always been ashamed of the official transit diagram for the tram system of The Hague [PDF link – Cam]. It’s a weird A4-shaped portrait diagram oriented so that the beach is at the top which is a strange choice as most residents of The Hague would tell you they think the beach is to the West/left. In reality it’s to the North-West and should be diagonal. There is plenty more things wrong with the current map, but I’m sure you can spot them by just looking at the map for a few minutes.

I have tried to redesign the map by adhering to the true north, using normal angles and coherent curve radii. The design tries to emulate the grids of The Hague’s road network by spacing the lines evenly. I stuck to the original colours which turned out to just be the default swatches in Illustrator, however I do think the map would also work nicely with an Amsterdam style colour differentiation of lines based on how they traverse the city centre (above or below ground or avoiding the centre completely).

Transit Maps says:

This is a big visual improvement over the official diagram, which I have always thought of as a bit generic and bland – though I will say that it has quite a bit of information encoded into it that Hugo’s version does not, like the peak hour-only nature of Line 34, accessibility information, bus transfers, and even zone boundaries.

However, there’s a lot to like about the visual impact of rotating the coast 45 degrees counter-clockwise (far closer to the reality of real-world geography) and having almost all the lines running at that angle. Though there’s a few vertical and horizontal route lines, this is almost a rotated rectilinear diagram like the old Montréal Metro diagram, and it looks superb. I really like the way that the main spine of lines 3, 4 and 34 come up from Zoetermeer and get reflected onto the left side of the diagram before splitting up to go to their final destinations. I will say that there’s perhaps an opportunity here with a little bit of tweaking to get a really nice vertical axis – the top of the 90-degree turn in Line 2, the Beatrixkwartier stop, the crossover in the NS rail lines and the vertical alignment of lines 1 and 15 could all line up perfectly from top to bottom and it would look amazing. They’re all just ever so slightly to one side of the axis line or the other at the moment. And if that vertical axis could be placed exactly halfway along the horizontal part of the 3/4/34 spine, so the two halves really are mirrored… well, that would be the icing on the cake.

I also like the use of parkland and the river to both orient the user within the city and to provide shape to the greater urban area – the satellite nature of Zoetermeer is particularly obvious.

Labelling is good throughout (all horizontal), but it might be nice to see if text throughout could just get a little bit bigger. The label for Den Haag Centraal seems placed a bit too far away from the actual station: I wonder if moving the NS symbol inside the station name box and then shifting everything to the left might work?

Despite all the line colours just being Adobe Illustrator default swatches, they actually work quite well, though there is one instance where the palette fails colour-blindness simulations: they grey cased line used for planned lines looks identical to the teal of the under construction part of Line 19. This is mitigated somewhat by the notes on the map itself, but it’d still be nice to have one render as warm/yellow and the other as cool/blue when viewed by a colour-blind user.

Our final word: Looks great! Perhaps doesn’t contain as much information as the official diagram, nut more than makes up for it with good visual design.

Submission – Official Map: Kansas City Streetcar Extension, 2025

October 24, 2025
comment 1
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Jon in KC, who says:

This is the new KC Streetcar pylon map, updated to reflect the Main Street Extension that opens this Friday, October 24th. It also shows the Riverfront Extension, which will open sometime early next year. I’m curious to get your thoughts. I have some concerns about the limited amount of contrast between the dark blue station lettering getting lost on the darker backgrounds, Art Museums and UMKC in particular, but maybe I’m overthinking it.

Transit Maps says:

You’re spot on in your assessment, Jon – the contrast ratio throughout this map borders on the Pass/Fail threshold for accessibility throughout, and it’s not just the dark blue type on a mid-blue background, but the grey text on that same blue and even the dark green labels on the (very bright) green parkland. It serves as a reminder that transit map designers have to consider accessibility as part of their design – contrast ratios for readable text and carefully-chosen colour palettes to accommodate colour-blind users being the major considerations. Tools like WebAIM make checking for type contrast relatively simple, and all wayfinding maps should aim to exceed the minimum contrast ratios required. Overall, this map needs to have its background colours lightened considerably to achieve better contrast.

To be honest, though I understand that the KC Streetcar branding uses blue almost exclusively, I would love to see a splash of a bright contrasting colour – perhaps yellow or orange – to draw the eye to important elements and make the map “pop”, as we say in the business.

The map itself is competently drawn, with nicely simplified streets and features: I particularly like the water/wave texture in the Missouri River. The Interstate and US Highway shields are disappointingly generic, and I’m not really in love with any of the point of interest icons, which don’t convincingly sell any idea of perspective, seem to be drawn in a few different styles and ultimately look somewhat amateur. Creating a cohesive and attractive set of point of interest icons for a map like this is difficult, time-consuming, and skilled illustration work and these aren’t quite there at the moment.

It’s worth noting that the KC Streetcar website also has a simplified version of this map – probably intended to be used as a strip map within cars – which has a plain white background and is much easier to read.

Our final word: A new streetcar extension – how exciting! This new map for the opening is superficially attractive and stylish, but more attention needs to be paid to accessibility and readability – especially if the map is going to be deployed at stations with varying levels and quality of light.

Source: KC Streetcar website

Submission – Unofficial Map: Klang Valley Integrated Transit by Eco

September 29, 2025
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Future Maps, Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Eco, who says:

I made this redesign of Greater Kuala Lumpur’s rail and BRT map this summer for an competition, given their official map feels unusually sloppy [Review from 2021 here: it looks much the same today – Cam]. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Transit Maps says:

Oh, I do like this! A sleek, modern diagram that’s future-proofed up to 2032 with the inclusion of the planned MRT Circle Line (line 13). Not only is that line perfectly circular, but there’s two properly concentric arcs for lines 8 and 12 contained within that circle as well! Pulling this off and still maintaining the right space and balance across the rest of the diagram is incredibly tricky, but the execution here is fantastic.

The integration of the numbered bullets for each line into the terminus stations is also really well executed and very consistently handled. I especially like it when the lines come in from the opposite directions, like with lines 4 and 5 at Putra Heights at the bottom left of the diagram. The lines numbers are perhaps just a bit too small for easy reference because of this, however.

I also really like the little rain cloud icon for transfers that are “not weather protected” – a necessary thing to know in Malaysia’s tropical climate! The icons for points of interest and landmarks are also excellent – rendered in a consistent and clear style, and fading out of the background like they’re emerging from a jungle mist. It is perhaps a little unfortunate that the National Palace’s icon above Semantan station looks like it’s balancing on the peak of a mountain, but a little bit of reworking can easily solve that little problem. There’s also some subtle but effective use of shadows and texture throughout that adds a lot of dimensionality to the diagram – just lovely work.

At the moment, lines 10, 11 and 13 seem a little too low in contrast relative to the black background but this may very well be intentional as they aren’t actually open yet. That contrast is definitely something to look at as each line comes into service, though. While black backgrounds on diagrams do look undeniably awesome (and definitely appeal to younger generations that have embraced “dark mode” on their devices), I do think that it can be trickier to find colours for route lines that work well on them when compared to a diagram with a white background.

Our final word: Superb – and leaps and bounds above the official map.

Official Map: DART System Map, Texas, 2025

September 18, 2025
comments 5
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

DART’s long-awaited Silver Line is opening at the end of October, and the agency already has a map out well in advance, so let’s take a look, shall we?

Look, this diagram is perfectly functional and does its job, but there are some absolutely baffling design decisions that have been made.

First and foremost is the decision to put a big “Effective September 15, 2025” label on the diagram, and then hiding the fact that the Silver Line doesn’t actually open until “Fall 2025” (currently planned for October 25, I believe) in small grey type over in the legend. This is obtuse at best and downright misleading at worst – many people are going to see that September date and assume that the Silver Line is open for service, when there’s still more than a month to go.

Then there’s the depiction of the Silver Line itself: the new, modern flagship route reduced to stair-stepping its way across the diagram like a drunken escalator, with ten – ten! – changes in direction on the way, some of them underneath station symbols. Even under the constraints of this diagram’s format, there has a way to straighten out and simplify this line so it looks like a fast and direct route.

Then there’s the whole issue of all the different angles used for the route lines. Every single angled line is different and only one of them is exactly 45 degrees! Yes, I measured all of them because I was trying to work out why the diagram felt so visually uneasy – my results are shown below.

As you can see, there are “45-degree” angles that actually range from 38.8 to 46.2 degrees, and “60-degree” angles between 56.7 amd 59.6 degrees. It’s absolutely bonkers and makes it looks like the design team just eyeballed everything instead of constraining their angles properly. Craziest of all is the A Train, which should just be an extension of the Green Line’s one and only actual 45 degree angle, but somehow manages to measure in at just 44.2 degrees!

Add to all this some poor labelling (why is Westmoreland to the right of the route line when all the other stations on that leg of the Red Line are to the left?), some badly nested curves, and a pretty inelegant fare zone boundary to the left of the diagram, and the whole thing feels very unfinished, almost like a first draft. It’s certainly not something I’d like to use to promote my brand new line.

Our final word: Bizarrely sloppy.

Source: DART website

Submission – Official Map: Kaohsiung MRT Diagram, Taiwan, 2025

September 3, 2025
comment 1
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Emerson, who says:

This is Kaohsiung MRT’s new system map, following the Red Line extension to Gangshan and the completion of the LRT loop. So far, Kaohsiung has not been featured on this site, so I would love to see your opinions on their map!

Transit Maps says:

I have to say that I’m not totally in love with this diagram: it just seems quite generic and bland, unfortunately. Even the nice touch of the interchange stations using the opposite line’s colour as a ring around each station code is let down by the fact that the green and orange used are absolutely terrible for colour-blind users, appearing almost identical in deuteranopia simulations (the red is dark enough to be visually different to the other two colours).

The tighter spacing of stations on the circle LRT line compared to the MRT lines does make things tricky, but I have to believe that there’s a more aesthetic way of presenting the circle line than this. It’s not particularly true to real-life, so there’s opportunity to simplify and beautify the shape and make a design “hook” out of it. As Kaohsiung is a coastal city, I’d really like to see a simplified coastline on this diagram as well to enable quicker orientation – the port area to the southwest offers a lot of potential for good visual cues.

Bilingual diagrams often have a hard time with type size because everything has to be presented twice. This diagram is mostly acceptable, except for the labels for the Taiwan Rail (TR) stations, which are just tiny. There is an English-only version of the diagram which fares a little better overall.

Our final word: Look, it does the job, but it’s not very elegant or exciting. Feels like it could be so much more.

Source: KMRT website

Submission: Official Map – Transportation Network of Brittany, France, 2025

August 25, 2025
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Nicolas, who says:

I live in Brittany, France, mostly on the western side of the region, so I am submitting its network map, containing coach, boat, and plane (yes, plane) routes in this great region.

Since merging the transport networks a few years ago, the region has decided to re-number the lines of coaches (to be fair, needed, there existed 4 line 1), where the last 2 digits will carry over with a 3rd added with the last digit of the deparment number (Finistère – 9xx, Côtes d’Armor – 2xx, Morbihan – 6xx and Ile et Villaine – 5xx). A single-digit line will get a 0 as last digit, and a b/c line will get 1/2/3 as last digit. Dashed routes are summer-only routes. I am meh on the whole thing.

On the joined map, from the official authority, only the 29, Finistère (westernmost) department, has switched over, the rest is coming this year.

I do think it is interesting that they went with a very schematic-yet-geographic design.

Transit Maps says:

I think what I like the most about this diagram is the restraint shown. Examination shows that this diagram seems to be loosely based loosely on multiples of 11.25 degrees, which offers a staggering thirty-two directions for lines to head in (I believe that the term for this would be dotriacontalinear). However, apart from Rennes – a major transport hub – which requires a lot of different unique angles for routes passing through it, the rest of the diagram wisely chooses from a much smaller subset of angles. This prevents everything from looking chaotic (or too much like a geographical map!) and I think the balance is just about right: complex where it needs to be, simpler in other places.

I also like the bespoke typeface – Region Bretagne New – which has just the right amount of quirkiness while still being nice and legible. Using big labels as the actual stations for major cities is clever and works well. The fact that most of the city names are quite short definitely helps, however!

As regular readers of the blog probably know, I’m not normally a fan of diagrams using overly-complex “faux geography” behind the route lines, but I think it actually works here, mainly because of the large area that the diagram encompasses, but also because the end result actually looks like Brittany without too much ugly distortion. It is interesting that the borders between the départements are drawn diagrammatically, though… probably to stop having a route line looking like it’s in the wrong département.

Overall, I do think there’s a bit too much empty/dead space around the edges of the diagram which could be better used: it really does look like the whole thing could be enlarged by about eight to ten percent and still fit onto the canvas.

Finally, where the heck is the legend?! It’s absolutely unforgivable to omit it on a complex diagram like this, where not everything might be immediately apparent to the user. For instance, a large number of stations have a dark blue diamond next to their name with absolutely no explanation anywhere as to what that indicates. And while it can be deduced that ferry routes with dotted lines indicate seasonal services, why make the reader work that hard?

Our final word: Shows a sprawling and extensive network with some excellent restrained diagrammatic work, but the complete lack of a legend is problematic.

Submission – Official Map: Northern Railway Map, England, 2025

August 18, 2025
comments 5
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Nicholas, who says:

Northern Rail’s new map is well worth a look – I find it exemplary for making such a previously nebulous network entirely understandable. Graphics pretty well impeccable. I understand this network may not survive the transition to Great British Railways, but it would be great if GBR could commission a nationwide suite of such maps for all the regional networks by the same author.

Transit Maps says:

I agree with Nicholas – there’s a lot to like about this clear and attractive diagram.

What’s immediately apparent is that while there’s a lot of vertical compression of the area shown – getting rid of all the empty space otherwise occupied by National Parks and the like – the relationship between major population centres has been maintained well. Carlisle and Newcastle line up across the map, as so Blackpool, Preston, Leeds and Hull, and so on down to the bottom. It’s impressive work, and the diagram still feels nicely balanced throughout despite the complexity of the network. I also feel that it strikes the right balance with the treatment of the coastline. It’s detailed enough to use as orientation (the labels do help!), but also simple enough so as not to distract from the diagram. Overly-complex faux geography is one of my biggest pet peeves, so it’s nice to see a designer resist the temptation for once!

I also approve of the map’s legend, which actually explains what all the symbols on the map mean in simple and plain terms. Yes, it’s a little verbose, but I really appreciate how it makes this complex network seem a little more human and approachable. A different approach that I haven’t seen very often before.

If I have any slight problem with this diagram, it’s that the nesting of corners as they go around curves isn’t always perfect. It looks like the diagram is trying to have slightly more organic curves that ease softly into corners – an approach championed by Ilya Birman among others – but it looks a bit clumsy in a few places, noticeably in the 90-degree curves coming south out of Manchester Piccadilly.

And perhaps some of the labelling could be looked at to see if the number of angles used could be reduced, or if more labels could be set horizontally.

Our final word: Yeah, this is pretty great. Simple, clean, effective design language works for me!

Source: Northern Railways website

Submission – Official Map: Valley Metro Light Rail and Streetcar, Phoenix, Arizona, 2025

July 9, 2025
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by a few people—sorry for the delay in getting to this!—including Shameek, who says:

Phoenix is opening the new southern light rail extension and splitting the system into two separate lines, so naturally they released a new map! I like some of the ideas in here, especially the downtown inset and treating the streetcar equally, but I wanted to hear your take.

Transit Maps says:

It’s always nice when transit systems expand past their first starter line and get to make more interesting diagrams! I quite like the modern, clean design of this one although it seems that the image file has been rendered without anti-aliasing, which gives a curious bitmapped look to the type and other design elements. The icons for park-and-rides and transit centers suffer the most here, as their small reproduction size doesn’t work well with the harsh edges created.

Despite this, the diagram feels balanced, with evenly spaced station labels, neatly designed line designation bullets, clear directional arrows on the one-way segments, a good map legend, and very readable locality labels. Perhaps the Downtown Phoenix box could have a white fill instead of grey to draw the eye to that area a little more, but that’s hardly a dealbreaker. The symbol for the Downtown Phoenix Hub is quite lovely, and the inset map of the area provides just enough context to direct passengers who need to interchange between the two light rail lines. Interestingly, the loop that must exist to for the A Line trains to change direction is omitted – both for design clarity and probably to reinforce that all riders have to leave the train when it arrives at the Washington/Central station.

The one less successful element is the S Line streetcar. Trying to fit a small local service onto a diagram with a scale as large as this one is a daunting task and keying numbers to a legend is probably the only solution if every stop needs to be named. However, I’m not entirely convinced by the somewhat haphazard order that the stations are numbered in. Stations 9 through 12 are numbered the opposite way to the direction that the streetcar travels in – as clearly shown by the directional arrow – which hardly seems intuitive. Maybe a “join-the-dots” approach where the numbering follows the route from one end to the other and then backtracks along the other one way section could work better? I also think that the green S Line should cross above the blue A Line instead of under it, as it’s very hard to follow here – in fact, it almost looks like Mill Ave/3rd St is an alternate terminus as the route line disappears almost immediately after the station marker.

Our final word: Very competent and clear, despite the unintentional bitmapped look. A bit of extra love when it comes to the depiction of the S Line streetcar would improve it even more.

Source: Valley Metro website