MBTA Map Contest Finalists

This is another persons map on the MBTA website, I think it's the best one.

Accessibility for the color blind?

I don't know why the T is so dead set on the color designation. They would probably have a problem with giving them number designation because I bet somehow in their minds they think that would be too confusing. But they like using the track numbers at Park St... like anyone realizes "track 1" or "track 2". I think they like to pretend their little green line subway is a real subway and they get to play these little games giving tracks numbers or something. I mean they make a bus out to be a train line and give it all this attention on the map, and it is ridiculous. The green line is a joke to begin with and should be torn out and turned to a regular bus line. A B line bus would be less to spend money on and could have higher frequency and 1 driver. The T is FUBAR, and should be closed down and rebuilt. FTW.
 
c_combat said:
But they like using the track numbers at Park St... like anyone realizes "track 1" or "track 2". I think they like to pretend their little green line subway is a real subway and they get to play these little games giving tracks numbers or something. I mean they make a bus out to be a train line and give it all this attention on the map, and it is ridiculous. The green line is a joke to begin with and should be torn out and turned to a regular bus line. A B line bus would be less to spend money on and could have higher frequency and 1 driver.
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Yeah, how about no...
 
c_combat said:
This is another persons map on the MBTA website, I think it's the best one.

Accessibility for the color blind?

I don't know why the T is so dead set on the color designation. They would probably have a problem with giving them number designation because I bet somehow in their minds they think that would be too confusing. But they like using the track numbers at Park St... like anyone realizes "track 1" or "track 2". I think they like to pretend their little green line subway is a real subway and they get to play these little games giving tracks numbers or something. I mean they make a bus out to be a train line and give it all this attention on the map, and it is ridiculous. The green line is a joke to begin with and should be torn out and turned to a regular bus line. A B line bus would be less to spend money on and could have higher frequency and 1 driver. The T is FUBAR, and should be closed down and rebuilt. FTW.
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Yours would have been the best one if you had entered it! ;-)

In re: to the T's obsession with color - It's a psychology thing. People freak out about wayfinding with numbers and letters. Colors are simply easier to relate to and follow.
 
datadyne007 said:
Yours would have been the best one if you had entered it! ;-)
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Definitely.

In re: to the T's obsession with color - It's a psychology thing. People freak out about wayfinding with numbers and letters. Colors are simply easier to relate to and follow.
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It's tradition too. Change is hard in this provincial town.
 
datadyne007 said:
Yours would have been the best one if you had entered it! ;-)

In re: to the T's obsession with color - It's a psychology thing. People freak out about wayfinding with numbers and letters. Colors are simply easier to relate to and follow.
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Yea, I suppose so. I'd imagine locals would still call them by the colors, I know I would, but for visitors and tourists, I bet a little number would help, seeing that most other cities with major transit systems use numbers. I think at the very least it would be cool if it said that C terminates at N. Station, and Gov't Center for B and Lechemere for E. A visitor coming from BU that wanted to get to Cambridgeside Galleria would assume that it will not require another train to get there until they get to Park St. and it's announced (in English) and it may cause some confusion that could have been avoided if only a map illustrated the line better.

It would have been cool if I submitted my map, I doubt it would have gotten chosen, I would have had to make it more confusing for it to get picked.
 
c_combat said:
The green line is a joke to begin with and should be torn out and turned to a regular bus line. A B line bus would be less to spend money on and could have higher frequency and 1 driver. The T is FUBAR, and should be closed down and rebuilt. FTW.
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Maybe you'll rethink that when you consider that the Silver Line on Washington Street carries only about half the passenger load of the "B" branch of the Green Line. Do you think the Silver Line is a great success?

The problems with the "B" branch have to do with MBTA managerial incompetence and laziness in fixing operational difficulties. And, in some cases, lack of money (although fixing operations would save money, so, bleh: see incompetence).
 
Ok. I saw this in person on the train today, and it's a little better than it looks in the picture. The line letters are actually superimposed on the Downtown subway in tiny print, although there's no indication of terminal stations, only a change on the next label from "B, C, D and E" to "C and E". The entire map is actually optimized for the GC closure, with a fine print annotation next to GC and the entire station actually represented by a black "X".

It's not total negligence, but it's still worse than what they had and far worse than what was possible. When half of your branches are ending 5 stations from the end of the line as drawn on your map, you should do better than 7pt font annotations to indicate that.
 
I know I was quite sad to see the perfect diamond in the center of the map disappear- it had reminded me of the old Cambridge Seven spider map's square.
 
piggiston said:
New post from Cameron Booth explaining how the MBTA took the winning map and made it worse: http://transitmaps.tumblr.com/post/83628699211/mbta-comparison
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Jeez... I didn't realize how much the T had changed. They basically ended up with their old map, but with the dumb straightening of the GL branches (which is pretty much all I noticed when I thought they didn't update the proposal at all).

Good for Cameron for bothering to actually put the maps side-by-side. The comments at the bottom have a short discussion of diagrammatic vs. geographic, and while I agree that this map is a muddle, I think any good T map would have to include elements of both. This isn't London, located inland with a single geographic feature and most of the track below grade.

That said, I agree with him that just dumping GIS outlines behind a diagrammatic map isn't a clean solution.
 
From a uhub post on some zombie game that takes place (partially?) in Boston, what map is this based off of? It's got the SL and CR lines so it's fairly new, but I can't recall ever seeing the Red Line depicted this way.

IMG_20140426_160323.jpg


Also, this...
last-of-us-boston-t.jpg


If they made a game in Paris or London it wouldn't have Subway plastered everywhere, why here? (Even worse using MTA typography to do so!)
 
davem said:
From a uhub post on some zombie game that takes place (partially?) in Boston, what map is this based off of? It's got the SL and CR lines so it's fairly new, but I can't recall ever seeing the Red Line depicted this way.

<snip>
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That map is a redesign done by Cameron Booth, originally posted on his transit maps blog. There was drama about it because, as I understand it, the video game makers did not get his permission first. But he eventually got in touch and things seem to be (somewhat?) smoothed over now. (See third-party article here.)
 
I've been seeing the new map around, and it's growing on me. The small details don't look great on the in-car maps, but they actually work well on the full-size station maps. The ones on the outbound platform at Boylston actually look pretty snazzy. I still don't like that the Green Line is distorted, but showing all the stops is good.
 
So a Paris architect is working on standardizing the subway maps... of the world.

For the US it's only NYC so far... but I'm liking it.

http://www.inat.fr/

new-york-city-metro-subway-map-1000.png
 
An architect who designs buildings that ignore their context thinks that all metro maps should be identical regardless of the city they're for. Film at 11.

Not all metro maps should be square; metro maps should fit their city's reality. Boston and London are east-west oriented; their maps should be wider than long. New York is more north-south oriented, and its maps should reflect that.

Distorting geography is one thing; outright lying about it is another. The Thames doesn't turn 90 degrees south, and those are not the correct directions to Upminster, Uxbridge, or Amersham. Jamaica is not directly east of 138th Street, and Brighton Beach is rather south of City Hall.

It's a fun experiment and all, but these are hideous.
 
That was going around a couple weeks back with write ups like "The Best NYC Subway Map Yet!" and every single comment about it was negative. That is worse than the Vignelli map.
 
The EGE said:
An architect who designs buildings that ignore their context thinks that all metro maps should be identical regardless of the city they're for. Film at 11.

Not all metro maps should be square; metro maps should fit their city's reality. Boston and London are east-west oriented; their maps should be wider than long. New York is more north-south oriented, and its maps should reflect that.

Distorting geography is one thing; outright lying about it is another. The Thames doesn't turn 90 degrees south, and those are not the correct directions to Upminster, Uxbridge, or Amersham. Jamaica is not directly east of 138th Street, and Brighton Beach is rather south of City Hall.

It's a fun experiment and all, but these are hideous.
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Agreed that you can't apply the same solution to every map.

That Berlin map is f-ing beautiful though. That Ringbahn... (In the interview with the Berliner-Zeitung he also says the current map is good and really doesn't need a redesign)
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
That was going around a couple weeks back with write ups like "The Best NYC Subway Map Yet!" and every single comment about it was negative. That is worse than the Vignelli map.
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The Vignelli map and its derivatives are great if you already know the system but need a diagrammatic version for some reason. It works amazingly for the Weekender map, because that's for locals who just need to know if their line has track work on it.

These maps... they look like the bad maps in the back of tourist guidebooks.
 
davem said:
So a Paris architect is working on standardizing the subway maps... of the world.

For the US it's only NYC so far... but I'm liking it.
Click to expand...

Distorting geography is fine, but I did a double take upon seeing JFK. If it takes an additional 30 seconds for someone who knows NYC geography but not the subway to find the airport on your map, it's a real problem in my mind.
 
Probably should have stated, I like the concept of creating a similar set of symbols and design conventions for all transit maps. I'm not a fan of cramming them all into a square, or other things that seem to take away from usefulness.
 
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