Keeping busy!
Just because I'm not allowed to seek employment yet doesn't mean I'm not keeping myself busy. It's important to keep my hand in, so to speak, so I set myself little design challenges and projects to keep the brain ticking over. One that I've just completed, and am pretty pleased with, is a redesign of Portland's MAX Light Rail system map. The MAX is a fantastic example of a renewed interest in mass transit in America (fighting back against the omnipresent car!). Twenty years ago, it didn't even exist, now it is an integral part of the city with plans for further expansion.
As great as the system is, its system map is severely lacking. I present here the official Tri-Met PDF of the system for your reference. The whole thing is suffering from visual overload... too much information all presented at similar levels of importance. The use of blue type everywhere is overwhelming to the eye and the clumsy use of "TC" and "P" in circles to denote Transit Centers and Park and Ride leads to ugly incidents at Gateway/NE 99th and Parkrose/Sumner, where the designer is at a loss as to where to place the parking symbol. Overall, the map lacks the style and grace of the best transit maps - London, Paris, Sydney and Stuttgart being prime examples of the way to do it right. For a fantastic reference on metro and transit maps around the world, click here.
Of course, I like a challenge... so I decided that I would add in the soon-to-be commenced Green Line as well. This line completely changes the face of downtown as it will run north-south through the nearly completed Transit Mall, rather than east-west as the current lines do. The yellow line will also be rerouted along the mall. Based on information on Tri-Met's site, I have produced this map, which I feel is a vast improvement on the incumbent.
It's a lot more visual than the old map - Transit Centers (white) are now easily distinguished from normal stations (coloured ticks), standard icons are used for Park and Ride and (my addition) bicycle lockers. Black type for station names stops blue from dominating the entire map, and town names are now a shade of grey to stop them from being so visually heavy. Changes of direction in a line are now gracefully curved, rather than abrupt changes of angle. Unforgivably, all type at a 90° angle on the old map read from the left, something I was always taught NEVER to do, so I have amended all the angled type to be read from the right and improved the differentiation between station names and bus route numbers.
The thing that I think reduces clutter the most is the new way I have approached depicting Fare Zones. Rather than use the large and distracting Zone Arrows that had to be placed awkwardly between station names AND the huge travel time lines, I have opted for a far more visual approach and used progressively lighter tints of the line colour. This wouldn't work on a map of the complexity of London or Paris, but on this relatively simple map it works surprisingly well, especially with the legend explaining it so clearly.
I've also included some Portland attractions on the map (the Zoo, Children's Museum and baseball park), although I have cheated and left out the venues at the Rose Quarter. The station name does the work for me there, so it's not too bad. I also like my little pedestrian interchange line between the two Rose Quarter stations, as there's a two block hike between them on foot.
Things I'm not sure about: the curve in the red line to the airport, while geographically more accurate, could be a bit fussy and unnecessary. Also, the travel time lines, while a vast improvement over the old heavy blue ones, don't really work for the downtown part of the yellow/green line, or the Clackamas branch of the green line.
Finally, this whole layout will fall apart somewhat when the extension of the yellow line happens in 2014. From PSU, the line will cross the river and head south to Milwaukie. On my map, this will put Milwaulkie a lot further south than Clackamas, when in reality they are pretty much level. I can't see any better way to represent downtown than what I've done, so it may just have to be that way.
I'd love to hear what you think of my efforts!
Posted in: chaosboy, design, portland on October 22, 2007 at at 10:15:00 AM
I think its pretty awesome
Looking at the way things are going who knows if there will ever be any need to draw a line south to miwaukee :(
Anyways, one aspect I didn't like was the lighter colors of the ends of the lines. Usually that's used to show routes that haven't been completed yet. On first glance it may appear that the grayed out segments are planned extensions.
Don't know if you realize, but TriMet has a adopted a version of their official map that looks a little like yours. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmchuff/2956795855/ and, from the person who designed it, http://www.gvernon.com/images/other/image-7.jpg
Thanks for the heads up, Jason, it certainly is interesting to see the evolution of the TriMet system map.
While it's a definite improvement on the old map in terms of design and information hierarchy, I still feel it could be so much better. There's a lot of weird gaps between stations (especially between Lombard and Kenton, that's just strange!) and the labelling of stations in the downtown area is – frankly – a complete mess, with station names at four different angles! I know that it can be done a lot neater than this, because I've played with a similar layout myself! It also doesn't accurately reflect the situation at PGE Park, which is really two different stations.
Looking at the map again, I agree with your points. Part of the problem is that the downtown area IS a mess, with 3 parallel rail lines in a width of 11 blocks. If you're really interested, as I said this this the person who appears to have designed it. Specifically see this page.