lyra loves public transit

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at some point I’ll do a review of the official île-de-france transit map, and i think this serves as a really good backdrop to help understand it. the per-system color coding makes it a lot easier to see what is metro and what is rer etc from far away. ill try to do my write up relatively soon and i’ll be sure to link your version op!

ORIGINAL WORK: Rennes Metro (Brittany, France), showing metro lines and connections to Chronostar (rapid bus) as well as TER and TGV (regional and high-speed trains)

Rennes, France was the smallest city in the world to have a metro line when line a opened in 2002. in 2008, line b opened making it the smallest city to have TWO metro lines. it is a VAL system and as such is fully automated and uses rubber tired trainsets. i have modeled the unique shape of the lines after their real geographical path--line a was largely built along a few existing street corridors (with the exception of the city center), while line b weaves around in tbm tunnels and viaduct. i made this in 2023, so its not guaranteed to be accurate today!

In the past few months, I have had a few people ask me about the wayfinding or the design and typefaces of the signage used on the SkyTrain system. I've wanted to talk about this for sometime and since I am on Christmas holiday, I felt like it was time to write about a part of its design language.

New Jersey Public Service Coordinated Transit (New Jersey, USA) Guide "E": Newark and Essex Division (1938)

lets start things off with a really good one... this surprisingly old diagram shows transit connections between newark, new jersey and its suburbs. rather than showing the exact routes of the 70+ buses and streetcars (this is what 'car' refers to in the key), it reduces each locality to a node and simply lists the routes which travel between adjacent nodes. this is apparently one of a set of 7 maps (according to the inset), though i haven't yet come across any of the others

what i like:

• its clear, concise, and provides a quick way to find suburban transit options in the area
• i like the use of color to differentiate routes to the city with other routes
• time estimates!! i dont know if these were reliable so its a double edged sword, but i do like to see them on a diagram like this

my criticisms:

• no differentiation of service levels. meaning in this case that it doesnt distinguish between streetcar routes and bus routes. some would argue that theyre both street running (mostly) so it doesnt matter, but i believe transit maps need to be clear about this regardless. it helps people know what to expect and i think most would agree that even a street running tram is a little bit more comfortable than a bus
• two routes, the 5 and the 82, are weirdly inconsistent with the rest of the diagram (i guess because they made stops which aren't on clean lines between nodes). i think that they could be clearer.

overall this is one of my favorites! see the full res version on internet archive