Many cities don’t have small network maps, but it could be a worthy investment. What I’m talking about is London-style bus spider maps like this:
Image from Flickr, by Oran
These maps would help improve wayfinding in areas like Dinkytown, Midway, Uptown, Nicollet-Lake, etc.
Also a pocket sized map (maybe about the size of a bus schedule) showing the major all-day routes would be useful. Frequent routes would have thick lines while less frequent routes would have thin lines similar to this:
Image from Flickr, by Oran
Posting individual maps in bus shelters would be useful. There is currently a pilot project like this on Route 27.
April 5, 2009 at 12:24 am |
It would fantastic if they posted the map of the route in each bus shelter, and that would be so little work for them to do…
April 5, 2009 at 1:46 am |
I think this would be a great idea. It becomes annoying trying to plan trips with only the entire system map or the individual route pdf versions. I good way to create some simplified small network maps might be to make a version for each transit station (Uptown, Chicago, etc.).
Do you have any more information on the Route 27 pilot project?
April 7, 2009 at 12:45 pm |
I don’t really know anything about it right now, but I will ask Metro Transit. I just assumed it was a pilot project because I’ve only seen the maps in bus shelters that the 27 stops at.
April 5, 2009 at 3:17 am |
That would be a good idea. Even if its just a modified quarter of the system map. Maps in the shelters is long overdue IMO, quite a few already seem to have space for one in the display anyways. I would also like route maps on some bus stop signs as well, and route numbers on all bus stop signs. I did notice a bus stop sign with an 87 on it at the U St. Paul campus so maybe something is starting to happen?
April 7, 2009 at 12:48 pm |
There are also the signs for the Hi-Frequency lines which have route numbers on them. Hopefully in the future the signs will be more like Chicago, LA, Vancouver, Houston, etc, where the route numbers and destinations are posted on the sign.
April 13, 2009 at 9:56 pm |
this got me thinking and I started playing with visio. I’m just starting but once I’ve got all the major routes done I’ll play around with the design a bit (right now it’s mostly hi-frequency routes).
April 13, 2009 at 9:56 pm |
oops, it ate my html.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/trigonalmayhem/metrotransitmap-test2.png
link
April 13, 2009 at 9:58 pm |
and if there’s any interest further down the line I’d love to share the visio file with people to play with.