Human Transit

washington, dc: a subway-style frequent bus map

Dan Malouff at Greater Greater Washington has sketched a schematic (not geographic) Frequent Bus Network map for the city, and separate maps for each suburban county.  See the original to enlarge and sharpen.

Obviously I recommend Frequent Network maps that show all the modes that run frequently, in some legible way.  In this case that would include the subway.  Otherwise, you seem to imply that there is a huge audience of bus people who want to travel only by bus.  Of course, such a map would need to be at a much larger scale and would have required a lot more work (and tough design choices) to draw.  This bus network is obviously discontinuous because the missing links are in the rail system.

 

greater seattle: loving the new sub-network maps

Now this is a clear map!  It's by the Seattle area agency King County Metro.  First the legend:

RapidRIde is King County Metro's new rapid bus product, with widely spaced stops, high frequency, special stations, but usually no exclusive lane.  Note how cleanly this legend distinguishes services that are useful for different purposes.  Note too that it omits peak-only commuter express services, because if they were present they would be lots of confusing overlapping lines that would make the basic network impossible to see.

So here's a piece the map.  Click to enlarge, but more important, go here (that's an order) to see the whole thing.

The distinctions on this map are entirely about what matters to the customer, especially the person who wants to see the all-day transit network that is ready to liberate your life, not just your commute.  Red means fast and frequent.  Blue means frequent.  Green means all day but not frequent.  And if you want to see peak commuter express services, which would obliterate the legibility of this map if they were included, see another map or individual timetable.  

To be fair, many good maps do show peak only services and visually de-emphasise them as faint dashed lines.  That works too, but the key design principle is this:  The network of any particular layer in the hierarchy of service should be clear without being obscured by lower levels of service.  This map does that perfectly:  You can see just the red Rapid Ride line, or you can focus easily on red plus blue to see the frequent network, or you can notice the paler green and see the all-day network.  All in one map.

To get to this kind of customer-centered clarity, note what they had to omit:  Two transit agencies' services are presented here with no differentiation at all.  Bus routes numbered in the 500s belong to Sound Transit while the others belong to King County Metro.  Most multi-agency regions would focus on highlighting this distinction first, on the assumption that the customer's loyalty to a transit company is much more important than their desire to get where they're going.  The distinction should arguably be at least a footnote if you don't have integrated fares between the companies, as it could imply fare penalties and different fare media.

Some multi-agency maps do show all operators, but still visually distinguish them, as the Los Angeles Metro map does, for example.  But if you want a really simple map, reduce the transit company's identity to a footnote, or something that can be inferred from a route number*, or don't even show it at all.  Instead, show the customer what matters to them: frequency, speed, and duration of service.

*Can you spot the one place on the LAMetro map where they do that?  The answer is in "Joseph E"'s comment below.

 

guest post: a reader's struggle to map tel aviv's transit network

Alan Tanaman is a transit planning enthusiast who is working to help redefine the perception of public transport in Israel as a service to be used by everyone. Alan was an advisor on transport policy for the Israeli Labour Party during their 1998 election campaign, and more recently has been assisting the Israeli Public Transport Passengers Organisation (an NGO). He is also one of the moderators on the Tapuz Public Transport forum, but his primary interest is in trying to make transit more simple to understand and use.

This blog was the prime motivator for my attempt to produce a frequent-network map for the Tel Aviv Metropolitan region. The area lacks a rapid transit system, but the slack is generally taken up by a fairly frequent bus system, albeit lacking in priority measures. Although frequent, the network has grown sporadically and without method, and it was decided in 2004 that a complete overhaul of the network was needed, one that would be based on free transfers.

Only in July 2011 did the first major reorganisation phase take place, but it was shrouded in secrecy until about 10 days before the change. Once the change did take place, there was mass confusion. Suffice to say that the information was insufficient and the implementation was poor.

People resented having to make changes, but in this case the change was poorly explained; the benefits of the new system with high-frequency core sections were unclear. It is incredible that one of the missing pieces was a complete network map. The government website www.busline.co.il included only individual line maps along with maps of individual areas. But if you wanted to get from one end of the city to the other, it was pretty difficult to work out the best way to do so.

I wondered if some of Jarrett Walker’s principles would work – was there a clear network of high-frequency lines running all day? During that month, curiosity got the better of me, and I put together a map of the highest frequency routes. These were to be called ‘fork routes’: Routes with a high-frequency trunk, forking out into two or three branches at each end. I also added a few of the other high-frequency routes and published the map on a public transport forum. The reaction was very positive, but the network coverage was sparse, so I was urged to add lower frequency routes.

At this point I decided that the map was going to become a mission to produce a complete network map, excluding only the very lowest frequency routes. This seemed impossible – the network is so complex and there are far too many line numbers to fit. Worse still, the agency was now backtracking on some of the changes that had simplified the network, and had announced that it would bring back some cancelled routes, and revert some to their old meandering ways.

But by combining two bus mapping systems, often known as French and Classic, it could be done. The French system uses coloured lines for each route, whereas the Classic (or British) system marks route numbers along the streets. By using coloured lines for groups of high-frequency routes and marking the rest of the numbers along the streets in black, everything fitted in, and the high-frequency routes were still clear enough to follow. 

The first network map was released on 23rd August. You can see this archive map in Hebrew at http://telaviv.busmappa.com/p/blog-page_22.html.  Here is a slice:

Only a week later a bunch of (bad!) route changes took place, which led me to release a second map as soon as I could. This map included routes every 20 minutes or better (in black) and 15 minutes or better (in colour). Routes running every 10 minutes or better got thicker lines and solid coloured number discs.

For the final map, in English map see here:  Here is a slice of it.

In the final English version, I also decided to incorporate some high-frequency commuter lines, but only when they were similar to the coloured lines that were already on the map. For example, route 166, which branches off route 66 at its eastern end, and also runs slightly differently for a short portion within Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, this does have the effect of making the all-day frequent network rather less clear.

apple maps vs google maps

One of the most disconcerting thing about being a tech customer these days is that the Apple-Google rivalry can be expected to create more grief for people who like both, as each punishes its customers for liking the products of the other.  It is already very laborious, for example, to sync the (Apple) MacBook's standard Calendar and Address Book with (Google) Android's -- a big problem for me as both a Mac and Android user.  Now we're going to see Apple smartphones that don't want us to use Google Maps.

Yes, Apple thinks it's going to improve on the most transformative automated mapping tool of all time.  By all evidence they've decided that a cool, slick look is so important that it doesn't matter whether the map gives you the information you need.  Gizmodo has an excellent comparison, including this graphic:

 

That's a slice of Lower Manhattan: Google on the left, Apple on the right.  Yes, the Apple map is pleasing on the eye, but do you turn to mapping software for serene imagery or to see the layout of your city and how to do things in it?  

While everyone can pick nits with Google Maps, Google has done an amazing job at massing large amounts of useful information in compact and legible ways.  Their maps are aesthetically cluttered, but the clutter is accurate:  Lower Manhattan is a cluttered place and we love it that way!  A great city is full of opportunites and we want to know about all of them.  I like feeling a little overwhelmed by a Google Map, especially as compared to the illusory cool -- also known as lack of content -- that Apple is trying to convey.

The official reason for a transit blog to complain, of course, is that Google has done a lot of work on integrating transit data into its maps, while Apple, to judge from its beta, thinks of this as a detail that can be added later.  It will be interesting to see whether people really give up Google Maps for a slicker but more impoverished tool.  If not, this could start driving transit users toward Google's Android, where the variety of third-party hardware designs already mean a tool much better suited to your hand, and your taste.

Christina Bonnington in Wired takes down Apple Maps here.

H/t: Daryl de la Cruz

vancouver publishes frequent network map

The Wayfinding team at Vancouver's TransLink has finally unveiled their new network map, with Frequent Network designations.  In this case ... orange:

Download the whole thing here: regional transit map

The term "FTN" (Frequent Transit Network) also appears on the map here and there.  This term has already been used for several years in TransLink policymaking.  In fact, four years ago in Transport 2040 TransLink committed to this goal:

The majority of jobs and housing in the region are located along the Frequent Transit Network (frequent, reliable services on designated corridors throughout the day, every day).

Now, finally, the public can see it too!  Disclosure: I had a review-and-comment role in a few stages of this process, but it's definitely TransLink's work, led by their excellent Wayfinding team.

heatmaps of service intensity

Does it make sense to represent service intensity as as heatmap?  Is the result at least cool to look at?  Xavier Jacques Côté, a programmer the Québec open-data advocacy group Capitale Ouverte, gave it a try with his hometown, Québec City.

More on the origins of this map, and other cool things Xavier did, in French here.  

Hat Tip: David Duval, Ville de Québec.

some questions on frequent network mapping

@CityBeautiful21 tweets this question about Frequent Network mapping (explained here, examples here and here):

@humantransit In a place that is improving its transit but cannot yet draw a [Frequent Service] map by your ["every 15 minutes all day, seven days a week"  requirements], how would you draw the map?

When a transit agency first sits down to do frequent network mapping, this always comes up.  Not all services are frequent over the same exact span.  Many are frequent all day but not evening or weekend.  This the the normal outcome of a history of route-by-route and hour-by-hour service analysis.

[A Frequent Network policy will gradually enhance those analysis methods by bringing your focus to (a) the entire independent network instead of each route individually and (b) the entirety of the day rather than each hour individually.  Hour-by-hour analysis of routes is especially misleading because ridership at each time of day depends on service availability another time of day; you won't use transit in either direction unless it's available in both directions at times you expect to travel, and if you're not sure when you come back, you care about the abundance and extent of the whole evening service pattern.  This is why cutting evening service -- which may have low ridership when analyzed trip by trip -- can damage a route's usefulness throughout the service day.]

Meanwhile, how to draw the map?

1.  Start where you are.  If your current frequent service offering is only weekdays all day, then say that.  The map will still be useful.  If you can come up with some kind of minimum evening/weekend service commitment for those route segments (every 30?) then say that as part of the definition of the frequent product.  Meanwhile, you can use your long range planning process to articulate the need for a more robust service span on the Frequent Network, over time.

2.  Consider the larger principle, which is this:  Service that is more likely to be useful to lots of people for lots of purposes, and that are designed to work together as a network, should be more visually prominent.  Service that is highly specialized to a limited market should be less visually prominent, including peak-only services and any service that runs less than once an hour (or even every 30).  It's these occasional service patterns that make transit maps unbearably complicated -- a problem easily fixed by ensuring that your map shows those ephemeral route segments but that they recede visually so that the more frequent network stands out.    

It never makes sense to draw a route that runs three times a day in the same line that you'd use for service every 30 minutes all day.  The problem of such maps is the same: you weaken the meaning of a line on the map by using that line to refer to something so ephemeral and specialized, thereby implying that any line on the map may be equally ephemeral and specialized.  So use a different, weaker line for those services.

For some good examples of maps showing all routes in a network, but using this principle that more frequent routes should stand out and less frequent routes should recede, see the full network maps for Portland and Spokane, discussed further in this post.  Here's a slice of Spokane's, where the red lines are frequent and the fainter pink lines are peak-only:

... and of Portland's, where a wider line is Frequent and peak-only lines are dashed with a white number bullet:

Full maps here:  Spokane.  Portland.

In both examples, more broadly useful services are more visually prominent.  Peak-only services recede (a thin pink line vs a wide red one in Spokane, a dashed line in Portland) so that you can see them but won't be distracted by them when you want to see the all-day network.  Both maps also highlight the Frequent Network in different ways.  Overall, I prefer the clarity of the Spokane map, because Portland introduces much complexity by trying to differentiate every route by color.  But both are good design responses to the basic problem, which is: Show me the services that are most likely to be useful!

More on this in Chapter 7 of my book.

vancouver: the frequent network revealed

One of North America's most advanced transit agencies, TransLink in Vancouver, has finally published a Frequent Network Map as well as a page explaining why that map is important:

This 15 minute or better service runs until 9 p.m. every day, and starts at 6 a.m. on weekdays, 7 a.m. on Saturdays and 8 a.m. on Sundays. This level of service might be provided by one or more types of transit, such as buses or SkyTrain.

People traveling along FTN corridors can expect convenient, reliable, easy-to-use services that are frequent enough that they do not need to refer to a schedule. For municipalities and the development community, the FTN provides a strong organizing framework around which to focus growth and development.

As longtime readers know, I've long advised that high frequency services must stand out from the complexity of a transit map, and be promoted separately, so that people can see the network that's available to people whose time is highly valuable.  Many individuals, and a few agencies, have drawn Frequent Network maps as a result.  For more, see the Frequent Network category.

Meanwhile, this is a hugely important moment for Vancouver, especially because of the way the Frequent Network can organise future land use, and help everyone make better decisions about location.  This map should immediately go up on the wall in every city planner's office, and in the office of every realtor or agent who deals in apartments.  It's far more useful than, say, WalkScore's Transit Score in showing you the actual mobility that will arise from your choice of location, in the terms that matter to you.

redistorting maps: the virtue of cartograms

M. V. Jantzen has designed a fun tool that let's you rearrange a subway map to show actual travel times from where you are.  It's featured today at Greater Greater Washington.  Here's Washington DC Metro viewed from Ballston station in Virginia:

Jantzen calls this a "distortion," and with that I would disagree.  It's a redistortion, because as Mark Monmonier explains in his classic book, all useful maps are distorted.  Here's a whole page of Washington Metro maps, including the classic diagram ...

and a spatial one ...

 

Spatial maps are about spatial distance, and that's often, but not always, what matters.  The classic London Tube map is useful as a diagram, for example, but it can also undermine people's actual mental understanding of the geography of London.  

Source: Transport for London

Of the above image, Kerwin Datu writes: 

Bayswater and Queensway are 190 metres apart on the same street, Regent's Park and Great Portland Street 230 metres apart on the same street. But anyone going from Oxford Circus to either Bayswater or Great Portland Street would be persuaded that they had to take two trains to complete their trip.  ... This is unacceptable in a low-carbon age, and with trains packed to the gills in peak hour ... 

Back to the biggest picture point:

Maps that show one useful geography correctly seem so naturally authoritative that we can easily overvalue them when we really care about something else.  

Consider the way spatial geography is misused -- by almost all media -- to represent population.  If you think this is a useful map of the recent Iowa Republican caucuses ...

 

... then you're misreading space as population.  The visual impression of dominating such a map arises from appealing to sparse rural voters who influence large spaces on the map.  Winning an election is something else.  The guy who won the orange counties did as well as the guy who won the purple ones, because the orange counties are where most people live.

(Updated) Back in the 2004 election, some smarter cartographers attempted maps (technically cartograms) in which each bit of area represented a fixed number of voters.  (Thanks to Niralisse for finding them for me!)  The US was reshaped into something looking like an angry cat wearing a corset, the mountain states reduced to almost nothing while the West and Northeast were enormous blobs.  

It took a while to get into, but it was an accurate visualization of what voters did.  It was a useful redistortion, arguably a net reduction in distortion, because when describing population-based data, a spatial map like the Iowa caucus map above is a distortion too.

Inevitably, as technology customizes everything around our individual narcissism perspectives and preferences, we'll get more used to "just for me" maps, maps that show how the universe really does revolve around ourselves.  These are crucial for their purpose.  I've especially praised this one, which shows where you can get to on transit, in a given time, from a point that you select.  

Ultimately, a clear vision of your city, your transit system, and your place in the world can only come from being able to move quickly between different kinds of maps, so that you're reminded at each moment that no map tells the whole story.  We must be able to redistort for ourselves, in real time.  If everyone had the tools to toggle quickly among different kinds of diagrams, they might even get over the notion that a spatial map tells you anything about an election.

sydney: new efforts at frequency mapping (guest post)

Kevin McClain is currently a Project Officer at Easy Transport, the Regional Coordination Office for Community Transport in Northern Sydney.  He holds a masters degree in Transport Management from the University of Sydney.

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about Frequency Mapping on Human Transit starting with this post. Here in Australia we have seen frequency maps for Melbourne and Brisbane, but other than this map, we haven’t seen one for Sydney. Inspired by the efforts so far, I set out to try and make a frequency map of the services in Northern Sydney, the region where I currently live and work.  This effort was also driven by the desire to reduce the number of resources a transport user would need to consult in order to plan a trip.  Currently there are seven different system maps for services in the Northern Sydney Area alone: five bus maps (each covering different areas), one rail map and one ferry map.  Ultimately I ended up developing two maps: One frequency map of all of the services in Northern Sydney and one map of all frequent services across all of Sydney.

I work for Easy Transport , which provides transport information for seniors and people with disabilities. We also serve as the regional coordination office for Community Transport in the Northern Sydney Region and provide travel training to residents.  Our Northern Sydney map was developed to be a tool that could be used by the travel training program and potentially help promote our service. 

One of the challenges I have struggled with is the fact that there are a variety of service types in Sydney (buses, trains, ferries, and light rail) and people seem to want to be able to tell the difference between the service types when they look at a public transport map.  This makes frequency mapping more difficult.  In the Spokane map, all services are provided by bus.  There is no need to show service types.  Creating a map that shows service types and then shows frequency within each of those service types quickly gets complicated. 

For the Northern Sydney map I started by showing bus, train and ferry frequencies at the following levels 1-15 min, 16-30 min and 31-60 minutes.  This quickly proved to be too much, therefore the train lines were modified to show only stations that had frequent services (1-15 minutes) and stations that didn’t (Click here to download high resolution PDF.)

One alternative is to show only frequent and infrequent services (1-15 minutes and 16-60 minutes). While this reduces the amount of information available, it also makes the map more legible.  (Click here to download high resolution PDF.)

The map of all frequent services across all of Sydney is less complicated.  Only the suburban train services and frequent bus services are shown.  [JW:  Sydney has no frequent all-day ferry services.]  Train frequency was again shown on a station by station basis.  This version has the same colours for the train lines as are used in the CityRail map.  (Click here to download high resolution PDF.) 

While this alternative does not have the colours of the train lines.  (Click here to download high resolution PDF.)

One of the main points of both maps is to show where the frequent bus services are in Sydney.  While train frequency is also important, there has been a recent expansion of frequent bus services across Sydney with the introduction of the Metro bus services (in red on the map of all frequent services).  I think that it is important to show how these new services, along with existing frequent bus services, fill in some of the gaps.

Each of the maps show the trade-off between providing more information and a clear map that emphasizes the frequent services.  Try planning a trip on one version of the map and then the other.  Does the level of information provided affect the routes you chose?  Are you able to figure out where the routes are going?  Are there areas that are particularly confusing? Which version of each of the maps do you prefer?

These maps are still in draft form and I would welcome comments and suggestions about how the maps might be improved.  And yes, there are errors on both of the maps.  Corrections or any frequent routes that I might have missed are also welcome.   You can send me feedback either by commenting on this post or by emailing me at kevin@easytransport.org.au.