Via PlanItMetro
Metro’s bus maps are already brightly colored and relatively accurate to local geography. (One need only look at the maps published by New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, with Manhattan expanded to ridiculous proportions, to see how easily a transit system can err in its cartography.) But the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority still has ways to improve on the maps that adorn its bus shelters.
A draft for a new map published late yesterday aims to do exactly that, by unclogging the depictions of many overlapping routes and adding information about the frequency of the system’s more than 300 bus routes.
“While the current bus maps have served their purpose over the years, there is room for improvement to make the system easier to navigate for the more than 400,000 customers who take Metrobus each weekday,” Lynn Bowersox, Metro’s assistant general manager for customer service, said in a news release.
The current maps, published in 1997, display every route with thick lines and blocky text that often clash, potentially confusing novice riders. Express lines are given the same emphasis as local routes, while there is almost no information about how often buses arrive at any given stop.
On the new maps, however, higher-traffic routes are represented by thicker lines, while minor routes are closer to pencil width. A line’s color and thickness also correspond to the relative frequency of each route. A major artery like the S4 along 16th Street gets a fat, red line, while a less popular route like the 60 is represented by a skinny blue path.
The main tradeoff appears to be that the new maps will show far fewer geographic features and key roadways than the current models. But that could be for the better, too. Rather than have bus lines jumbled up against criss-crossing avenues and highways, the new maps attempt to give passengers an “overview” that simplifies one’s navigation.
Metro writes on its planning blog that it aims to have the new maps in place by the next service change in December.
