tbtc
Veteran Member
What is the worst bus map (at the moment, historically)?
It's all subjective, of course, but I'd consider things like:
I'm asking after finding Diamond's map of their Greater Bolton operations - https://www.diamondbuses.com/media/3085/map.pdf - personally I don't mind geographic or schematic maps, but if you're going schematic then I'd want a bit more detail
It's probably not the worst out there (and some of the above is obviously entirely subjective, my own personal prejudices etc), but I'll use the Diamond one as a benchmark - can you find a worse one? (2021 map or historic one, each are valid)
As a better example, the Travel South Yorkshire map (https://travelsouthyorkshire.com/ge.../Sheffield-Network-Map-valid-October-2021.pdf) has clearly different colours, regular numbers along the course of a route, areas with very high frequencies have a big "grey" line rather than distorting the map by trying to have ten parallel lines on the one road, irregular services are all light grey, it's pretty accurate geographically)
Obviously any map depends on just how complicated/simple a network is, some areas are easier to replicate, other areas have messy combinations of irregular route variations or several services along one common road which distorts the map.... you can only do a map based on what you have and some networks are tidier than others!
It's all subjective, of course, but I'd consider things like:
- Too many colours
- Not enough colours, so it's confusing which "red" line is which
- Too many lines
- Too schematic, so no relation to reality
- Insufficient information to work out where services terminate or names of intermediate roads
- Too much information, crowding out the flow of services, making it hard to read (e.g. text superimposed upon roads)
- No distinction between "frequent" services and "one a day" journeys
I'm asking after finding Diamond's map of their Greater Bolton operations - https://www.diamondbuses.com/media/3085/map.pdf - personally I don't mind geographic or schematic maps, but if you're going schematic then I'd want a bit more detail
- lots of routes go between multiple "nodes" but the number often only shows once, so you struggle to see whether the one that continues is the brown or the bronze or the orange line (since there are several colours which means some similarities, it's hard to follow, because the lines don't have numbers on them so you can't be sure which of the darkish-blues follows on beyond a junction) - for example there are four routes from Bolton to Farnworth but I need to trace them much further to find out what numbers they have
- there must be a few services terminating at places like Trafford Centre but not the traditional "number in a box" to indicate that a service terminates there
- none of the lines are bolder/thinner to indicate frequent/irregular services other than a couple of "eve" services in the top left corner
- there's lots of straight lines to make things look very "simple" but then certain areas have "accurate" looking squiggles (Altricham, Bury), the combination looks like the worst of both worlds
It's probably not the worst out there (and some of the above is obviously entirely subjective, my own personal prejudices etc), but I'll use the Diamond one as a benchmark - can you find a worse one? (2021 map or historic one, each are valid)
As a better example, the Travel South Yorkshire map (https://travelsouthyorkshire.com/ge.../Sheffield-Network-Map-valid-October-2021.pdf) has clearly different colours, regular numbers along the course of a route, areas with very high frequencies have a big "grey" line rather than distorting the map by trying to have ten parallel lines on the one road, irregular services are all light grey, it's pretty accurate geographically)
Obviously any map depends on just how complicated/simple a network is, some areas are easier to replicate, other areas have messy combinations of irregular route variations or several services along one common road which distorts the map.... you can only do a map based on what you have and some networks are tidier than others!
