What factors influence choice of colours for lines on transit maps?

[PTR 444]

Most transit maps depict transport routes in a variety of colours, which is essential to ensure passengers are familiar with where each route goes. The question however is, what makes designers choose a particular colour over another?

Some factors I can imagine influence choice of colour include:

• Contextual influences, for example the LU Jubilee Line being coloured silver to match the colour of the jubilee itself
• Symbolising an area which the route operates to, such as Morebus route 50 Bournemouth - Swanage being coloured blue to represent the sea
• Using brighter, bolder colours to highlight more frequent and important routes
• Highlighting an operator’s most important route in their corporate colour
• Collating different routes along the same corridor in different shades of a colour, as the now-defunct Yellow Buses did pre-2016
• Accessibility for colour-blind people and avoiding clashes of similar colours

Generally, most bus companies assign a single colour to a particular route and may complement it with route-specific branding. In London however, the vast array of routes in such a large area means there is no guarantee that one route could appear in the same colour on every single spider map. For example, TfL bus route 151 appears as lime green on the Worcester Park map, light blue on the West Sutton map, yellow on the St Helier Hospital map and dark blue on the Hackbridge map.

So what factors influence the designer’s choice of colours, or do many just pick randomly? If you were to update a transit map for your local area, what colour changes would you make?

 

[AlbertBeale]

Most transit maps depict transport routes in a variety of colours, which is essential to ensure passengers are familiar with where each route goes. The question however is, what makes designers choose a particular colour over another?

Some factors I can imagine influence choice of colour include:

• Contextual influences, for example the LU Jubilee Line being coloured silver to match the colour of the jubilee itself
• Symbolising an area which the route operates to, such as Morebus route 50 Bournemouth - Swanage being coloured blue to represent the sea
• Using brighter, bolder colours to highlight more frequent and important routes
• Highlighting an operator’s most important route in their corporate colour
• Collating different routes along the same corridor in different shades of a colour, as the now-defunct Yellow Buses did pre-2016
• Accessibility for colour-blind people and avoiding clashes of similar colours

Generally, most bus companies assign a single colour to a particular route and may complement it with route-specific branding. In London however, the vast array of routes in such a large area means there is no guarantee that one route could appear in the same colour on every single spider map. For example, TfL bus route 151 appears as lime green on the Worcester Park map, light blue on the West Sutton map, yellow on the St Helier Hospital map and dark blue on the Hackbridge map.

So what factors influence the designer’s choice of colours, or do many just pick randomly? If you were to update a transit map for your local area, what colour changes would you make?

Note that the Jubilee Line was originally built as the Fleet Line, having its name changed at the very last moment in a fit of royalist sycophancy [or other reasons you might prefer]. (The last-minute nature of the change was still in evidence for many years, since the big embossed metal route signs at stations had already in some cases been re-made, with "Fleet Line" on them, but covered up with a sticker pending the opening.) The official new line colour was actually grey, not silver. After the last-minute change (which, it was alleged at the time, LT bureaucracy only agreed to since "Fleet" and Jubilee" came in the same place, alphabetically, in the list of lines, so that everything already in place - such as the metal plates - just needed a[nother] sticker, not remaking). As part of the change, the official name of the new line colour became "silver" instead of "grey" - though the colour didn't actually change. So the Jubilee Line being "silver" in the tube colour scheme was a lucky accident.

On the first day of operation, many of the new trains were stickered by an anti-monarchist group called Movement Against A Monarchy (or MA'AM), covering up the Jubilee Line signs on the route maps in the carriages with a sticker reading "Fleet Line - Don't Jubilee've it!"

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

Just a couple of observations I've noticed regarding the subject of route/line colours...

Falcon Buses (Surrey) have all of their routes (excepting school services) colour coded. Their 715 service between Guildford and Kingston is coloured in dark green - I do wonder whether this is a nod to the past Green Line 715 service which ran a broadly similar routing on its route between Guildford and Hertford.

As for their 479 service between Guildford and Epsom, this one is coloured in an Arriva-esque teal/turquoise - perhaps a nod to how they took on the 479 from Arriva when they withdrew their operations from Guildford, or just pure coincidence?

Could their yellow-themed 436 service between Woking and Weybridge be a reference to the Brooklands Museum (with yellow being one of their primary colours)?

 

[SynthD]

It’s partly to do with printable colours. The colour should work on many different materials, which is why Pantone is used. TfL go a step further with their enamel, which now has most of its colour range used up.

 

[HSTEd]

I suppose, in very large systems like the New York Subway, colouring lines probably becomes impractical due to the finite number of highly distinct colours.

NY uses colours but primarily for grouping routes I believe?

 

[PTR 444]

I suppose, in very large systems like the New York Subway, colouring lines probably becomes impractical due to the finite number of highly distinct colours.

NY uses colours but primarily for grouping routes I believe?

They do, although I think on past maps from the 70s and 80s they used individual colours for each route.