San Francisco’s Rider-Friendly Transit Map
Eric Jaffe (via Simone Manganelli):
Fast forward to today and Primus has turned the insight from that rough early journey into one of the most rider-friendly transit maps you’ll ever see. The redesigned Muni map—co-created by Primus and David Wiggins—immediately indicates frequency through a route line’s thickness. Muni officials adopted it system-wide this April and will update it later this month to reflect a service upgrade.
[…]
A handful of other transit systems have delved into weighted frequency maps—D.C.’s Metrobus and Spokane Transit being two strong examples—but for the most part cities have shied away from the approach. The reason may be partly political. Since frequency maps spotlight which parts of town have worse service, they invite criticism that basic maps of service coverage don’t.
[…]
It’s also a pedestrian map. “Anyone on transit is by definition a pedestrian,” says Primus. With that in mind, he and Wiggins made the map useful from a walker’s perspective, even as it functions primarily as a transit guide. So they kept an accurate scale (unlike other transit maps that famously distort geography) and showed all streets (labeling 95 percent, in a faint grey).
