![]() I don’t love the depiction of the three lines (Gladstone, Morristown, Montclair) passing under the Newark/NE Corridor lines in the main map, and like it in the NYC-area inset even less. Also note the Port Jervis box at the top, which is more than a regular inset - it’s really an extension of the map. The South Jersey rotation is indeed unique, and helpful. Did somebody not notice a “Caps lock is on” warning, or does it signify something? Is it an acronym I’ve never puzzled out? Maybe this map would be a good place for NJ Transit to start explaining what it means. Will all the map users know why the Statue of Liberty is way out in the western hills of New Jersey? And I realize that for some reason “LINE” in River Line has been in all capital letters since the service started. And I know that the Statue of Liberty was part of the Jersey Central herald, but that railroad was merged into Conrail more than 45 years ago. They’re at varying distances, and the Coast Line logo looks like it is marking Monmouth Battlefield rather than a railroad line that runs along the shore. I wish the logos for the lines were a consistent distance from the lines they represent. I agree with you about background colors in insets in this case I suspect that they are the same as the main map in order to use the same colors for the states. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s definitely a step in the right direction. ![]() Our final word: One of those rare occasions where a geographical rail map is superior to a diagram. A leading line or arrow linking the insets to the part of the main map that they’re magnifying would also be handy. I also like it when the background colours used in an inset are subtly different to those used on the main map, just to help set them above and apart. The diagrammatic insets are neatly drawn with a minimum of fuss, though the colours used for some of the light rail lines could perhaps be better differentiated: it’s a little hard to tell PATH’s grey apart from the dull brown of the Hudson-Bergen light rail, for example. The map’s border does a lot of good work here, clearly separating the two parts of the map, while making it clear that there’s continuity between the sections at Bordentown. The cleverest part is the way the bottom third of the map gets rotated 45 degrees counter-clockwise to save massive amounts of space: the Atlantic City Line runs neatly across the bottom of the map instead of having to drop towards the southeast. The solution chosen here – a statewide geographical map supplemented with local area insets where needed – isn’t groundbreaking, but it is effective and a massive improvement. Obviously, these are at very different levels of scale and detail, and the diagram struggled because of it, unsatisfactorily compressing the considerable detail around Newark/New York into a very small part of the diagram. One of the main problems with the previous diagram is that it simultaneously had to show a sprawling statewide network as well as local services like PATH, and the Hudson-Bergen light rail. NJ Transit has been down this path before, with similar maps used around 20 years ago, though this design is considerably cleaner than that very muddy execution. The NJ Transit rail map has basically looked the same – and has retained most of its faults – since I reviewed it back in the very early days of the blog, so it came as a surprise when I discovered that that diagram has been replaced with a new geographical map this month.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |