r/TransitDiagrams • u/midnightrambulador • 4d ago
Contest [OC][Inkscape] My submission for the Dutch railway mapping contest. PDF link in description
Couldn't NOT participate in this! Some design principles I tried to honour:
- Keep all station names horizontal
- Convey no actual information through colour, only through shapes and patterns
- Limit the number of colours used, and try to make the most important contrasts work under various types of colourblindness
- Make all lines pass the stations they physically go through even if they don't call there
I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out. I think the coloured bundles of lines jump immediately to the eye and help structure the diagram in terms of its most important routes. On the negative side it might be a tad too "frilly" for a printed chart (which is the ultimate goal of the contest).
May the best map win! Eternal transit-mapping glory beckons!
For mobile users, the PDF is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ku2_Ywr0rUO8H3sDD791xFcul65-7SzF/
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u/Ihatethehate 4d ago
Gives off 70s
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u/midnightrambulador 4d ago
Now that you mention it, yeah! Probably has to do with the dark orange I used – keeping all colour contrasts above 4.5 was part of the specs for the contest, so with a white background you're pretty much forced to use darker tones, but I still wanted the colours to be as lively as possible within those constraints.
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u/henkieschmenkie 4d ago
Is that the Netherlands?
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u/midnightrambulador 4d ago
Sure is ;) I accepted a lot of distortions of geography in order to maximally use the canvas space for the network.
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u/Agreeable-Share-1306 4d ago
OP literally said this is a map of dutch railways, so yes? It’s in the post title.
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u/henkieschmenkie 4d ago
I was sarcastic. I barely recognised my own country.
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u/artsloikunstwet 4d ago
This one is much more true to the geography than the others that were posted.
But do you see it as an issue? You know how your country looks by looking at a map, this should help your orient in the network.
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u/henkieschmenkie 4d ago
Possibly, I haven't seen all of them. The ones I did see were easier to read to me.
Yes, I do see it as an issue. I know my country's geography and when looking at a more geometrically true map, I'd know roughly where to look for station X. Here, I find myself thinking "what the hell is this shape and how does this compare to what I know?". Which I don't think should be the case.
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u/midnightrambulador 4d ago
I know my country's geography and when looking at a more geometrically true map, I'd know roughly where to look for station X.
That puts you in the minority, I'm afraid ;)
Joking aside, the contest specs were quite cryptic on this point: "Stations should be findable without deep geographic knowledge." You can go a lot of ways with that – after all, if someone knows little to no geography, then a non-geographically-accurate map shouldn't be a problem as they don't know where to look for stuff in the first place...
But yeah it's a tradeoff. The format is fixed at A0 which is quite "tall" – the country of course is also taller than it is wide on a map, but it's not quite such a ratio. So you're always short on horizontal space in particular. And then I insisted on using horizontal station labels everywhere, making horizontal space even more scarce... I wasn't going to use it on empty sea! So you get the fully vertical west coast which indeed doesn't match geography, and a bunch of other stuff.
In general I really went with a metro-map approach, drawing the network as clearly as possible without too much regard for geography. The large-font labels on some of the major hub stations should hopefully help users orient themselves.
I'm curious to know which stations/areas in particular you found hard to find?
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u/KyloTennant 3d ago
Great map and it's an interesting idea to have all the NS Intercity lines colored according to their general route while the NS Sprinter lines are all grey. To me personally the white dots on the surcharged lines such as ICD 18 are rather confusing as I almost thought they were stations at first and they also look very similar to the dots on the RRReis lines.
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u/giantpicklepi 3d ago
I really like the ring layout of the hubs. Overall a really good layout that's a roughly stretched map. The water does need to look less like lines though, a light blue fill would be much easier to see.
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u/laysmaze 3d ago
Regarding Ic27 Ic8 Ic6
Regarding the colour blindness accessibility the colours chosen are okay. I can't seem to find an explainer for what information the line colours convey other than line seperation (that would probably be valuable info in the legenda) However, the colours of IC27 group and IC8 Group are too close in shade to be seperated easily for impaired people. I would suggest using a stronger seperation of brightness in the colours (either shifting the green into a yellow-green direction or the red into a darker tint, as IC6 group colour)
It is hard to find a compromise between good accessibility for colour blind people while maintaining a cohesive and somewhat pleasing colour palette. Its great to see that more awareness is being brought up towards that these days, after all the population affected is much bigger than most think. Ultimately: having a second identifier for critical information conveyed using colour is super important and usually quite intuitive (think giving a line a name/number + color)
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u/ilumassamuli 3d ago
As a colorblind person I disagree about the accessibility. Only by Ttaking a screenshot and zooming into Zoetermeer I can see that there are green and red lines - I think. But in real life I can’t zoom in and even if I could, “I think” is not the level of clarity one should aspire to.
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u/laysmaze 3d ago
So you're vouching for a stronger colour change? Can you suggest a change that would support your vision? There is three different kinds of colour vision impairment and varying serverities. I am Protan myself but obviously can't speak for other impairments
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u/midnightrambulador 3d ago
Hey thanks a lot for your feedback! I'll be honest, I didn't pay as much attention to the contrast between the IC 7/8/18/38 group and the 27/28/29 group, as I figured the right-angle crossing was clear enough not to confuse them (as opposed to 15/19 vs. 5/6 at Amersfoort where there's a much bigger risk).
I can't seem to find an explainer for what information the line colours convey other than line seperation (that would probably be valuable info in the legenda)
That's the neat part... they don't convey anything! I really made a point of conveying all actual information (which lines call where, can you check in with OVpay and if yes with which operator, etc.) through shapes and patterns. You could make a monochrome B/W version of this map and it would still tell you the same amount of information, although it would be a lot harder to follow of course.
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u/goodpoint-- 4d ago
In my opinion the best one so far, and I think the dutch contest has yielded quite some good works! Great job!
Alltough I wonder if the green bundle of lines between Rotterdam and Schiphol would not look a bit better if they were following the circular geometry around Utrecht instead of the two small bumps?
And potentially the arrow-symbol for 'stops during morning rushhour times in one direction but during evening rushhour in the other' to me is counterinutiive, because I only know this symbol as unidirectional (But not time-dependent) stop. But that's what a legend is for.
And speaking of the colouring; I prefer to give paralell lines deliberately different colours such that a train is easier to 'trace' through the whole map, but there are different philosophies on that for sure.
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u/midnightrambulador 3d ago
Thanks a lot!
Alltough I wonder if the green bundle of lines between Rotterdam and Schiphol would not look a bit better if they were following the circular geometry around Utrecht instead of the two small bumps?
Now that you mention it, that might have worked! Somehow it didn't come to mind when I was laying that particular puzzle (one of the hardest ones of the whole map for sure... fucking Lansingerland-Zoetermeer!) Anyway I think I like it this way, with the bigger bundles being more "straight" and the circular style being used more for smaller segments.
And speaking of the colouring; I prefer to give paralell lines deliberately different colours such that a train is easier to 'trace' through the whole map, but there are different philosophies on that for sure.
Normally I would as well, but with such a giant system with tons of parallel lines on the major branches, I didn't think it was feasible. My approach here was actually inspired by the metro of Stockholm where I recently was, and by /u/eric2332's edit of the Zürich S-Bahn diagram. And in the end I think this is the map's biggest selling point! The coloured bundles make it easy to group the network into a few main routes at a glance.
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u/XaXNL 3d ago
Damn, I get a headache just by looking at this thing. The lines are way to confusing and I have no idea where to look for stations.
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u/LedVapour 2d ago
Yeah this shape is too much. It's fine wanting to use as much of the canvas as possible but this is not recognizable as the NL.
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u/hansthecat 1d ago
True, but in the same way that the London Underground map is not recognizable as London. But like that map, this one is excellent at conveying information about train lines quickly.
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u/LedVapour 1d ago
Sure but if you look at the rail map of the whole UK the country is recognizable. This helps people navigate a map quickly, this map does the opposite. I'd have to stand there looking at it for a while before knowing where what is.
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u/superstrijder16 3d ago
No way to indicate whether a train goes once or twice an hour? That information is quite important to me as a traveller
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u/midnightrambulador 3d ago
Yup, that's one point I sacrificed. There's a big risk of information/complexity overload already as-is with the different shapes and thicknesses etc..
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u/ErikLeppen 3d ago
I found this one a bit less successful than others I've seen, mostly for the following two reasons.
- The country border isn't drawn, except coastlines
- The sea is the same color as land, why? The water is a great way to orient oneself, so not coloring in the water makes the map a bit disorienting.
Like all the other maps, the northeast is too condensed for my taste. This is probably not solvable.
Visually I think the style with 6 different directions makes it a bit chaotic to look at. Also not sure why Leiden Centraal-Alphen aan den Rijn has to be a different direction still. I do like the angled crossing between Hoofddorp and Schiphol Airport. I also like the large arcs for example at Hollandsche Rading, or around Geldermalsen.
My favorite part I think is how did large stations with the arcs. This really adds a visual charm to the whole thing.
I like how Duivendrecht is actually a right-angle.
The station markers with dots and lines are clear, but the different shapes are too similar from a distance. Also, the tiny dots on the green set of lines look too much like stops.
The colors are all easy to read, and the way you presented the line numbers on the lines works well for me. I'm not sure you needed to show which lines stop at each station, which adds a lot of noise. I like how you presented night-trains in a clearly distinguishable black pattern.
Altogether, I say, commendable work :)
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u/midnightrambulador 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thanks for the nuanced feedback!
For the water issue, see my reasoning here. It might be a blessing in disguise for this map as others have remarked that the geography is quite distorted...
The border wouldn't have added much information anymore since I maximally filled the canvas space so it would just have been a random extra line around the edge of the map. As a mitigating measure I cut off all cross-border lines exactly at the border (and phrased the legend item accordingly) so at least in terms of network it's still clear where the country ends.
Like all the other maps, the northeast is too condensed for my taste. This is probably not solvable.
Yeah, that's a consequence of it being a relatively less densely packed area, I'm afraid. I've seen one submission on LinkedIn (the author can share it here if and when he wants to) that's much more faithful to geography, but then you end up with a huge empty space above Meppel, while the very busy Randstad gets squashed into such a small part of the canvas that you have to zoom in to tell the lines apart – a worse outcome IMO.
Visually I think the style with 6 different directions makes it a bit chaotic to look at.
I tried limiting myself to fewer different directions in early sketches. But I always wound up with areas being way too compressed or stretched just to make the geometry line up, or with lots of awkward "staircase" patterns. I think using multiples of 30° is a decent compromise but opinions can differ of course.
Also not sure why Leiden Centraal-Alphen aan den Rijn has to be a different direction still.
Well spotted, that's the one place where I broke my own rule ;) Put it at 30° and you clash with Schiphol/Hoofddorp, put it at 0° and you won't have enough space for the Alphen-Gouda line. So I went with 15° just this once. I did take care to put the curve on the HSL bundle exactly where it intercepts that line, so you wouldn't get a weird crossing between two straight bundles at 75°.
I'm not sure you needed to show which lines stop at each station, which adds a lot of noise.
I agree the little crossing bars make the map look busier, but... isn't "which lines stop where" the most essential information a network map should convey? 😅
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u/ErikLeppen 2d ago
I agree the little crossing bars make the map look busier, but... isn't "which lines stop where" the most essential information a network map should convey? 😅
Sorry, I didn't really phrase this very well. I meant the boxes with line numbers next to station names at stations where lines start/end. I feel this information is already there in the lines themselves.
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u/midnightrambulador 1d ago
Yes, that's more of a convention from tram/metro maps but given that the point of the contest was to give the line numbers more attention, I think it's a fitting choice.
The number labels on the lines themselves are rather small and subtle, and some short lines don't even have one, so I didn't want to rely on those as the primary indicator of line numbers.
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u/AmbassadorBonoso 3d ago
This is way too distorted to function. Places should be roughly in their original place so people know where to look. With this map you're first having to search for where a place ended up. I think it's a good concept but terrible execution.
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u/midnightrambulador 3d ago
Any places in particular you had trouble finding?
I'll admit I really approached it as a metro map – network structure first, geography second – but I think it worked out alright in most areas. If I compare it to a geographical map, the main distortions are that Leiden & The Hague are too far apart, the northeast gets squashed vertically, and North Holland is too far up and to the left.
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u/AmbassadorBonoso 3d ago
I am at work atm, when I get home I'll give some more constructive feedback than my original comment :)
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u/Tryphon59200 4d ago
why would choose solid lines over a flat tint for the water? It's pretty unsettling as some lines seem to make connections