Stephen Furley writes:
In the meantime, if you haven't already seen them you might be
interested in two maps of the New York Subway. The official MTA one
is almost a graphical map, but not quite;

I presume you mean "geographical".

It's one of those maps that only looks geographical; although it
shows streets and landmarks as well as the subway lines, it has
significant scale distortions.

Some years ago, in the late '70s or early '80s I think, the MTA
published a Beck style diagramatic map, but the New Yorkers didn't
like it, and it was soon withdrawn.

1972 to 1979. The designer was Massimo Vignelli. In one important
respect this map out-Becked Beck: there were no diagonal lines.
Everything was drawn as either vertical or horizontal. Which meant
that in the more complex areas, a lot of lines had to zigzag to get
all the interchanges right.

The Vignelli map had touching parallel lines, up to 5 or 6 of them,
for each lettered or numbered train route following the same set of
tracks -- it's like the way the present Underground diagram shows
the Circle, Metropolitan, and Hammersmith & City Lines -- but the
stations were shown as dots *within* each parallel line, allowing
the same symbology to be used on sections like the Jubilee and
Metropolitan Lines where one route provides an express to the other's
local service (which is, of course, very common in New York).

One problem with this map was that it required a separate color for
every route, which is too many colors. They were labeled within
the stripes as well -- one advantage of having route names like "A"
instead of "Hammersmith & City" -- so you didn't have to consult a
legend to see that which train the blue stripe was. But the map used
since 1979 has used colors for *groups* of routes, allowing single
or double stripes to be used in many areas where the Vignelli map had
triples or more. It simplifies a complex system in a different way.
I like both designs.
--
Mark Brader | I passed a sign that said "you are here",
Toronto | but I didn't entirely believe it.
| --Michael Levine

My text in this article is in the public domain.