Bay Area Rail Map

[kevin_standlee]

From a mailing list of SF fans who are also transit buffs comes a good map of Bay Area Rail Transit in the style of the London Underground Map.

I like the map. Like the LU map, it sacrifices absolute geography for clarity, which means the scale is distorted in places, but it means you can see how to get from A to B by transit, if possible.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

You didn't think that red line running between San Francisco (4th & King) and San Jose (Diridon) was a BART line, did you?

For comparison, see the official BART System Map. And -- I take it you didn't realize it -- it includes a whole bunch more transit that isn't BART, including the Amtrak Capitols, ACE, Caltrain, Muni Metro, and VTA light rail. BART's own maps, if they ever show those forms of transport, tend to behave as if they're irrelevant.

And anyway the diagram style is very different -- LU-style maps have rules about never showing more than 45-degree bends, for instance. See the Wikipedia Article about the Tube Map for further discussion of this style.

[controuble.livejournal.com]

Oops - sorry, I didn't realize this was a Bay Area Rail map - I kind of skipped over that part thinking you were just expanding the BART acronym.
The official BART map is done in a similar style, but there are a couple of greater-than 45 degree bends, and when I looked at it, I see that one line does go beyond Daly City now (which none did last I was out there), and didn't Concord used to be the end of the yellow line?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I don't know when you were last in the Bay Area, but yes, the BART system has been expanded in the past 10-15 years. The Concord line was extended to Pittsburg/Bay Point, the SFO/Millbrae extension was built, and the Dublin/Pleasanton line was built.

BART's map attempts to stay geographically accurate, which is why there are so many wiggles in it. Tube-style maps sacrifice geographic accuracy for diagrammatic ease of use. Contrast the standard Tube map with a geographically accurate Tube map to see the difference.

[controuble.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was out there last July, but we didn't use the BART. My grandmother used to live in the Bay area (in San Francisco, the Clairmont district of Oakland, and then in San Leandro) and I think the last time I visited her was in '88 or '89. She moved to IL in '90, so I didn't have an excuse to go any more. I always found the BART very easy to use.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

BART is easy to use. Trying to go anywhere else BART itself doesn't serve can be a little challenging. See my comment above about the Balkan States of Transit in the Bay Area. The idea of integrating transit seems to be a Funny Foreign Idea that is not in fashion in these parts.

Things are better than they were ten years ago, but only a little bit. For instance, you still can't get from the Capitol Corridor/ACE line to San Jose Airport unless you do a very cumbersome double transfer. You used to be able to do it from ACE, but they no longer stop at Santa Clara/El Camino Real station, and won't for years until the station is rebuilt. (The underlying reason appears to do with the track layout and who owns which track -- Amtrak/ACE trains interfere with Caltrain trains if they cross over to a track with a passenger platform.) It was bad enough when you had to use a bus transfer the way you do to/from Oakland, but a double-transfer is too much for me, and I'm a transit enthusiast.

[timill]

At first glance, the key says that this is all BART. It could do with (say) a break line or a new heading (OTHER?) above "Caltrain" to distinguish the two.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Good point, and one I hadn't noticed when I first saw the map, because of course I already know all of these systems.