Unofficial new Berlin rapid transit route map | Hacker News Reader

Unofficial new Berlin rapid transit route map

berlintransitmap.de

162 pointsdgellow60 comments

Really sad how almost all the comments in this thread are negative.

As somebody who has lived in Berlin since 11 years, whilst having studied the official transit map and the big BVG physical map of berlin for hours:

This is a really great improvement over the official one it gives me a relieved kind of pleasure to look at. I can really feel how all those expectations from the physical map finally find a home in the abstraction. Oddly satisfying!

I live in karlsruhe and the KVV there did a similiar change and after living with it for a few months I can say that it's a real improvement!

The KVV map did not change its layout very much. It was mostly a pretty tame transition from sharp angles and straight lines to curves. Most stations didn't change their relative position much. I don't know if the new one is better. I only remember having to unlearn the layout of the old one for a while. Also, this map change was after a time when the routes were changed around several times to accommodate the new tunnels then under construction. So the old maps also had a lot of churn.

that's true that the change is not as big as the one proposed here, but I still think that the new one is more intutive.

This is a nice piece of art. I can't really comment _much_ on how functional it is but I can say people's complaints are usually overblown and many appreciate the refreshed look. This one in particular seems to retain a lot of original geography while looking a lot softer/warmer.

I'm personally inclined, as I think others are as well these days (given that I see them in shops), to put these various transit maps up as art in my home, although usually an even more artistic rendition. I grew to love these kinds when living in Seoul, whose subway system is comparable in size to that of Tokyo these days. Funny enough, it seems like the older Berlin maps were headed in a similar direction, portraying the main "ring" line very literally with branches off of it.

See: https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/tokyo-...

or: https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.co... for Seoul

You might enjoy http://eryq.org/content/page/Underhill/Underhill.png

I like it! Particularly as someone not that familiar with the geography of The Shire or surrounding areas, having only really read the books, makes me wanna break out a map and see how it lays out.

Sure enough: http://lotrproject.com/map/#zoom=3&lat=-1691&lon=1500&layers...

I get the general idea that the S-Bahn ring is not actually a ring and the map should also reflect that. But the transit map is not intended to do this. It's not about highly accurate distances between stations (these are off in the official and this unofficial map), the curves of the rails and rivers of the city. It's about the train I need to take, where it intersects with other train routes, what is my next stop and what city zone is this station in. All of which I think are worse to read in this proposed map.

- Zone A is massively cluttered with station names, try reading the stations on the U1, it's not clear at all

- The ring itself is also quite hard to read compared to the old map, because I need to jump left and right to follow the path of the tracks

- Why add rivers to this map?

There is a beauty to the symmetry of the current map which makes it easy to read and most importantly it doesn't overwhelm the user with odd shapes and flashy colors. The article itself is quite nice though, especially the old maps, overall the presentation was great too. I just don't think this needed fixing.

For anyone interested here is a link to the official BVG Map (correct distances) and the official route map: https://fahrinfo.bvg.de/Fahrinfo/bin/query.bin/en?ujm=1

> - Why add rivers to this map?

Rivers are often used to navigate. Knowing if a station is just south of the river or north can help a lot to determine the closest station. Esp. as real walking speeds often differ from those assumed by trip planners, a fairly accurate map with rivers helps to find a quicker door2door journey.

A very different Berlin metro map, based on concentric circles, drawn by a good friend of mine (and old housemate):

https://glyphobet.net/rundumberlin/

It makes much less of an attempt to correlate with actual geography, but is faster to find connections on.

I don't have much to add, but very cool! I love new perspectives like this and what they add. They can be useful when considering what new patterns can add for the official maps (or at least one can wish).

I like the look, however in the case of the circular line ("Ringbahn") it would lead to higher transit times: The left half takes much longer to travel (ca +25 minutes) than the right half, as a friend found out last month by accident.

> Too many turns made it very hard to read. It was quite an ordeal to draw a route.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find the 'robotified' look of the original much easier to parse than the large rounded corners, which seem more of an aesthetic choice than a practical one.

Same. The huge wobbly inner loop is far too distracting.

I certainly don't mind such experiments, but after living in Berlin for quite a while now, I still have to hear anyone complain about that the transit map is hard to read.

I personally would even say that it's one of the easier ones I have used regularly (compare to Stuttgart for example, which is pretty cryptic due to the city's geography).

I lived in Berlin for a little less than a year. Coming from another city with a huge commuting infrastructure (NYC), I found the BVG's communication patterns to be comparatively pleasant: concise, accurate, and legible. I liked the original map a lot. Although, it's hard to bash the MTA too hard, here: there aren't many parts of Berlin that are as rail-dense as lower Manhattan.

I've spend a lot of time in Berlin, and I find it hard to read. Mostly in that sometimes it's relatively annoying to determine what lines will get me from Station A to Station B.

For example, let's say you're a tourist and you arrive at Hauptbahnhof, and you need to get to get to Alexanderplatz - what lines will get you there?

There's a whole bunch, and it's very hard to figure that out quickly. Or you might see that the S9 does what you need and you'll just wait for that, so you'll go there and wait, while the S3,S5,S7 pass you by.

I've literally made that exact journey and I don't remember it being that hard to decipher. It's not confusing just because multiple lines go from A to B. You can clearly see that all those lines are equivalent between those two points

> I've spend a lot of time in Berlin, and I find it hard to read. Mostly in that sometimes it's relatively annoying to determine what lines will get me from Station A to Station B.

You sound like a person who walked up to me yesterday with a Google maps opened asking me how she would get to her destination in Google maps.

> For example, let's say you're a tourist and you arrive at Hauptbahnhof, and you need to get to get to Alexanderplatz - what lines will get you there?

The smartphone is there not just to listen to podcasts or watch TV

The S9 is literally on the same platform as every other S-Bahn train that goes from Hbf to Alexanderplatz, so you'd also have to willfully ignore the ample station signage for all the trains that pass you by.

As a first-time tourist to Berlin, I found the concept of "there is a circle line bisected by a north-south line and an east-west line" a super useful framework for hanging the rest of the network off. It's a shame this isn't reflected, in preference of a dog's head.

The dog's head prevents longer travel times- when people assume it is a circle, they quickly find out the left half takes much longer to travel when you move from Tempelhof to Schönhauser Allee

Interesting side note: The designer of the map Pasha Omelekhin seems to work mostly for the Russian agency Art. Lebedev where he was also involved in the official redesign of the new Moscow metro map [1]. They also have detailed process descriptions for most of their projects.

Among others the agency works for big Russian state owned corporations, like Gazprom.

[1] https://www.artlebedev.com/metro/map3/

If Art. Lebedev doesn't ring a bell: They designed the Optimus Maximus keyboard.

The principal of the firm runs a (now-outdated) Russian site about the Moscow Metro (metro.ru).

Why would you use curved lines, when they point in the wrong directions at the stations? For example Westkreuz and ICC stations should be mirrored vertically to have the correct orientation. The same for Schoeneberg etc...

Super confusing, the official map is a lot easier to read, at least it's clear that's an abstraction. If you need to locate stations on a real map just use their real map that shows all stops.

Slightly off-tangent, but I wonder how much of the original straight-edge design was dictated by technical limitations of the time. Given that it’s an abstraction, it might be a form of an abstraction that walks the line between real-world shapes and what you’d traditionally define as abstraction.

The “organic” curves in the new map might have been much more difficult to achieve and experiment with using older methods (which I assume was a physical medium) than modern vector drawing tools.

Berliner here. The ring (called like that by most citizens, here drives the “ringbahn” – circular train) serves most as orientation. People say “I live inside the ring”, or “that party is far outside, outside the ring”.

Removing this element alone is a really bad decision. By looking at the original map a couple of times it is very easy to use the ring as visual aid and go from there. It is essential for navigation.

In general I think adding more curves does not do any good here. I appreciate people trying to improve the map, and certainly there is much to be improved, but the approach of berlintransitmaps goes in the wrong direction. It is much harder to read than the original map imo.

The biggest problem is contrast.

> Removing this element alone is a really bad decision. By looking at the original map a couple of times it is very easy to use the ring as visual aid and go from there. It is essential for navigation.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Ring is very much the central element in this new map, isn't it?

But it’s not geometric any more. Try following the ring in one direction finding a station which you know is somewhere on the ring. It is much easier with the original design.

This is true - it's indeed much harder to do that, but the geometry should not take the blame: the station markers are a lot less proeminent in his version, vs the clear white pills for every station in the original.

As a foreigner, this new map looks a lot clearer, and I still see a clearly delineated ring in the center. What exactly is the problem with dropping the forced circle shape?

See comment above.

Berliner here as well, living near the Ring. I prefer the dogs head shape, with the ring shape visitors often travel around the longer (western) route of the ringbahn, causing delays.

I guess public acceptance of the change will be mixed as well, a new map is unfamiliar at first and any change costs cognitive energy.

I would bet a lot on this map never making it into the public (accepted officially). Maybe a reworked version with better contrast.

I absolutely agree that it is hard to guess how long a trip will take with the current design. Would be great to have another dimension which could be activated in an interactive map to give an idea of time (e.g. line thickness).

Ok so taking into account the UI is cool as hell, I love the design. I love the design of transit maps but the curves and fluidity of the map make it so much easier to look at.

Now if only boston could get one of these....

I dislike how this map is presented as almost official. The author does not seem to have any relation to Berlin traffic authorities. This should be framed clearly as a proposal.

I assumed the map was official too, especially because of the "Effective from December 9, 2018" piece on the header.

It's a map. You don't propose maps, you just draw them and either sell them or give them out for free.

Also it's Berlin where people generally feel they own the city and everything in it, corporations and government only coming second.

If someone makes a map and a majority starts using it... guess it's our map now.

Knowing the image the BVG and S-Bahn generally try to project, I can even image them rolling over if people say they like that map. Unlikely, but we'll see if it gets mainstream attention.

Source: Born and raised in Berlin.

It specifically says it is not official toward the end of the article. It is very clearly framed as a proposal.

99% of people will not read all the way to the end of the article and just assume it's official.

It specifically says it’s “not yet” official. That’s a very distinct message; and, in the context of the wording on the rest of the site, it’s actively misleading.

And they have their own domain too... imagine in a few years, after they've forgotten this design project, some tourist googles "Berlin transit map" and ends up on this site, and gets a way outdated map.

IMO quite irresponsible.

UI designers (or especially the ones that have blogs) seem highly susceptible to 2 common afflictions, which affect many people when they live for too long in their art:

-- Believing that fonts and lines can solve major world problems

-- Believing that anything they touch must've needed solving

I find it rare that a UI designer will say "that version of it is fine, and better than the additional complications I would introduce if I put my mind to it!"

Sure, there are some interesting aspects of this redesign. But let's not overstate faults of the old map that many people were just fine with for decades, to justify the need for a redesign.

You can even see the creator's belief in his own work's importance, as the last picture on the webpage shows he's actually posted the map without authorization in some subway car.

Do you think he hacked the video monitors to display his map too? The picture is clearly Photoshopped.

[Edit: on closer inspection, it looks like the video monitor is photoshopped in, but the paper map is real. I like the idea of seeing how well a product works in an actual environment and getting real feedback.]

I find your comment to be overly cynical. The map designer never said his map can "solve world problems", and it is clear to me that Berlin's map is far from ideal. He had an idea and wanted to try it out, and now he wants to know what people think. Is there something wrong with that? Drawing unoffical transit maps is a common practice, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Try it out? The sub-headline is "A transit map should be [bla bla]. Berlin has received such a transit map.".

One of the last words are:

is it an official map? Not yet. [bla bla] then it will become an official one.

I think he thinks he's the Designer God's gift to humanity. The design is nice, but IMO the guy's kind of a dick.

I'm a little confused; who do you think is supposed to solve the problem of a clear readable transit map other than a designer?

Also what is this "old map that many people were just fine with for decades"? The BVG revises their map, what, yearly? They had to cope with a rather radical set of revisions a couple of decades ago. And more recently with the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof the entire transit system of Berlin has rotated around a new axis.

The map is very beautiful and clear, so please take these as small nitpicks:

The zone boundaries are not clear at all. I see the words Zone A and Zone B within an area with the same background colour, with the words Zone B and Zone C "tacked on" to a border. Is Zone C the area outside the framing rectangle?

Contrast is a bit low, and line colours are just slightly too similar. Maybe the fare zones would be clearer in grey, like the London tube map.

I believe zone A is inside the inner ring. There is a slight gradient inward there, but otherwise you're right, the background color of zones A and B is very similar.

Ah, I see the gradient now, it's still hard to distinguish because its colour is basically the same as that of the ring line. Yesterday evening it was nigh impossible to see because of the red-shifted colours of my monitor.

Picture of Tokyo subway map - https://bit.ly/2D6IkwX

Actual, current picture of Tokyo subway map: https://www.tokyometro.jp/en/subwaymap/

Zone boundaries seem very confusing to me.

Not gonna lie, without trams (the obvious best mode of transport) in the map, it's of little use. That's obviously the same for the original one. Don't understand why they are not combined. Let's be honest, it's GoogleMaps all day any day.

Do you have a recommendation for a map that integrates trams? Thanks.

Cool topology ... makes me want to apply a Riemannian metric and see if Berlin pops out!

I wish I had had this last weekend in Berlin - I see it as a great improvement over the official map, which is incredibly hard to reason about compared to other big cities.

I love it. If it succeeds in Berlin please make one for Munich too. If, as unlikely as it may be, they won't love it in Berlin, please make one for Munich too.

I gladly remember my few days working in Munich. Most accurate schedule I've ever seen, on bus/tram/U-bahn. Down to 30 seconds.

Any app for that yet ?

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