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Comment by m90 | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

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