Transitland · · 3 min read

Giving equal prominence to buses and trains on the map

We've refined Transitland's global map to emphasize where riders can access the most frequent transit service. Thanks to leaders at San Francisco's transit agency for informing this improvement.

Transitland’s global map of transit has an ambitious goal: to map buses, trains, subways, cable cars, ferries, and other modes of public transit across all urban and rural regions where we can source standardized open-data feeds. While the data feeds may be standardized, every route/trip/stop record also represents the manifestation of local history, politics, and economics — factors that can vary widely from country to country, or metro region to metro region. When we design our map of transit to be consistently usable and understandable across the world, we also touch on questions unique to each place.

Earlier this year, Jeffrey Tumlin, director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, took the time to discuss with our team some of the complicated questions raised by Transitland’s global map (and by similar transit navigation apps):

The discussion was spirited: Tumlin shared how his current experience leading a major US transit agency and his previous experience consulting internationally highlights how much of an outlier the US is in terms of privileging rail transit over bus transit. Legacies of racism continue to shape the transit networks of today. Whether transit service is provided to riders by a bus with rubber wheels or a train on steel tracks still resonates in an almost cultural manner, aside from the practicalities of whether the route will help riders reach their destinations.

The discussion was also optimistic: SFMTA is strengthening its network of bus routes with service of at least every 10 minutes. As frequencies increase further, riders are finding it even more convenient to quickly transfer from one high-frequency route to another. As a square of roughly 7 miles by 7 miles, San Francisco is now covered by a grid of high-frequency bus routes, enabling riders to travel “diagonally” with a single transfer with minimal wait time. SFMTA may stand out in the Bay Area in this respect, but it’s using patterns long common to other parts of the world and increasingly adopted in the dense cores of more American cities.

💡
Interline is currently engaged by the SF Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission to build a regional mapping data services platform to support transit cartography throughout the entire Bay Area. This platform will help to support MTC's Regional Mapping and Wayfinding project, of which SFMTA is also a key stakeholder. All transit riders and residents of the greater Bay Area stand to gain from this initiative to design consistent maps and signage, as well as related initiatives to better integrate transit service.

Based on input from Tumlin, as well as from SFMTA transit planner Steve Boland, we’ve tuned the Transitland global map.

Rail routes are now zoom-level dependent

Rail lines continue to be more prominent at national or region-wide views. As you zoom into a city or neighborhood scale, rail lines now shrink to be equally sized with bus lines:

screenshots of Transitland global transit map before and after changes to rail styling

This change reflects how rail lines are helpful for riders orienting across broader viewers and relevant for traveling longer distances, but for intra-urban travel, a bus may often be competitive if not better than a rail-based transit service.

Bus routes are grouped by styling

Previously, our map classified buses routes into two groups by their frequency: less frequent routes were styled with a lighter blue color, more frequent routes were styled with a darker and more prominent blue.

Now our map groups buses into three different groups by their headway (the term that transit planners use to refer to how frequently a transit service operates):

screenshots of Transitland global transit map before and after changes to bus frequency styling

In cities and metros with a network of high-frequency service, this change will help to emphasize that subset of fast and dependable service, while still also showing connections with less frequent bus services that provide coverage.

Onward

We’re working on some longer term improvements to the way bus and rail route shapes are handled within the Transitland software stack, and we look forward to sharing more in the future.

It’s also always a pleasure to place the work we do with data and software within the broader context of public transit in the US. Thanks to SFMTA staff for a lively conversation and useful feedback!

Read next

How current is that schedule?
Transitland ·

How current is that schedule?

The GTFS Best Practices guide recommends publishing data for the current data plus at least 7 days in the future. We've used the Transitland archives to assess how many feeds meet this goal.