Even Melbourne has good maps now....

[Gazza]

Some people might recall Melbournes maps being overly diagrammatic, eg http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/maps-stations-stops/metropolitan-buses/bus/1814

They seem to have picked up their game of late and are doing Perth/Adelaide style maps...
http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/assets/Maps/Localities/PDFs/21_Hobsons_Bay.pdf
http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/assets/Maps/Localities/PDFs/38_Mornington_Peninsula.pdf
http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/assets/Maps/Localities/PDFs/30_Melbourne.pdf
http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/assets/Maps/Localities/PDFs/53_Yarra.pdf
etc

When's Brisbanes turn  

[somebody]

When's Brisbanes turn  

When hell freezes over?

[SurfRail]

Those network maps have been around for a while, however given that they go by local government area name they are of pretty limited use.  I have no idea where Stonnington or Hume are...

They had a system wide one when I first visited in 2005, which was withdrawn not long afterwards.  They were meant to be releasing a highly functional interactive one but I have no idea what happened to it.

[aldonius]

'They' being TL or the Melbourne people? I'm presuming TL - I have an A5 booklet of network map published July 2004. The 'highly functional interactive' sounds an awful lot like *cough*googletransit*cough* ...

[SurfRail]

'They' being TL or the Melbourne people? I'm presuming TL - I have an A5 booklet of network map published July 2004. The 'highly functional interactive' sounds an awful lot like *cough*googletransit*cough* ...

No, Metlink.  They had a fold-out booklet for sale for about $2-3.

[SurfRail]

Why can't we ever have nice things?

http://upgrade.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/map-journey#jpsearch%5Baction%5D=showSearch

[Jonno]

Why can't we ever have nice things?

http://upgrade.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/map-journey#jpsearch%5Baction%5D=showSearch

Because our political leaders see public and active transport as a social services for those undesirables who choose to use it or can not afford or are not allowed to drive...and these people have hours of spare time to work it out and travel around.  Everone esle is smart enought to know it is better to drive.  

Please repeat this morning, noon and night until next Saturday.

[HappyTrainGuy]

I thought it would show just how bloody random and usless our bus routes and train connections really are.

[#Metro]

Why can't we ever have nice things?

http://upgrade.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/map-journey#jpsearch%5Baction%5D=showSearch

It is a rubbish map and makes all the errors that a motorist would if asked to draw a map of the PT system.

The map is a map of infrastructure, not service - that's first error. Only motorists draw infrastructure maps like this because they don't have to interchange modes or worry about frequency and span like PT users do.

The map shows all lines as the same colour/length - PT exists in space AND TIME. The 'AND TIME' bit is *crucial* in the way a map is drawn because roads for cars exist in space and are around 24 hours a day but PT IS NOT. If I go down to the SE Freeway at midday and midnight I can use it - if I go down to the bus stop at midday and at midnight I can't do the same thing because at midnight, the bus stop may as well not exist because there are no services then. Bottom line - they totally forgot about frequency.


Third problem - information overload.

KISS - CORE FREQUENT NETWORK MAP is what is required.

[SurfRail]

Did you guys not actually see the fully interactive Google based journey planner and map?  What did you think I was referring to? 

I don't live on a "frequent" service and in this area it probably never will be one.  Does that mean somebody living in my area doesn't deserve to know what services my route connects to?  A frequent network map is something separate to an entire network map...

[#Metro]

It is a nice map
It is a pretty map
Is it a useful map?....

[Jonas Jade]

It can be useful if you use the journey planner to create a route, or you are looking for a specific location and want to see all the services in the area of that location.

You can toggle bus routes, tram routes, train lines, Nightrider etc.

While there could be improvements made, like "frequent services" etc. this is a network wide problem as services are identified as Train, Tram bus etc, and until the taxonomy of that is changed it would be useless on a network wide thing like this to have another tier as that would confuse most users in Melbourne.

Unfortunately they conflate train and tram with being frequent services (as individual lines are usually 15-20 min frequency max most times of the day), and bus is much more of a mixed bag, so yeah it is kinda useful.

[Jonno]

It is a nice map
It is a pretty map
Is it a useful map?....

It is more usefull than 120 maps

[SurfRail]

It is a nice map
It is a pretty map
Is it a useful map?....

Yes, for goodness' sake.  Believe it or not, people live on services other than BUZ routes - majority of people in fact.

Say I want to travel from McDowall to Wynnum.  Or from Yeronga to Victoria Point.  Or even something simple like Fig Tree Pocket/Shorncliffe/Beenleigh to the City  Kindly explain how your frequent network map assists me.  It doesn't that I can see.  An analogous map in Brisbane would be of enormous assistance for people like these.

More to the point - this is interactive, and considering it would have built from the cadastre they need to maintain anyway, would have cost virtually nothing.  It lets you CLICK ON ANY STOP OR STATION TO SHOW THE NEXT DEPARTURES.  For non-frequent services, this is important stuff.

[SurfRail]

It is a nice map
It is a pretty map
Is it a useful map?....

It is more usefull than 120 maps

Damn straight it is.  No need to plumb through multiple badly drawn PDFs.

[HappyTrainGuy]

I like the 120 odd maps. Gives me something to do while I wait for my local hourly bus 

[Jonno]

I like the 120 odd maps. Gives me something to do while I wait for my local hourly bus  

Aha!!  Now we know the mapping design principle.  If there was a concise map people who notice the wait time more.  With the 120 maps the hour wait seems like minutes because it took you 58 minutes to work out that the bus was about to arrive.

[#Metro]

Say I want to travel from McDowall to Wynnum.  Or from Yeronga to Victoria Point.  Or even something simple like Fig Tree Pocket/Shorncliffe/Beenleigh to the City  Kindly explain how your frequent network map assists me.  It doesn't that I can see.  An analogous map in Brisbane would be of enormous assistance for people like these.

More to the point - this is interactive, and considering it would have built from the cadastre they need to maintain anyway, would have cost virtually nothing.  It lets you CLICK ON ANY STOP OR STATION TO SHOW THE NEXT DEPARTURES.  For non-frequent services, this is important stuff.
   

This map is better than that 120 fragments that preceded it but not as good as a CFN map at all. As I said before, is still has all the errors of the motorist in its design. Could they not have a toggle feature for frequency and span? No- they decided to organise and present the data on the basis of whether the vehicle made choo choo sounds, ding-ding sounds or vroom vroom - totally irrelevant.

The value of a CFN map is not only does it remove irrelevant information, it shows you immediately where the frequency and decent span is. And this is important for the passenger and not only that it is important for the renter/person looking to live near decent mobility and the developer looking to build density near decent PT (remember there isn't a correlation between frequency and concrete). The map falls short in my view - if they added this functionality to the existing map, to filter out all the low frequency routes, then this problem would be solved.

[HappyTrainGuy]

I like the 120 odd maps. Gives me something to do while I wait for my local hourly bus  

Aha!!  Now we know the mapping design principle.  If there was a concise map people who notice the wait time more.  With the 120 maps the hour wait seems like minutes because it took you 58 minutes to work out that the bus was about to arrive.

Translink needs to team up with UBD to publish the Translink refidex. 600 pages of trying to locate your bus stop

[#Metro]

Aha!!  Now we know the mapping design principle.  If there was a concise map people who notice the wait time more.  With the 120 maps the hour wait seems like minutes because it took you 58 minutes to work out that the bus was about to arrive.

Don't forget in Sydney you also need a complimentary piece of string to work out how many sections...

[Jonno]

I like the 120 odd maps. Gives me something to do while I wait for my local hourly bus 

Aha!!  Now we know the mapping design principle.  If there was a concise map people who notice the wait time more.  With the 120 maps the hour wait seems like minutes because it took you 58 minutes to work out that the bus was about to arrive.

Translink needs to team up with UBD to publish the Translink refidex. 600 pages of trying to locate your bus stop

That would easily cover a 2 hourly service.

[SurfRail]

This map is better than that 120 fragments that preceded it but not as good as a CFN map at all. As I said before, is still has all the errors of the motorist in its design. Could they not have a toggle feature for frequency and span? No- they decided to organise and present the data on the basis of whether the vehicle made choo choo sounds, ding-ding sounds or vroom vroom - totally irrelevant.

Outside of trams, Smartbus and a few selected bus and rail routes, they have no frequent network.  Trams do = frequency in a very big way down there.  So frequency mapping is not much use when the system on the whole is not terribly frequent.  Problems of policy at a higher level than the guys who design the maps.

I'd say the map is missing functionality, not necessarily including wrong functionality.  If I was building one I would optimise it so the user could do what they liked, viz:

1.   Show any combination of routes, or every route (mode irrelevant)

2.   Show all trains

3.   Show all trams

4.   Show all buses

5.   Show all frequent services

6.   Show all after dark/Nightrider services

7.   Show services from a given bus stop/location.

Everybody is covered then, and you can use the map as you need/see fit.