Transit Maps of the World | Mark Ovenden

Transit Maps of the World | Mark Ovenden | Love it!

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Transit Maps of th...

	Transit Maps of the World Mark Ovenden Penguin (Non-Classics), 2007 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Beck and all

A timely update to the first edition in 2003 with a new Zone: 6, listing all the latest and proposed subway systems around the globe. This extra Zone now includes hybrids like tram-trains, monorail or light rail and they all need maps. The other five Zones in the original have had their contents revised also.

I think the beauty of the book is in looking at the way various transit companies have approached the problem of communicating (sometimes complex) information in a simple way for passengers yet each map has its unique points. The book's authors rightly trace the origins of the modern designed transit map to London Transport's Harry Beck. His genius was to discard the geographic location of stations and have route lines as either vertical, horizontal or at forty-five degrees. It's amazing to see how many maps of the dozens in the book still follow this general principal.

However, creating a map that might look graphically stunning is not always enough. New York's MTA got Massimo Vignelli to design their map and it looks a visual treat but passengers weren't impressed and found it confusing so the MTA revised it. Vignelli's 1979 map and the latest 2007 MTA one are shown together on a spread in the book, two maps with the same information yet looking so different.

This update has a few more train and station photos to fill the space that was frequently left blank in the first edition and there is a nice touch with a spread near the back that includes some fantasy maps. If I have a fault with the book it is that in the new Zone 6 section many of the maps are so small that I don't think they were worth including.

I thinks it's worth pointing out that Transit Maps is not designed as a reference guide for travelers to cities around the world but as a celebration of the beauty that is inherent in these colorful diagrams.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

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Love it!

If you are a fan of rail transit systems, cartography, or functional graphic design, then this book is for you. It contains very up to date images of all of the greatest transit maps in the world. It also provides quite a bit of historical insight for the larger systems. The only thing I thing that would improve this book is if it were in a larger format. Then you could actually appreciate the maps even more. Considering some of the maps illustated are diplayed 6 feet high on subway station walls, any extra size bigger they could print this book, the better.

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An essential reference for urban rail enthusiasts

"Transit maps of the world" by Mark Ovenden.

This unique atlas contains at least one map of every urban "mass transit" system in the world. That includes heavy rail (subways/metros), light rail, elevated rail, monorail, and even some streetcars, trams and trolleys. Suburban/commuter rail is included only for a few large cities that have no subways.

Most of the maps come from official sources. For the more important networks there are both modern and historical maps. For each city there is a broad description of the network and the metropolitan area served. But the emphasis is as much on the widely varying designs of the maps as on the transit systems that they represent. Most are diagrammatic, using straight lines rather than geographically scaled curves.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5

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