Submitted by Henrique, who says:
Hello! Rio de Janeiro has, now and finally, a new official map of all the metropolitan transport system. Here, we have BRT corridors, tramways, metro lines and a suburban rail, but each system used to have your own map in the stations. What you think about the design of it?
Transit Maps says:
The text on the government web page promoting this map roughly translates to: “This tool… aims to standardize the visualization of all transport services of high and medium capacities and the respective integrations available to users”, which is a very laudable goal. However, I’m not sure it’s totally successful, for a few reasons.
The lack of differentiation between modes is the biggest thing: almost every route, no matter the mode or frequency of service is the same exact thickness. As a result, there’s no hierarchy to the map at all. Personally, I would have made the Metro lines thicker and more prominent than everything else because of the higher frequency of service: it forms the literal backbone of the transit network. At the moment, actually finding the Metro on the map is a lot of hard work!
There’s also quite a few similar colours used for different lines throughout the map. The worst example of this is two Line 2s (Metro and light rail) that are both green. Speaking of which, the two systems should really use different nomenclature to allow them to be told apart more easily… Lines 1, 2 and 4 for the Metro, but Lines A, B and C for the light rail, for example.
Station labelling is somewhat inconsistent: some angled route lines use horizontal labels (mainly to the top of the map), while others have diagonal labels. Lots of intercity bus terminals to the right side of the map have their labels set at angles for no discernible reason. The coastline is generally simplified nicely, but the borders of the parklands are too detailed by comparison. There’s even one park to the west of Nilópolis that hasn’t been properly simplified to 45-degree angles! Including a note that the map is not to scale directly underneath a scale bar seems a little odd.
On the plus side, the layout is generally pleasing and the legend is quite comprehensive and well laid out.
Our rating: Promises a lot, but doesn’t quite deliver. Looks clean and modern, but not very intuitive or easy to use. Two-and-a-half stars.
See also: This map from the Rio Olympic Games that also attempted to combine different services into one map.
Source: Governo do Rio de Janeiro website – link no longer active