Progress: drawing actual bus lines for the first time. Not surprisingly, the bus yard is in the very center of this map — lots of the longer routes pass by on either 3rd or 6th so they can switch drivers.
A bit of Tulsa bus nomenclature (more of that to come): 1xx routes are out-and-back routes from the downtown station (the 100 starts downtown and ends on east Admiral Place in far east Tulsa) and 2xx routes connect the downtown station with the Midtown Memorial station* (the 222, likely the longest route in town, passes through north, south, east and midtown Tulsa — it crosses / transfers to the airport line** four times, passes two large hospitals, both the OU and OSU campuses and a shopping mall — which is why I felt it deserved a primary color).
This project gets more complicated by the minute. Attempting this project with a city I wasn’t so intimately familiar with would be overwhelming.
*coincidentally not in midtown by most accepted boundaries
** probably the least sensical bus route in the city. Riding the bus from the downtown station to the airport takes about 40 minutes (you could do it in 10 in a car, even in pretty substantial traffic) as you spend a great deal of time snaking through north Tulsa neighborhoods. We’re talking residential streets. I feel like they must have consolidated lines at some point or something. Another fun note from personal experience: the bus drives through the airport terminal loading zones (inbound and outbound) but doesn’t stop if you don’t pull the cord. I learned that the hard way, and ended up having to walk a half a mile with a rolling suitcase. I think maybe the 203 deserves its own post.
Arterial streets in midtown Tulsa.
Type Testing
Arrived at a typeface for the map — Adobe’s brand new Source Sans Pro. The typeface was designed by Adobe as an example of open-source design, and therefore seems really appropriate for this project from an ethical standpoint.
Additionally it’s wonderfully readable, clean, modern and has a wide array of weights, which lends itself to information design (I see hierarchy of information as paramount to a project like this).
So this is just a little test. I’d been using Gotham for my mockups to this point, which is a fine typeface, but I’m loving the look of Source with the maps.
Nightline color scheme. Tulsa has 6 bus lines that run at night — completely separate from normal service. Despite having only 6 lines the system is rather comprehensive (and uses smaller-capacity buses). I’m excited to see the nightline map, it’ll be far less cluttered and more stylized.
Having flashbacks to my color theory class in college.
Progress Update: Color.
Working on color schemes. My thought process: 18 existing bus lines, plus I want to leave room for expansion without having to change existing colors. This is a little bit overwhelming. The existing map uses several colors that are virtually indistinguishable, and I’m doing my best to avoid that.
Also I kind of want to print this on a huge canvas and hang it in my living room.
Just a little more process. Merging real-world information with my styles, adjusting accordingly. The route lines have gotten slimmer in proportion to the streets themselves to simplify complex intersections and interchanges, and to keep things from getting muddled when you view the map as a whole.
A few personal thoughts on Bus Maps as opposed to other transit types:
Whereas a rail map concerns itself mostly with the rail line itself, a bus line is all about navigating the actual streets. As this project develops I realize more and more that it’s a map of the city almost more than a map of the transit. There are elements of stylization of course — smoothing out interchanges, snapping the grid a bit, but ultimately the map has to represent the city. My goal is not just an elegant and beautiful transit map but also a completely useable map of the city. This is, after all, where the existing map fails so fundamentally — not as a transit diagram (though it certainly does fail there as well) but as a map.
