Transit-style Bike Map for W&OD

[Brent]

I think it’s a fantastic idea! Make sure you put icons at the different stops to indicate restrooms, water, bike shops, etc.

What program are you using? I’ve always used Inkscape to produce the SVG, and hand edited the xml to fine tune things.

[baiskeli]

What a cool idea! It emphasizes the fact that biking is a form of transportation too, not just a hobby.

[mooniker]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys.

I just noticed that you may not be able to see the full-size image I uploaded — it only shows up thumbnail-sized when I try. Here’s a link to the current draft that you can actually download and look at:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2998029/WODBikeCommuterGuideDRAFT20110801.png

@Brent: Yes, I’m using Inkscape. I’m a little concerned about cluttering the map because I want to make it as simple, clean but useful as possible. So I’m trying to decide what information to include and have a few layers with different kinds of information that I can swap in and out.

[Brent]

You’re right about keeping it as simple as possible. I think the most important pieces of info to a cyclist would be water, restrooms, and bike shops (for repairs).

How are you deciding where to put the dots along the trails? Some of them are obvious, like where trail and major road intersections happen, but others don’t really have anything notable (I’m not familiar with the whole trail, so I might be wrong).

[StopMeansStop]

Very nice, but the Custis doesnt touch VA sq, Clarendon or Courthouse the way the map indicates.

[mooniker]

@Brent: Well, the W&OD used to be a railway, so at first I actually just went back and used some of the stations from the old railway. That’s the reason why I thought this map would be kinda straightforward.

Then I tried to think of “stations” on this map as activity centers (or at least my modified version of MWCOG’s concept of activity centers), which often coincide with Metrorail stations, and I also used future Silver line stations as well.

Some of the dots aren’t so much activity centers but I put them on kinda like “transfer stations”:”Hunter Mill,” “Bluemont Junction,” “Four Mile Run,” and “Cemetery.”

I’m kinda thinking of putting the information you describe in as icons next to “station” names the way WMATA does on their map.

@StopMeansStop: I tried to place those stations further down to suggest that they aren’t actually on the Custis Line. But maybe I should make it more clear. One of my earlier drafts/layers had parallel “stations” (exits) on the Custis with names like “Quincy St” and “Veitch St.”

[Brent]

I like your ideas. Being an old railway does make it easy to label “stations” on the W&OD. I would also probably include major road intersections where you’re likely to find amenities such as convenience stores.

I think the icon idea for amenities next to the station names is a fantastic idea. That could also help define where some of the dots are placed. Road intersections with a convenience store, for example, might get a dot and icon; as well as places like Smith Switch station (I think that’s it…I just rode the trail this weekend, but I don’t know the names of any places), with water fountains, etc.. I dunno, I’m just throwing out ideas…

[americancyclo]

I’ll second the requests for bike shops, water, and restrooms. Also, I think the Custis Trail stops in Rosslyn instead of extending across the Roosevelt bridge. I see where you’re going with the folding over, but it is a bit distracting.

[WillStewart]

It can be a little disorienting to people, especially those who might need it the most. Why not just use a landscape pattern and give it a true East-West orientation?

[acc]

Oh gosh, I love this. Thank you for attempting this project. I want to know where there are bathrooms, and shelter to go inside and warm up during the winter or cool down in the summer, the fire departments just in case someone needs medical assistance or a safe haven.

Love, love, love,
ann

[FFX_Hinterlands]

James,
Thanks for sharing. Love it. Smiths Switch Station should be on there, somewhere. +1 on fitting into landscape, somehow.

Tom

[CCrew]

@acc 6720 wrote:

the fire departments just in case someone needs medical assistance or a safe haven.

Aww, tell the truth. You just want to know where the hunky firefighters are

[mooniker]

Thanks @everyone for the feedback. Keep it coming. ^^

I knew that the way I curved the orientation would be controversial and potentially confusing. But I couldn’t figure out how else to fit it on one page. (I wanted something that anyone can print.) Even in landscape, the W&OD’s too long to fit, unless I break it up. I thought the bend would be palatable because those further out places are less likely to be start or end points for bike commuters going downtown. Would it be better to put the stations beyond Herndon in a separate inset? Or give the non-W&OD trails separate insets?

If it’s any consolation, I’m thinking that I might make a version that isn’t all out of whack for smartphones where you can finger scroll up and down the line. Won’t have to worry about page dimensions.

A lot of people seem to prefer a landscape orientation, so here’s a quick mockup of what that might look like:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2998029/WODBikeCommuterGuideDRAFTlandscape20110802.png
(Lots of the alignments are off because I didn’t go back and make sure text lined up well.)

I’m thinking about introducing a second type of “station.” On WMATA’s map, there are double circles for transfer stations and normal circles for ordinary stops. Transfers don’t make sense on a bike map, but I may distinguish the stations with a larger circle representing activity centers (destination and origin points such as Rosslyn, Balston, etc) and smaller circles for landmarks (Bluemont Junction, Four Mile Run, Cemetery, etc).

In regard to icons, so far I’ve heard restrooms, water fountains, repair shops, emergency/medical, and shelters. I’m kinda trying to keep this diagram transportation focused, so I’d include Metrorail (with a Helvetica-esque M icon) and park-and-ride lots (with a bus icon). My only issue with some of the icons, like restroom, is that practically every activity center has bathrooms somewhere, so maybe I’d only indicate the trail-side ones with a small symbol.

@Brent: I have a couple layers where I started to include major intersections and any intersection with bicycle lanes on the crossing street. But the map started to get really cluttered really fast and I’m concerned about complexity and info overload. Also, bringing in more cross streets starts to associate the map with real geography, making it difficult to keep up the Metro-style abstraction. I’ve toyed with giving the stations names subtitles to indicate the major cross street, too.

@americancyclo: Yeah, I haven’t really settled on a color scheme yet. I left those two bridges maroon-ish and the other bridges olive green-ish. My ears are open to color ideas.

[americancyclo]

I feel I need to mention that the trail network is more like a road network than a transit system. Mostly in that we have ‘exits’ rather than ‘stops’. In that sense, I think you might get some good insight from looking at road maps, since we’re both dealing with paved stretches of asphalt, sometimes even on roads. I have a feeling you’re looking to end up with something like the attached [ATTACH=CONFIG]294[/ATTACH]map

[mooniker]

Yes, I’ve seen that highway map/diagram before via GGW. I think it’s modeled after the London tube map, but I’d rather use the iconography of the Metrorail map because it probably has more currency locally in turning heads and making people consider bicycles as transportation.

That said, I’ve sorta departed from Metro map conventions and have tried indicating “exits” as you’ve suggested and revised the map to be much more W&OD centric and (hopefully) easier to interpret. I’ve updated the link to the current draft in the first post of this thread.

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