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Here's what 30,000 maps looks like:
SVG at: http://cincymap.org/images/Cincinnati_Transit_Map.svg
About the map
Basically, the map reads as such: thicker lines represent more frequent service, thinner less. The thinker a line is, the less time you will need to wait for a bus to come. For thin lines, check a schedule unless you have an hour or more to spend waiting. Distances are not to scale; use the white dots to approximate time between two points. The space between two white dots represents ten minutes. To find aproximate total time to your destination, refer to the legend to find exact frequency. Divide that in half and multinply the number of dots you'll travel past on your line by ten. Add those two numbers and you get the average wait time plus the approximate travel time. That is your approximate one way travel time.
About the project
The Cincinnati Frequent Transit Map is a project that grew out of my frustration with the absence of any legible description of Greater Cincinnati's system. I first began tinkering with Cincinnati's transit data in late 2010. I wanted to get clear in my own mind just what services were useful, what neighborhoods had better transit service, and how they were all connected. SORTA, the primary transit agency serving the region, hadn't published a system map in over four years. The map on their website was not only inaccurate, but so illegible that most new riders were scared off.
After a couple days of entering most of the data from paper route schedules into GIS over a shapefile of regional streets I was able to see the basic structure of transit system. I included rough data drawn from the schedules on frequency and was able to highlight areas with more frequent service. I was intrigued by what I found, so I started drawing some simple sketches, at first just the most frequent routes. After getting some positive feedback I ran with it. I started including more routes and details. I reduced the wild curves of Cincinnati's hilly streets to 45 degree angles and smooth corners. By analyzing GIS data for all of the region's buildings, zoning codes, and census data, I was able to include meaningful information about the location of neighborhood boundaries and business districts. By reading schedules one at a time, I was able to give a rough estimate of the time between two points on a given route.
As I poured more effort into the project I decided I couldn't leave it as just an academic exercise. A couple of recommendations led me to Kickstarter.com, a website that helps to raise money for creative projects. After just five days I had raised over $1,200. Less than a month later, I had raised $2,300 with the support of more than a hundred donors from Cincinnati and around the world. That money was used to print 30,000 pocket-sized maps and several hundred posters.
Those maps have now been distributed by individuals, businesses and organizations around Greater Cincinnati. The University of Cincinnati even printed 6,000 of their own maps for their freshman class, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has maps at their branch locations and both regional transit agencies are distributing the maps directly to their customers.
The map is a diagrammatic illustration of the Greater Cincinnati's transit system that shows where, when, and how one can travel by bus. It's nearer to New York City's Subway Map or that of London's Tube in design than to the more to-scale and more difficult to read maps of most Midwestern cities. Like the New York map, this map highlights the important frequent and convenient transit lines over services that are infrequent, specialized or too complex to readily apprehend.
The map articulates not only where routes go in relation to each other and their context, but by including temporal information, how long you can expect to wait for a bus. The basic idea behind a frequency map is that transit service doesn't only exist in space, but in time. You may know the line you want is on Vine Street, but you can't expect to catch the bus at midnight the same way you can at noon. A bus map that locates routes in space but not in time is not very valuable unless it is accompanied by schedules for every route. And that's just not very convenient.
Ultimately, I hope to allow people to understand what good service exists, and where it can take them so that they can not only begin to use public transit, but understand it in a way that lets them have an informed discussion about how to improve it. You can hardly demand better transit service when you don't know what you have!
http://www.cincymap.org
