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What I like:
*subtitling long station names
*marking line terminii (esp. WFC, Grosvenor, Silver Spring)
*improved parking icons
*better Amtrak/MARC/VRE icons
*clearer representation of buses to airports
*legend effectively conveys a lot of info in little space
*representation of peak-only and off-peak-only service. The dots and rectangles are clear, and clearly distinguished. Being unfamiliar with current or future service patterns (I left in 05), I think this map preserves its ease of use. Much easier than NYC's map. Though to be consistent, the dotted section of the Yellow Line should be listed in the top legend with the dashed segments.
*keeping the overall design/minimizing changes. So I'm a minority on GGW, but I love the Metro map. I find it iconic and so easy to use. I didn't like the contest submissions that radically differed from the status quo, though I liked elements of many of them. I think this is a great compromise that should work well for the most people.
*love what they did with the National Airport station. And as I've said for years, Stadium-Armory should have RFK added to it for balance.
*keeping street locations of stations. Important since the lines don't necessarily follow street grids.

What I don't like:
*the new tight angle in the SE green line. I know it's more geographically accurate, but a great strength of this map has always been it's being diagrammatic over geographic specificity.
*English-only. Come on, this is the 21st century. The Hispanic population of the region and nation are growing rapidly. DC is an international city. At least print the most important things in Spanish. I also liked the contest submission map that listed other available languages, and
*no QR code. I don't even have a smartphone, but this would clearly be extremely useful.
*I'd like to see the whole Silver Line here, not just Phase 1. That would be more consistent with early versions of the map when Metro was first built. WMATA's rationale makes sense though.
*no bus lines. Buses have long been the stepchild to Metrorail. Major routes like the Circulators would've been a great asset. You could even leave off the lines and just list the route numbers that serve each station.
*no Purple Line. Call it personal preference; I'd like to see it on the map now.
*no Farragut-Farragut transfer shown

Good point on subtitling inconsistency with universities, and relative distances between stations and between stations and major destinations. The survey asks about replacing "Red Line" with "RD". But it doesn't say whether the two-letter codes would appear at both ends of each line, unlike the current map. I'm not disabled, but this might be a consideration.

As I think about it, it might make sense to call the Vienna spur silver and the Dulles extension and old orange line orange.

"Perhaps Metro could make it a standard part of the out of service announcement, that if you are continuing you just need to wait for the next train." -stroke of genius from Nathaniel

@Alex B. I think WMATA may also require that the jurisdiction in which a station sits approves a station name change, and National sits in Arlington County which strongly opposed the change.

by Jon Morgan on Sep 7, 2011 8:31 pm • link • report