Geographical and Diagrammatic System Maps

A long-lasting concern in communicating transit to the public is how to best package the information: whether to do something like the iconic London Underground map with its complete ignoring of geographical reality or just slap the transit stations on a geographical map and let that do the work, or something in between.Even London has gone through some evolution historically on this.And perhaps obviously many cities do both, or a middle ground, or a mixture, since there are obvious benefits to each: the clarity of how the lines intersect and work on the one hand, and the ability to use the transit to get to the actual city on the other.Montréal, which I recently visited, is I think a really good object lesson in these benefits (and corresponding disadvantages) because its two systems rely heavily on the opposite kinds of information. So today I want to use the REM and the Montréal Metro to illustrate some of the affordances of each--that is, what each kind of map allows to happen and…