In our opinion, the quality of Australian rail maps is very poor. Some are better than others, and they span the range from atrocious all the way up to adequate. We have decided to award the best map, the runner-up, a wooden spoon award for the worst map, and some dishonourable mentions.
Award for the Best Australian Rail Map:
Our award for the best official Australian train network map goes to Cityrail for its map of the Sydney metropolitan and interurban services to Newcastle, Hunter Valley, Bomaderry, Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands.
See the map here
Comment: This map uses quite clear and distinctly defined lines to show a moderately complex network. It shows good colour discrimination and uses quite readable fonts. Without being a thing of great beauty, this map is reasonably elegant and pleasing to the eye. It is functional and usable by regular and first time travellers alike and makes reasonable use of page real estate. The disciplined restriction of lines to horizontal, vertical and 45 degree diagonals works well, but the confused colouring of longer distance routes where the lines are grey and the station ticks are coloured is clumsy. The listing of some station names in diagonal print is an unfortunate but understandable compromise.
Runner-up award for the best Australian Rail Map
The runner-up award goes to Countrylink for it's map of country and regional New South Wales train and connecting bus services.
Comment: Like the winning Cityrail map above, the Countrylink map of New South Wales shows all the routes distinctly and uses colour well to discriminate train and connecting bus services. It is arguably less elegant than the Cityrail map, and it's web publication is at too low a resolution to do it justice - but it is functional. The lines denoting rail routes are perhaps a little too thick than they need be for elegance, but they do nonetheless clearly show which routes are trains, which are buses and where connections are made. This map could have achieved the top award had it used the available page real estate to avoid printing some station names in diagonal text.
So, what about the other end of the spectrum. Sadly, there are so many from which to choose.
Wooden Spoon award for the worst Australian Rail Map
The worst map is Yarra Trams' map of the Melbourne tram network.
Comment: This is an abomination quite frankly, and an insult to the great tram network that Yarra Trams operate so effectively. Bizarrely, all routes are the same colour with no route distinction at all - and that colour is yellow. Yellow routes on white background - it would be hard to select a less distinct colour pair. There are some short sections of route shown in blue which is intended to illustrate a different fare zone, but to the unfamiliar viewer this may be incorrectly interpreted as a different route requiring a change of trams. Where routes cross each other, because both routes are coloured yellow, the author has distinguished the lines by inserting a white gap in one route. Ridiculously though they have also placed white gaps in many normal junctions where trams do traverse the junction unfettered. As a result, this map has numerous unnecessary breaks in the routes that just aren't there on the ground. The lines are way too thick making the overall appearance ugly. To top it off the city area is shown as a separate breakout map presumably to highlight the intensity of services there - but this makes it very hard to navigate between the two parts of the map. The city area is tilted diagonally when it could so easily have been kept vertical and horizontal - they way that most locals think of the city streets are north-south and east-west so why on earth not show them that way here - it could so easily have been done. The tourist oriented city circle tram is illustrated as a tiny thin green line running along the centre of the normal yellow tram route - making it almost invisible and a completely unsatisfactory way of showing the most commonly sought out aspect of the network by visitors to the city who could be the most common users of this map. Location names are a mishmash of horizontal and diagonal left and diagonal right and some run across the route lines. Except for termini and train connection locations there is no explicit naming of locations - even major junctions. To top it off, there are many places where routes join at right angles or T junctions with no indication of which way the trams actually turn. in one instance (at Domain Interchange) the route taken is shown as an acute angle - but unless you knew it already you couldn't tell from this map.
There are so many things about this map that are so bad it is a clear winner of the wooden spoon award for the worst rail map in Australia.
Dishonourable mentions
Special brickbats must go to TransPerth and Adelaide Metro. Incredibly neither of these organisations actually publish a map of their metropolitain rail services! They do show train lines and station on their bus maps, but only as addenda and in both cases it takes a lot of experience to navigate your way by train through the maze of bus routes and roads. Luckily in each case the network is reasonably small so it can possibly be managed - but for goodness sake guys please produce maps.
Other maps assessed in making these awards:
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