Muni Map

Increasing numbers of public transit riders are using computers to access information about buses, subways, and other modes of mass transportation. Today, transit systems worldwide have online counterparts to their paper map alternatives, many borrowing common visualization and presentation techniques from popular mapping websites. The result: a spectrum of approaches to the seemingly simple problem of getting from point A to point B. Many fall short of tapping the full potential of the online environment. This project compares a variety of public transit sites and explores techniques for solving a set of fairly standard mapping problems. We then apply the more usable approaches to a web- and kiosk-based prototype designed for the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) system. In doing so, we hope to offer a user-centric model for use by transit systems everywhere.