Bad Maps: Metro Edition

Eric Richardson

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES —

Back in April it was a City map that got the "Bad Maps" nod, so this time it's only fair to recognize the efforts of Metro, the county transit agency. The map pictured sits on the sidewalk at 7th and Hope, outside the 7th/Metro subway station.

The Aon building, depicted in the map section on the right, was what first drew my attention to this particular piece of cartography. For the life of me I couldn't understand why Metro was placing it on the same block as the Standard hotel. In a case of fake-3d gone awry, the building's height takes its top (and label) straight onto the wrong block.

Two more great examples of bad map work after the jump.

It's perfectly excusable that Metro still has Robinsons-May on the map. After all, it was only back in January that Macy's got their new signage up on the 7+Fig location. Placing the Robinsons-May in the parking garage, though, is a little bit more serious of an offense.

Perhaps they felt the real location was just a bit too crowded, or perhaps the data they were working off of just wasn't quite detailed enough to get it right.

Similar to the above, like many maps this one places Macy's Plaza straight into the parking garage, and makes the one-block mega-structure look like four dis-joined buildings.

As a bit of a side-note: Poor Sheraton. They really bought at a bad time. Everyone had just put up maps and wayfinding signage that featured the Hyatt Regency, and then Sheraton comes along and takes over. Over two years later they're still wrong on maps like this one that site directly across the street from the hotel.

This really speaks to a core issue that faces Downtown maps like this one: Downtown is changing, fast. If you're going to put out a map out on our streets, you need to be prepared to make changes to it when Downtown changes. Otherwise you're doing a disservice to those who would use your map to get around.

Funky stylings that don't quite tell the story and some sloppiness with the truth combine to make this map a bad map in my book.