First off, have you ever noticed how small Bucharest is? You can go from one side of the city to the other – or from one end to the other – in just a few minutes (if travelling at three in the morning, or by metro of course). For a city of almost three million people the actual size of the place is tiny: no wonder it can often feel oppressive, and the traffic immovable.
Anyway, we noticed this while taking our six-year-old, train and metro-obsessed son for a ride on the system this weekend, from one end to the other. Amongst other things (the looks you get when speaking English, the lack of advertising on the trains, the rather large number of security guards and the appallingly confusing signage at Piata Victoriei) it struck as us as just a little troubling that almost six months after a small extension to the metro was opened (Nicolae Grigorescu to Linia de Centura), the company which operates the Metro, Metrorex, has yet to get around to changing any of its maps.
Wherever you travel on the Bucharest metro the current maps tell you only that the extension is ‘under construction.’ In fact, a quick Google search brings up several versions of the Bucharest metro map, of which none is the official version and none of which is actually correct. This one comes closest, but the green line does not yet go as far as Laromet:
The Bucharest Metro
and that is an amateur effort, the work of a trainspotter in his bedroom: a pastime Bucharest In Your Pocket might well have to now take up.
Why? Because when we contacted Metrorex to get a new map for use on one of our products (our Bucharest Mini-Guide, 6 lei at all good kiosks or free from your hotel concierge) they not only ummed and ahhed about letting us have their latest map, we also realised that it was in fact the long out of date version they would be sending us. In the past we have created our own map (a far better effort we might add than the official one) which though now in need of updating remains the most user friendly version we’ve seen:
The In Your Pocket Bucharest metro map
but a labour intensive excercise, and, well, it’s just a bit crap that we have to create our own. No?
The official Metrorex site by the way has no map on it whatsoever, old or new.
What Bucharest needs is its own version of Harry Beck, the graphic designer who came up with the iconic London Underground map in the 1920s. (There’s even a book about it: Mr. Beck’s Map). For it really is about time Metrorex settled on one style of easy-to-use map, which it licenses for free, and which it keeps up to date.
Is that really too much to ask?
Anyway, last word goes to our son, who on finding out from reliable as ever Wikipedia that there are more lines planned for the Bucharest metro (M5 to Drumul Taberei, M6 to to Otopeni) said that he was sure they will be ready in time for him to take his son for a ride on.
The blind optimism of youth.
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What kind of a city doesn't have an up-to-date map of it's metro system?! Little things like this say a lot about Bucharest and Romania in general. The Metrorex officials have expensive SUVs yet no proper map?! What are they up to exactly there in the headquarters next to the Izvor Bridge. This is another example of how I find Romanian society incomprehensible at times. I'd love to know what the conversations of corrupt officials are actually like. How are expensive cars justified over actually doing work and updating an important map? How do these Romanian officials have any sort of positive reputation among one another?
The Bucharest Metro is one of the few things that's working 90% correctly in this city.
Imagine the city without the metro service! Whenever the Metrorex workers go on strike it's a disaster, the city is paralized. So we oughta pass these small mistakes because except for them – the Metrorex is doing a good job!
There are countless other services working real bad in this city.
A few months ago I design a touristic (and geographically accurate) map for the Bucharest Metro system. It's mainly based on the Parisian metro touristic map and I was going to also make a much smaller, schematic map (a cross between London Underground and the schematic Paris Metro maps), but didn't get to it.
Anyway, if you're interested in the maps (one with the current system and one with the wet dream-type of projects) you can find both here:
http://www.box.net/shared/t9jb4rv7dx
Maybe I'll get around to making that smaller map in August-September.
Really superb work! Thanks and congratulations!
I often pass by the Metrorex headquarters next to the Izvor Bridge and am always amazed by the huge SUVs (Audi Q8, Cadillac Escalade and a certain 4×4 BMW make) belonging to its managers and parked ostentatiously outside, right on the pedestrian pavement. No wonder that they live in a plush world and don’t have time for hoi polloi like us or things such as decent sign posting in the tube stations, let alone a simple updated map of the underground.
I have not seen such a brash behaviour with expensive cars by managers of a company largely funded by the taxpayer even in Russia. It is just disgusting. It makes you think that the economic crisis is a blessing for this country if at least will constrain such kind of behaviour.
I 'redesigned' the Bratislava tram map as an homage to Harry Beck, using colour and a stylised, simplified system. It was first published in my Bradt guide (2005) and has since been copied many times – unofficially.
Great ideas always get copied.
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