5

I need public transport maps for all cities in the world (for reuse in an open travel guide).

Requirements:

  • For use by tourists, typically the kind of map you would print and carry around to quickly find out what lines and changes lead you to your destination
  • Details of streets are not needed, but major features (like rivers or famous landmarks) are OK
  • Train, metro/subway, light rail should be shown
  • Bus lines not needed if that would make the map too crowded
  • Stylised map prefered, no need for geographical accuracy
  • Reusable in Wikipedia: Either CC-BY-SA, CC-BY, public domain (official maps are most often not re-usable)
  • Preferably as SVG
  • The authority maintaining the repository should have the goal of having up-to-date maps for the whole world, not just for a particular city or country. Bonus for stylistic consistency across all maps.

This transport maps repository would be acceptable, but unfortunately it is not open.

Nicolas Raoul
  • 8,426
  • 5
  • 28
  • 61
  • 3
    Because many transit maps are stylized (eg, normalizing distances between stops), they might be considered 'works of art' and thus copyrightable ... so beware of using maps that are just copies of official transit maps if the transit authority doesn't release it under an open license. – Joe Mar 23 '15 at 18:04
  • I have removed all of the comments that were not directly related to the content of this article, because they added a lot of noise. There's always Open Data meta and our chat room for further discussion. – Patrick Hoefler Apr 02 '15 at 09:41

2 Answers2

5

The OpenStreetMap.org website has a "Transport Map" layer:

enter image description here

It's not great. In particular, tram stops are far too prominent (for the city of Melbourne anyway).

You could conceivably make a better style, using openstreetmap data, and a tool like Mapbox Studio.

You didn't really make it clear whether you want a geographically accurate or a stylised map (like a subwap map). The latter can only be made by hand, as far as I'm aware.

Steve Bennett
  • 850
  • 5
  • 12
  • +1 OSM has a lot of public transport data, even though it is not exhaustive. Sorry for my question being ambiguous, stylised maps preferred but geographic is better than nothing :-) – Nicolas Raoul Mar 25 '15 at 05:04
4

Wikimedia Commons has a repository of public transport maps:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_transport_maps

The maps are available under various license, but are at least compatible with either the CC-BY-SA license or the GFDL license.

Samples:

map map map

Drawbacks:

  • Most of them are not SVG
  • Not all cities are covered
  • As you can see, the maps do not try to be coherent in style with each other

Suggestions for any better repository would be highly appreciated.

Nicolas Raoul
  • 8,426
  • 5
  • 28
  • 61