New Melbourne fares brochure

[Chris Brownbill <cbrnbill@enternet.com.au>]

The new fares brochure for Melbourne contains a redesigned map of the tram
network and it is amazingly poor.  It has some really bad design priciples and
contains some bizarre errors.

Firstly, only three colours are used to discriminate the routes - Blue for all
Yarra Trams routes, and Red and Red/Orange for Swanston Trams routes.  Its hard
to disriminate the Red/Orange from the Orange, so why in hell they chose such
similar colours beats me.   Whilst most routes are shown as solid lines, the
city circle is a sparsely dotted line and doesn't really register as a tram
route at all.  The lines are at unnecessarily crazy angles which make it hard to
read.  There are some topological errors which just beggar belief - such as the
Route 96 light rail line is shown crossing to the East of Clarendon Street
before reaching Park Street, and it looks like it runs from Port Melbourne to St
Kilda rather than Melbourne to St Kilda, The northern terminii of routes 78/79,
69 and 72 are shown as being a long way South of Victoria Street / Whitehorse
Road and a casual reader would think there is no connection possible there.  The
Southern end of Route 78 appears to be at Carlisle Street rather than Brighton
Road.  The Southern end of routes 69 and 79 appears to be shown turning South
into Acland Street to terminate at the same place as 16 and 96 (although its
hard to tell because of the similarity in route colours.  Finally, the treatment
of the Yarra river is strange - it appears to spring forth from a source
somewhere in Toorak, and flows through the city and then stops abrubtly short of
the bay somewhere near Fishermans Bend.  Even better than that though - the
river flows over the top of St Kilda Rd, Queensbridge St and Clarendon Streets
and the trams routes thereon.   Oh and whilst it does show Docklands and the 86
extension, it locates the football stadium a long way from Spencer Street
station, and it shows Lonsdale, Bourke and Collins Streets extending westwards
over the top of the Station - which they do not do.

What a piss-poor excuse for a map.  It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. 
This is going to cause confusion for potential travellers and doesn't do justice
to Melbourne's network.