It’s no secret that Pittsburgh likes to be No. 1, and it is again as a local graphic design team has won a coveted international award for most intelligible subway map. This is the first year Pittsburgh has entered and it reportedly won by a mile, with Seoul a distant second and five-time champion Tokyo having to settle for third place.
World-class architect and contest judge Stelios Papastathopoulos said there was something about the Pittsburgh entry he found utterly compelling.
“I’ve never been to Pittsburgh but after looking at this map I felt at one with your subway system in a way I’ve never felt with any other subterranean transportation network.”
He credits the strength of Pittsburgh’s graphic design community for being able to render a subway system with such clarity.
“It must be something in the water.”
The contest is only for true subway systems, so above grade stations are excluded. Mayor Dan Peduto was ecstatic that Pittsburgh prevailed against traditional subway map design heavyweights like New York, London, Paris and Beijing.
“First the Stanley Cup and now this. Truly this is turning into a banner year for us.”
We don’t have a subway, our city planners made a huge mistake in never building one when we could have afforded it. So, I don’t know what this article is going on about. We have an extremely simplistic overhead eclectic rail which goes underground for a few stops and then out to the south hills but that’s it.
I didn’t realize they had a subway. I visited last Oct but was unaware of this. Maybe because it is a “sub” way and was underground so I did not see it. I wish they had posted the complete map of the system so I know where it is if I ever get back to the city. Things have changed there in the 30 years I left.