Student puts buses on the map
DUNEDIN student Sam van der Weerden thought the city’s bus map was hard to decipher — so he decided to design his own.
The University of Otago maths student and cartography enthusiast spent a year of his spare time redesigning the Otago Regional Council’s bus map.
‘‘I just like doing these sorts of maps and there’s so much wrong with the current map. I decided to try and design something a bit more useful.’’
The council’s map was useful only for people familiar with the bus routes and did not include notable landmarks, such as the Roslyn Village or the Town Belt, he said.
Selftaught, Mr van der Weerden sought advice for his map from the amateur cartography community on the internet.
‘‘There’s a lot of good advice on there so I just started sketching out a plan of the Dunedin system and worked on it when I could.’’
It is not just the city’s present day public transport he is interested in. He has also created a redesigned layout of Dunedin’s former tramway system.
On social media people have praised his map and it has even caught the eye of the council.
Council support services manager Gerard Collings was impressed.
‘‘We know that our current Dunedin route map has plenty of room for improvement and we’ve been working on a new design that will be published when the bus hub goes into service,’’ Mr Collings said.
A printed map was just one way bus users accessed information about the city’s bus services and increasingly, the council expected people to be use online sources first, he said.
Feedback on the current map, as well as from the map created for the new service in Queenstown, would be used to shape Dunedin’s new map.