The railway map of Japan provided in the app “World Transit Maps” has been revamped, evolving into a more practical maps that makes it easier to find stations and routes at any scale.
Improving design is a top priority
Japan railway map has adopted the “tile format (v2)” in November 2024, with a layout that is faithful to the actual geography, making it easier to understand the distance and direction between stations.
On the other hand, when the map was zoomed out, some tracks and stations disappeared due to display restrictions. In response to this matter, we received harsh criticism such as “Too much is omitted when zooming out” and “It cannot be used as a route map.”
We took this seriously and realized that making the route map itself more appealing would lead to improved quality for the app. While temporarily putting on hold various plans for new features, the design team made the most of their resources to work on improving the map’s appearance.
The number of stations displayed increased by up to 30%
For the new transit maps, we have completely revised the placement of design elements, such as the line width and overlap of tracks, the size of the circles indicating stations, and the size and thickness of text fonts.
In pursuit of the optimal balance that does not impair readability, we have succeeded in minimizing the number of stations omitted when zoomed out. As a result, the number of stations displayed on the reduced map has increased by approximately 10% overall, and by approximately 25 to 30% in major metropolitan areas.
In the previous version of the map, when zooming out on parallel lines such as the “Keihin-Tohoku Line” and the “Tokaido Line,” one of the lines would be hidden.. After the improvement, the process of zooming out was improved, and both lines are now visible at small scales, overlapping each other.
In addition, improvements have been made so that routes for subways, trams and ferry routes, which were previously not shown on reduced-size maps, can be viewed at all scales.
No special operations are required to display the new design route maps. However, due to device cache, the old design may be displayed temporarily. Also, for areas that are saved in the “offline maps”, if you delete them from the list and then view them, they will switch to the new design.
![[Before improvement] When the map is zoomed out, parallel lines, metro tracks, and many station names disappear.](https://en.wtmap.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/02/MapDesignRenewalBefore.png)
![[After improvement] All tracks are still displayed even when zoomed out, and the number of station names displayed has increased significantly](https://en.wtmap.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/02/MapDesignRenewalAfter.png)
Install
Supported Versions
To use the above, update your app “World Transit Maps” to version 8.3.0 or higher (for both Android and iOS).
Countries and regions where maps are provided in the app “World Transit Maps”
Asia
- Japan (v2)
- South Korea
- Taiwan (v1)
- Hong Kong (v1)
- Macau (v1)
- Thailand
- Malaysia
- Singapore
Europe
- United Kingdom
- France
North America
- United States
*(v1) supports “tile method (v1)”, (v2) “tile method (v2)”, and no mark “download method”.