Correct answer: 2011. Congrats to DavidDoesLemmy for getting it! If anybody’s curious about the unredacted map, I’ve posted it here.
I blurred out the issuance date for obvious reasons, but can anybody determine the approximate date from the map design and routes?
Found it in the info book for the hotel I’m currently staying at and thought it might make a good game!
I was only a few years old at the time and living closer to Adelaide than Melbourne, so I don’t know for sure, but as far as I can find I don’t think it did.
I found a random blog post from may 2011 (a week after the map was published) where somebody compared the old map to the new map. The old map was just yellow, the new map introduced colours. Perhaps you’re getting confused with the yellow only map, or maybe there were some places which had a coloured map before 2011?
https://web.archive.org/web/20141009101352/https://www.insanityworks.org/randomtangent/2011/5/4/new-melbourne-tram-network-map.html
Edit: further digging seems to show it was quite a big affair when they rolled our coloured maps, they even repainted trams to advertise the new coloured routes: https://web.archive.org/web/20120216204047/https://yarratrams.com.au/media-centre/news/articles/2011/melbourne’s-new-tram-network-map-revealed
Ahh yeah, I do remember them introducing colours to the maps. No changes to the routes.