Historical Map: BART System Map and Planned Extensions, March 1, 1989

March 13, 2018
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Here’s a rather charming illustrated map showing the Bay Area’s BART commuter rail system as it looked in early 1989, plus a glimpse into the future as it was envisioned at the time. I particularly like the little details in this map – drawn by Art Richardson of BART’s “Documentation Division” back in 1983, it would seem – all the bridges are drawn accurately, and the skylines of San Francisco and Oakland are also well rendered. Look at the cute little Ferry Building and Transamerica Pyramid!

Some of it is quite familiar – the line to SFO (though San Bruno was named “Tanforan”) and the Warm Springs/Milpitas extension, for example – but some of it is far less so. A line from Walnut Creek directly down to West Dublin/Pleasanton? An extension past Richmond all the way to Crockett? Or continuing from Concord past Pittsburg out to East Antioch? BART were definitely dreaming big back in the late 1980s.

Our rating: Looks gorgeous, and a fascinating historical document to boot. Four stars!

Source: David Rumsey Map Collection

Submission – Official Map: Montreal Commuter Rail Map, 2018

March 12, 2018
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Submitted by Ruofan, who says:

Montreal’s transit agency recently redesigned its commuter rail map, and I think it looks awful compared to the old one! They’ve added so much clutter, by indicating literally every commuter bus line in the city (and even illustrating which segments of the lines run on bus lanes) and using thick, colourful lines for the metro. The downtown segment is almost unreadable!

Transit Maps says:

Yeah, I have to agree with Ruofan’s summary of this map… this is pretty terrible stuff. Generally, if an inset map doesn’t actually make anything clearer, then you have to question its inclusion. All this one seems to do is make the mess of the central area ever so slightly larger…

As usual with a geographical transit map that covers a large area, there’s a lot of empty space that could be better utilised by expanding the central area for clarity and compressing the outlying areas. As it is, I’m really not sure that the addition of the Metro and the (unnumbered) commuter bus lines actually adds any useable information to the map, just a lot of noise.

Our rating: Cluttered, messy and unattractive. 1 star. 

Source: RTM website (PDF link)

Historical Map: Sydney Tramways, 1921

February 23, 2018
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This is one of those maps where I’m not entirely sure if it’s the brainchild of a genius or the work of a madman. It’s an insanely detailed map-slash-diagram of tram routes in Sydney from 1921 by an unknown author that also attempts to indicate almost every major cross-street along the way. Intersections that are also designated as tram stops get a marker and increasingly larger labels to indicate their relative importance. Five different line styles attempt to make some sort of sense of where lines run between, but it’s all a bit messy and incoherent on the page. Throw in the main line railways and ferry routes, and this map is trying to do an awful lot of work.

The map is relatively geographically accurate in the city and in the eastern suburbs, but everything outside of that is crammed into increasingly small spaces, leading to everything from Ashfield westwards to Parramatta and Castle Hill being jammed into the first column of the map’s grid. Castle Hill also ends up looking like it’s roughly level with Gladesville, when it’s much further north in reality. All the edges of the map are like this, with everything jammed in however it will fit, causing massive distortions to river courses and the coastline.

Despite this, the rich detail of the map makes it fascinating. Of particular note is how divided the city is at this point in its history: no Harbour Bridge or Spit Bridge means travellers had to transfer from trams or trains to ferries to continue their journey at these points.

Our rating: A glorious mess, but an invaluable resource for anyone researching the history of trams in Sydney. I definitely recommend heading over to the National Library of Australia’s website and checking out the full high-res version of this one. Five stars!

Source: National Library of Australia

Future Map: Cascadia High-Speed Rail Network by Oran Viriyincy

February 14, 2018
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Created on behalf of a new advocacy group for true high-speed rail in the Pacific Northwest – the aptly named CascadiaRail – this is probably my favourite map of 2018 so far. It’s clear, beautiful, representative of the region, and is wonderfully aspirational – presenting a clear and exciting vision of a possible future.

I especially like that there’s no state or national borders shown at all: the region is instead defined by the natural geographical features that are such a part of its character: mountains, forested valleys, desert plains and mighty rivers. 

Each of the four major Cascades peaks shown are depicted accurately – Mount Hood looks exactly like Mount Hood, for example – and they also have an extra layer of hidden meaning. As Oran told me today, these four mountains – Mount Baker, Mount Olympus, Mount Rainier and Mount Hood – also lent their names to the original four Amtrak Cascades Talgo VI trainsets. I do love a nice bit of symbolism tying the past and future together.

Our rating: Yeah, I pretty much adore this. Four-and-a-half stars.

Further information about CascadiaRail and its mission can be found on their website.

Historical Map: Suburban Bus Routes of Sydney, 1961

February 13, 2018
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The map on the reverse side of the previously featured diagram of downtown Sydney bus routes, showing an overview of routes throughout the city. The map even comments on its own shortcomings to the bottom left , with a disclaimer that almost apologetically states that “This map is intended only as a guide to the bus services.”

Using the same colour-coding and ambiguous naming conventions as that diagram, the map is mainly notable for highlighting the fact that a vast majority of routes ran through downtown, with only a select few crosstown or “inter-suburban” routes (denoted by a dashed purple route line). A number of northern beaches services met with ferries at Manly, and these are shown as brown dashed lines.

Also of note is the abrupt western edge of government bus services, with nothing running further west than Lidcombe, Meadowbank/Top Ryde and Epping. Private bus companies took over further out than this: even in the 1980s, I caught a Harris Park Bus #165 from Epping station to my home further up the hill towards Carlingford.

Source: National Library of Australia

Historical Map: Location of City Bus Terminals, Sydney, 1961

February 4, 2018
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A map showing the main Sydney bus terminals and the routes which ran through them from December 1961. The route designations are an uncomfortable mix of streets the buses run along downtown (Pitt and Castlereagh Street Services) and eventual destinations (Northern Suburbs Services via the Harbour Bridge), which doesn’t really help to make the system user-friendly. The extensive legend below the map helps somewhat, but it’s all somewhat arcane. In practice, you remembered where the buses you always caught left from and went there – but woe betide if you ever had to catch an unfamiliar bus from a different terminal!  

The actual signs at bus stops – see the second image – weren’t much help either, filled with many tiny little route numbers and descriptions. I hazily remember signs like these at the Eddy Avenue stop near Central Station in the late 1980s or early 1990s, so they were a mainstay of bus wayfinding in Sydney for decades.

The map itself is at least clearly drawn and overcomes some of the drawbacks of the overly-complex downtown routing because of that. The illustrations of buildings are quite charming, and the little “umbrella and bag” icon for the lost property department locations is really quite superb.

The reverse of this map shows an overview of the whole Sydney bus network, which I’ve now posted here.

Source: National Library of Australia

Submission – Fantasy Map: Los Angeles Rapid Transit – the “Tom Bradley” System by Julian

January 28, 2018
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Submitted by Julian, who says:

In the post-interurban era of Los Angeles, various proposals for a reinstatement of rail service surfaced from time to time in the political discourse. Starting in the early 60s, the plans often sought to replicate the model of the Bay Area Rapid Transit or Atlanta’s MARTA heavy rail systems. By the late 70s, the foremost proponents and planners of such a system were the then-dominant Southern California Rapid Transit District and LA mayor Tom Bradley. However a competing movement emerged that sought to more closely and cheaply reinstitute the Pacific Electric interurban system- the “new red cars”- through San Diego-style light rail technology. The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, a parallel transit planning agency convened in 1977, championed this alternative. Each agency researched and planned their own respective “starter lines”- SCRTD a route from Downtown LA to North Hollywood, LACTC one from LA to Long Beach – independently of each other. In 1980, Proposition A, a tax proposal, was put on the ballot to allocate funding to both agencies, but the map presented to voters was almost solely based on SCRTD plans, as indicated by the title “rail rapid transit system.”

In the end, both ideas won out and in 1993 light rail and heavy rail were unified to form the present-day LACMTA, relegating the RTD to history, and today the two modes continue to expand side by side. But the above map imagines a scenario where neither the LACTC nor light rail concept gained traction, and the RTD was enabled with sufficient funds to build out the proposed countywide heavy rail network, and imagines a network of routes following those on the Measure A “rail rapid transit system” diagram.

Transit Maps says:

This is a fun little “what if” map here from Julian – imagining an alternative development of rail transit in Los Angeles County to what we have now. His concept matches the corridors defined in the Proposition A map he references above, though I’m imagining that the proposed routes in his map are of his own devising.

The map is both familiar and strange, with some segments that echo reality, others that take very different routes and others that are still a long way from being built (the Sepulveda Pass, in particular). Stylistically, I’m really liking the 1970s look: all fat, chunky lines and big, round station markers. The drab olive colour of the ocean really adds to this as well. The use of the old SCRTD logo is a nice touch as well.

Historical Map: Map of Kyoto and Vicinity, 1920

January 27, 2018
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Here’s a lovely old map of Kyoto, issued by the Miyako Hotel in 1920 for the benefit of its guests. The hotel is still there almost 100 years later, now owned by the Westin Group. The interurban streetcar to Otsu that once ran down the middle of the street in front of the hotel was abandoned in 1997, replaced by the underground Tōzai Line of the Kyoto Municipal Subway.

The electric streetcars are displayed prominently on the map in red, but the five separate operating companies are represented by different arrows next to the line. An arrow with a solid black circle at its tail represents a line of the Kyoto Municipal Electric Tram Company, for example. Insets around the main map show the routes of interurban streetcars to neighbouring towns.

Designwise, I do like the delicate colour palette: all muted browns, beiges and sea greens. While some of this is due to the yellowing of old paper, I find the whole effect very pleasing and subtle.

Source: National Library of Australia

Historical Map: New South Wales By Train Information Wheel, 1938

January 23, 2018
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I’m loving this little promotional piece produced by the New South Wales Railway Department in 1938. The user would rotate the outer ring so that a city’s name would line up with the red arrow, thus revealing various facts about that place, including which railway line it was located on and how far from Sydney it was by rail. Here, Canberra’s statistics are shown. A lovely little piece of railway ephemera.

Source: National Library of Australia