Passers-by looking at a pre-H.C. Beck Underground map outside Strand station in 1937. At a glance, it looks like the Fred Stingemore map, but expanded to show the whole system (the pocket card only showed central London). Parkland also seems to have been added – the large dark blotches dotted all around the map. Source: Londonist.com
In the late 1960s, Chicago actually seriously considered knocking down the elevated parts of the “L” and replacing it all with a modern subway network. The plan originally called for multiple lines, but these got whittled down over the years for a variety of reasons – lack of funding being one of the major ones. By 1977, all that remained on the table was the Franklin Street Subway, shown in red in the handsome illustrated […]
Submitted by Ryan VanSickle and Christian Hurst. Ryan says: I’d like to submit the official proposed BaltimoreLINK system map. In addition to its frequency mapping and radial design (something I haven’t seen much in official maps from transit agencies), it’s got a few features that indicate a sense of humor – monsters in Chesapeake Bay, and Lil’ Linky the advice bus. There’s no elaborate compass rose to match the tallship and giant octopus, though. The […]
Submitted by thesandpeople100, who says: Cutaway diagram of the Paris Metro’s Opera station. I came across this working on a project for a hypothetical addition to Palais Garnier but couldn’t find any information on its origin. Any ideas? Transit Maps says: A reverse image search on Google found the answer to this pretty quickly: this beautiful cutaway appeared in the July 1910 issue of Popular Mechanics. Unfortunately, this month isn’t available in Google Books’ archive of […]
Submitted by Dan Reed, who says: Tysons Corner, Virginia is the archetypal suburban edge city and as traffic becomes unbearable, officials are hustling to get people on transit, particularly the new Silver Line with four local stops. The owners of Tysons Corner Center, one of the nation’s biggest malls and a tourist attraction in its own right, seem to have made this “spider map” showing all of the bus and rail service to and from […]
Submitted by Voystok, who says: Here’s my fantasy map for the non-existent rapid transit system of Split, Croatia! I made this as a practice project in Illustrator as I’m preparing a portfolio for a college application. The geography is largely distorted and the city lines (M1 and M2) are very disproportionate to the other lines (M3 and M4) which are suburban. I hope one day this city will have a transit system like this. Transit […]
A lovely old map showing Mexico City’s extensive tram network in 1910. Solid red lines are electric street-running trams, ticked red lines are electric trams on exclusive right-of-way, while green lines are humble mule-pulled trams… of which there are still quite a number. In fact, mule-pulled trams continued to be used in Mexico City up until the 1930s. Electric substations, mule stables, carbarns and other company properties are also highlighted on the map. Streetcars hung […]
Submitted by Pierre, who says: I’d like to suggest this map that I immediately found particularly bad designed. It represents the bus network in a small French region, Puy-de-Dôme. Besides the fact the number of the lines are very hard to read, I find quite difficult to follow each line and the center looks totally messy. Transit Maps says: Pierre is right on the mark with his summary of this map… it’s really quite dreadful […]
A visual exploration of BART ridership throughout a typical workday. Watching the video below is fun, but the actual tool – made with HTML/CSS, JS, .d3.js, Sketch and BART ridership data – is even better. Click here to view it. After you’ve watched it through to about 2pm, some controls will appear down the bottom left to change the speed of the simulation, and also switch between “inbound” and “outbound” trains (which I think should be labeled […]
