Month: July 2017

Historical Map: A Progress Report on the Interstate Highway System, 1961

July 27, 2017
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A great old map on a subject matter very dear to my heart – the Interstate Highway System. Produced in 1961 by the Caterpillar Tractor Company, who stood to gain a great deal in the construction work required to complete the network, it shows the proposed completed network in white, sections under construction with blue dashes, and – somewhat counter-intuitively – sections that are open to traffic in red. It’s immediately apparent how little of […]

Historical Map: Nuclear Weapons Complex Transportation Routes, 1988

July 27, 2017
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Here’s an unusual use of transit map design principles – a map produced by the Radioactive Waste Campaign in 1988 of the routes used to transport nuclear materials and waste around the United States. This diagrammatic approach actually works very well here – as the legend to the map says: The origin and destination of these routes are well known. However, because of government secrecy, the exact path of these routes is conjectured. Without the […]

Fantasy Map: Major Rivers of the United States by Theodore Rindos

July 24, 2017
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The early history of the United States is filled with explorers and pioneers making use of rivers as “rapid transit” to quickly travel through otherwise inhospitable or unknown lands. So it makes sense that someone would attempt to show this network in the simplified form of a subway map, and here is one such example by Theo Rindos. Of course, such a map instantly puts me in mind of Daniel Huffman’s superb series of river/subway maps, […]

Submission – Illustrated map of Qingdao Metro’s Line 3, China

July 19, 2017
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Submitted by Bailey, who says: Here’s a map from of the Qingdao Metro for Line 3 – quite an interesting, stylistic one. For all the effort that went into the (quite brilliant) artwork, I’m surprised the station names are entirely unreadable near the city center. Transit Maps says: Despite the name, Line 3 is actually the first Metro line constructed in Qingdao, opening in two stages from 2015. In typical Chinese style, it’ll be joined […]

Historical Map: Manchester Ship Canal, England, c. 1928?

July 18, 2017
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Not a “traditional” transit map, but it does show an important transportation network in a simplified strip map form, so that’s good enough for me!  This absolutely gorgeous two-colour map straightens out all the kinks in the eponymous canal, presenting it as a dead straight line from one end to the other. The variable scale is indicated by the mile markers on either side of the map: the less interesting parts of the canal get […]