Photo: Lost in Berlin
Heh. Love the expression on his face. Source: TGKW/Flickr
Author: Cameron Booth
Historical Map: Japanese Match Box Cover, date unknown (1920s?)
Beautiful vintage match box cover with a little map showing the location of the “Fuji Restaurant” in Hiroshima relative to the nearby streetcar line. Source: maraid/Flickr
Official Map: Port Authority of Allegheny County Full System Map, 2013
While researching yesterday’s post about Pittsburgh’s light rail map, I came across this, the full system map – showing light rail, BRT (busways) and buses – produced by the Port Authority of Allegheny County and available on their website. That’s right: the map image has been sliced up into multiple .png files and placed into an HTML table. A table with a staggering fifty-one separate cells. It’s like a time warp back to 1996 or […]
Submission – Official Map: Pittsburgh Light Rail System Map, 2013
Submitted by Dan Daly, who says: Here is the Pittsburgh light rail map. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. In my opinion it is kinda useless not because of it’s design but because it only covers the light rail. Very little of the urban part of the city is actually covered in this map. If the busways were fully included with station names and the links to the T stops it would […]
Historical Map: San Francisco Muni Transit Routes, 1970
For a long period of time, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, (commonly shortened to just “Muni”) used pretty much exactly the same map in their brochures. It seems that each year, they’d simply make any amendments required – addition of new routes, deletion of old ones, etc. – and then reprint the brochure/map in a new colour combination. The earliest example I can find, from 1952, uses a sombre two-color palette of black and red, […]
Great Big Transit Map: Barcelona Edition
Simply enormous map at the Estació de Barcelona-Sants, showing both the Metro and commuter rail networks. It’s made up of twenty-eight square screens, each of which looks pretty big in their own right! Source: fredajude/Flickr – link no longer active
Submission: New Washington, DC Metro Strip Map at Pentagon City
Submitted by Peter Dovak, who says: Spotted a new schematic installed at Pentagon City Metro station in Washington this week. I’m not sure if this is experimental or what, but I’ve never seen such detailed line info at a station here before. Not a huge fan of the execution, though, the labels are awful skewed! Transit Maps says: In the limited space allowed here, angled station labels are pretty much the only workable option. It’s […]
Unofficial Map: Minimalist Glasgow Subway by Verboten Creative
A system as simple as Glasgow’s (one loop of track with a mere 15 stations) lends itself well to a minimalist design approach. Indeed, the current official map is pretty darn simple itself. However, this neat little two-colour poster from Glasgow-based creative agency, Verboten, definitely takes a very different approach to that minimalism. It eschews any attempt at geography, dispensing with the River Clyde completely (although the gaps between the groups of stations give away its […]
Historical Map: Berlin BGV Map Detail, 1931
Lovely informational clarity in this detail from a beautiful 1931 map of Berlins transit – tram, bus and U-Bahn. Of particular note is how all labelling that is not directly related to the transit routes is rendered in a visually pleasing and subordinate light grey. Source: IsarSteve – link no longer active
Historical Poster: London Transport Jubilee Line Opening, 1979
Okay, here’s just one more Tube-map themed poster (for now). This one’s a little more contemporary than the others I’ve featured recently, dating from early 1979. The cheerful little Tube train – which looks like a model that’s been photographed, rather than an illustration – is actually a pretty reasonable stand-in for the geographical layout of the new line, which then ran from Stanmore to a new Charing Cross station (later extensions mean that the […]