A beautiful old map showing scheduled morning peak service (both actual service and absolute maximum capacity) into Manhattan below 60th Street. The thicker the lines, the greater the service – much like modern service frequency maps! Being 1954, the subway is still divided into its three separately run divisions: BMT (Yellow), IRT (Blue) and IND (Red). Source: Ward Maps’ Facebook Page
What a fantastic photo! More than anything, it illustrates how people actually use maps in real life. Now that a destination has been reached via the Tube, a street map is required for the next stage of the journey. There’s some serious study of that map going on here! Also, look at the Tube map on the wall behind our geographically-challenged subject. Charing Cross Road goes right past Leicester Square tube station, where I’m almost […]
A charming, if simplistic, map of commuter rail services offered by the Key System company. Some sources on the Internet date this to 1941: however, the prominent “Exposition Ferry from Ferry Bldg.” callout box would seem to link this map to the timeframe of the Golden Gate International Exposition held on Treasure Island between February 1939 and September 1940. These dates mean that the Bay Bridge, the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco and the transbay […]
A lovely above-door strip map from Portugal’s capital. By sacrificing geographical reality (only the Tagus River gives any sense of orientation), the three lines are able to be laid out for maximum clarity and legibility. The comprehensive legend has symbols for connections to the Metro, the private Fertagus commuter rail line to Setúbal, ferries, and buses. It even has a “camera” icon for stations with points of interest nearby, and a little “umbrella and beach […]
A very interesting early topological transit diagram from Istanbul. It’s tricky to date precisely: the best I can do is the range 1923–1939, based on the lines shown and the fact that the STM was dissolved at the latter date when transit in Istanbul was nationalised. It’s probably roughly contemporaneous with other early topological maps like George Dow’s work for the LNER in 1929, although I actually see this map being born out of necessity, rather […]
An interesting two-color bus map from 1975. Hot pink! Strangely, while the service area boundary is heavily squared off and stylised, the routes themselves are presented very accurately. Really not the most usable map, as the route numbers are very difficult to follow from end to end. The meaning behind the dotted route lines also doesn’t appear to be explained at all on the map, but may be elsewhere in the timetable book in which […]
I’ve featured a couple of dodecalinear maps recently (both for Amsterdam – here and here), but this future transit map for Austin and San Antonio has got ‘em covered. It’s a hexadecalinear map. That is, there are sixteen possible directions for a route line to head from any given point. Interestingly however, the angles between the route lines aren’t evenly arranged. Instead of 0 – 22.5 – 45 – 67.5 – 90 degree arrangement, this […]
Submitted by Alain Lemaire, who says: this map might interest you – in response to your blog post of Joan Zalacain’s Amsterdam tram map. It seems the 30/60 degree paradigm is indeed well suited to Amsterdam’s topological layout. Too bad this once official map is no longer in use today. Transit Maps says: Thanks to Alain for sending this beauty in! Simply put, this is lovely work. What I really like about this map is […]
A rather odd map of Lithuania on the wall at the Klaipeda inter-city bus terminal. Ostensibly, I guess it depicts the coach network, or even just the nation’s main highways, but it does seem odd to have a city – Alytus – marked on the map when there’s no apparent way to get there. There’s also a couple of interesting choices made for international destinations: Tallinn and Riga (the other Baltic state capitals) are fair […]
Another stunning panoramic painted rail map from the Alps of Switzerland – its very similar to this one of the Zentralbahn (Nov 2012, 4 stars), which can actually be seen on this map entering from the lower left and terminating at Interlaken. The map shows the railways around the Jungfrau mountain, operated by different companies, but marketed together as “Jungfrau – the Top of Europe”. The Jungfraujoch station sits almost three vertical kilometres higher than Interlaken, […]
