Author: Cameron Booth

What I’m Up To and the Future of the Blog

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My Transit Maps

Hi, everyone – it’s been a while! Quite a few people have written in lately wondering why I haven’t updated the blog in a while, so I thought I should address that. Firstly, for those that were concerned something was wrong, I’d like to reassure you that I’m a-okay and everything is fine. I’ve just been engrossed in a new project, and as a result, the blog has gone into a bit of a hiatus […]

Official Map: C-TRAN Bus Network, Vancouver, Washington, October 2023

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Official Maps

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Transit Maps has never taken a look at the map for Portland’s northern neighbour, the (original) Vancouver. With the recent addition of their second “The Vine” BRT route along Mill Plain Boulevard, now seems like a good time. At first glance, it seems to be a pretty solid map with some nicely simplified geography and routes clearly delineated. To my eyes, it seems to take some design cues from Spokane’s celebrated bus […]

Historical Map: Lines of the Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway, 1927

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Historical Maps

Here’s a fascinating map of streetcar lines in Omaha, Nebraska in 1927, beautifully hand drawn on top of a pre-printed single colour map of the area produced by the City’s engineering department. Not only does the map show the extent of all the streetcar lines (with 64.6 miles of track), but also colour-codes them to show which predecessor company originally laid down the tracks. The original Omaha Horse Railway Company, founded in 1867, is represented […]

Historical Map: San Joaquin County, California, c. 1910

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Historical Maps

Here’s a beautiful old illustrative map – this is from a prospectus advertising the benefits of settling in San Joaquin County, California in 1910. Part of depicting this as a desirable place to live and do business is showing the multitude of modern railway lines – including several electric interurbans – almost all of which seem to converge upon Stockton, neatly in the middle of the map. This being an advertising tool, the situation shown […]

Submission – Official Map: Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Map at Bergenline Avenue Station

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Official Maps

Submitted by Kara, who says: At the (extremely cool) Bergenline Avenue station, [my partner and I] stumbled across this official map that I’d never seen before, depicting both the HBLR and the PATH! It was actually all over that station, and it’s definitely a relatively old map, because we also found a slightly different version (that matched the usual map by depicting the weekday-only line with a dashed stroke) that was dated to 2015. I […]

Unofficial Map: High-Speed Rail of France, 2023 by Lars’ Transport Maps

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Unofficial Maps

Well, this is just beautiful. Having made my own diagram on the same subject matter way, way back in 2011, I think I’m qualified to say that this is a rousing success. The maps have some similarities – routes are colour-coded either by their Paris origin station or operator (Yellow for Eurostar, burgundy for Thalys, Pink for the low-cost Ouigo service, etc.), and the Paris stations are the undeniable focus point of the map. But […]

Historical Map: Sydney Railway Layout, 1953

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Historical Maps

Unearthed on Twitter (It’ll always be Twitter to me, no matter what Elon says) by @crossing_lights, this is quite an extraordinary find. Long-time readers may have seen the 1939 version of this diagram (and the digital recreation that I made). Here’s the thing: the general consensus has always been that this was a one-off attempt at something in the style of H.C. Beck’s newfangled London Underground diagram. I seem to recall that one theory even […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: Brussels S-Train by Elliot H

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Unofficial Maps

Submitted by Elliot, who says: I’ve come across this blog a couple of months ago, and have been lurking ever since. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at designing a trasit diagram, and having gotten some free time, I decided to redesign the S-Train diagram for Brussels. So here it is, my very first finished(ish) transit diagram. Transit Maps says: A great first effort here from Elliot! I’d say that its arguably more successful […]

Project: My UTA Rail and BRT Design Exploration

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My Transit Maps, Unofficial Maps

I teased this in yesterday’s review of the new official UTA diagram, so here’s my exploration of a few design ideas for an alternative version. As always with this type of project, I look for ways to approach the design problems for the diagram that are intentionally different to the official one. We already know what those solutions look like, so I like to explore the untested and see what happens. Some things work really […]