All posts filed under: Unofficial Maps

Submission – Unofficial Map: St. Petersburg Metro, Russia by “Kilo”

July 10, 2015
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Submitted by the author, who says: So, for a high school art project, I decided to make a system map for the St. Petersburg Metro. I spent about a half-month studying the system and the stations, getting some Russian friends to translate the station names, and prototyping the pipes in Inkscape (didn’t have Illustrator), eventually coming up with this design. Now that I’m in college and in the process of trying to apply for a […]

GIF – Expansion of the Shanghai Metro, 1994-2014

July 6, 2015
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Wow. From nothing in 1993 to 14 lines, 338 stations and 548km (341 miles) of track – the longest rapid transit system by route length in the world – in 2015. A mere 8 million people use the system on an average weekday. Of interest is the massive expansion in the years leading up to the 2010 Shanghai Wold Expo. See also this 1939 tram and trolleybus map of Shanghai’s International Settlement.  Source: Wikimedia Commons/user: […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: MARC Commuter Rail Network by Peter Dovak

July 5, 2015
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Submitted by the prolific Peter, who says: Like you, I was disappointed with the official MARC system map, but recently I stumbled on a concept while working on another project, so I had a go at turning it into a standalone map. Apologies for spamming your submissions box, but I really like how it turned out and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts! Transit Maps says: Peter, you can spam my submissions box all […]

Unofficial/Future Map: Denver RTD Rail Transit by Theo Ditsek

June 29, 2015
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Having just complained about how depressingly average the new official Denver RTD rail map is (June 2015, 1.5 stars), it’s rather wonderful to see an unofficial map that raises the bar as much as this one by Theo Ditsek. Unlike the real map, this one has a pleasingly compact shape, compressing the outer reaches of the map while expanding the central part. It’s a classic diagrammatic transit map device, but it’s employed particularly well here, […]

Submission – River Rail Streetcar, Little Rock, Arkansas by Peter Dovak

June 28, 2015
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Submitted by Peter, who says: Ages ago, after you posted a tutorial on highway interchanges on your McKinney Ave streetcar map, I was inspired to try and practice the technique on what ended up being a very very similar project–definitely too similar to take any credit for. I left it incomplete for so long because it was just uncomfortably reminiscent of your map to finish, but for the sake of completion and appreciation for the […]

Unofficial Map: Boston MBTA by the American Automobile Association (AAA), c. 2008

June 23, 2015
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Sent my way by Andy Woodruff, this map is all kinds of wrong. As it’s from around 2008, it shows an older configuration of the Silver Line routes, with an SL3 route going to City Point. However, the underlying base map hasn’t been adjusted to accommodate the diagram, so SL2 and SL3 appear to take you to destinations deep in the outer reaches of Boston Harbor, while Kendall/MIT is located in the middle of the […]

Visualization: Amtrak Ridership Map for Fortune.com

June 10, 2015
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I’m kind of loving this elegantly simple two-colour Amtrak ridership map produced for an article on Fortune.com. It certainly shows the dominance of the Northeast Corridor in terms of ridership!  Cartographically speaking, I really like the unusual “perspective” projection, which – when combined with some lovely and subtle relief shading – certainly gives the impression of looking down from high above the continent. The labelling of the routes perhaps doesn’t quite live up to the […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: Bus Routes of Luxembourg City by Jug Cerovic

June 2, 2015
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Submitted by Jug (who you may remember for his INAT series of standardised transit maps), who says: Hi Cameron, 3 weeks ago you posted an article about the Luxembourg bus map (May 2015, 1 star). I was curious to see if that Gordian Knot could be disentangled and started working on it. Anyway when I succeeded and managed to understand how the system actually works I couldn’t help but redesign it altogether. You can see the […]

Unofficial Map: St. Petersburg Metro by Art Lebedev Studio

June 1, 2015
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From the studio that brought us the new official Moscow Metro map, here’s a map of the St. Petersburg Metro that they’ve developed under their own initiative – with an eye on making it the official map by the time the 2018 FIFA World Cup rolls around. It’s got all the hallmarks of the Moscow map – great attention to detail, lovely use of colour and iconography, a useful and well-applied underlying grid (see second […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: Passenger Rail Services of Wales by James Jackson

May 18, 2015
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Submitted by James, who says: While I’ve been designing imaginary transit maps, and re-imagining existing transit maps, for a few years, I’ve been doing it on Illustrator. I’ve drawn the Welsh rail franchise a number of times, but I set myself a few challenges this time round. I wanted to make it clearly bilingual. Here in Wales we’re used to seeking out our respective languages on signs and official documents, but official versions of the […]