All posts filed under: Unofficial Maps

Unofficial Map: Portland MAX Light Rail – Super Mario 3 Style

March 29, 2013
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Mash-Up Maps, Popular Culture, Unofficial Maps
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Here’s the latest “Mario Map” from the incredibly prolific Dave Delisle (seriously, how much cool stuff can one guy pump out?). This one is of my home town of Portland, Oregon, and Dave actually enlisted my help in checking the accuracy of the route layouts and the spelling of the station names. Considering the ridiculous length of some of the station names in the system and the limitations of the 8-bit art style, Dave’s done […]

All Aboard the Orient Express!

March 25, 2013
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Here’s an absolutely charming little map found on the inside of a French model train set box lid. I don’t have a definitive date for this, but it does have a lovely retro feel to it. The map itself isn’t much help, as it’s pretty much a work of fiction: a weird combination of different parts of the Orient Express’s historical routes (see this diagram on Wikipedia) and a branch to Warsaw via Prague that […]

Submission – Unofficial Historical Map: Los Angeles Pacific Electric Railway Diagram, 1917 by Sam Huddy

March 18, 2013
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Drawn and submitted by Sam, who says: Pacific Electric: Challenge Accepted! Cameron, When I read your disappointment on the uselessness of that beautiful map of the Pacific Electric at its peak in 1917 (not 1920), I wondered if it was possible to create a simplified London Underground-style map. With over a hundred routes it seemed impossible, but after several attempts, this was my end result. Any further information is on the map itself. Transit Maps […]

Comparison of Beijing Subway – 1984 and 2013

March 14, 2013
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Historical Maps, Unofficial Maps
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I absolutely love this now-and-then snapshot of what is now the busiest subway system in the world. The picture on the left is from the first edition of Lonely Planet’s guide to China in 1984; the one on the right is from the 13th edition, released this year. That’s only a 29 year gap – quite astounding! Source: two tweets from Daniel McCrohan, a writer for Lonely Planet’s China and Beijing guides. 1984 and 2013.

Unofficial Map: Crosscut’s Seattle Link Light Rail Strip Map

February 20, 2013
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Crosscut, a non-profit news website centered on Washington State’s Puget Sound Region, has been talking about Link light rail’s signage for a while now. Their point about the minimal directional signage at SeaTac Airport to guide you to the train is valid, but their problem with Link’s own in-car strip map is less well founded. They recently called for new designs as part of a competition, but unfortunately didn’t receive any. So they took it […]

The Almost Official Map: Ilya Birman’s Moscow Metro Map

February 20, 2013
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I’ve seen a lot of tweets recently linking to the design process page for Art Lebedev’s new official Moscow Metro map (Transit Maps wrote about this page way back on February 4th). However, I haven’t seen as much attention being paid to the second-place winning map, designed by Ilya Birman. He also has a design process page for his map, and it’s just as fascinating as the Lebedev one. He discusses the difficulty of having […]

Unofficial Map: “Barcelona Tourist Guide” Metro Map

February 12, 2013
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As you should know, official transit maps are copyrighted materials. Commercial reproduction of the map by third parties normally requires permission and payment of a licence fee – often a hefty one. A lot of people don’t want to pay that fee, so they design their own version of the map instead. This can result in maps that are eerily similar to the official one, nicely designed but different maps, or horrendous monstrosities. Guess which […]

Hand Drawn-Map of Japanese Rail System by Wyton Chu

February 7, 2013
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Okay, this is nothing short of amazing. Drawing a complex transit system map is hard enough, even with computers and the precise drawing/drafting tools they offer. To draw something like this by hand and have it look so clean and accurate beggars belief. Love love love. Click through to view a whole set of images of this remarkable piece on Flickr. Source: Flickr/chuwasg

Unofficial Map: San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit, 2011

February 2, 2013
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This post comes about because of an email from an anonymous follower, who says: “Any idea if a unified San Francisco transit map exists somewhere out there, perhaps a la the Portland one? SF has to have one of the more confusing transit systems in the country, what with Caltrain + BART + Muni + cable cars + the F line.” As it happens, there are plenty of unofficial maps showing both just the City […]

Video: Making of a London Underground String Map by Dan Coffey

January 31, 2013
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Feeling creative? Why not make a string art replica of your favourite subway system as shown in this awesome video? The pro tip is definitely the taping down of the actual map before putting in the nails for guaranteed fidelity to the real thing. Source: Dan Coffey/Vimeo