A map from on what looks like a presentation board showing the mid-1970s version of the Chicago Central Area Transit Plan. Initially planned as a whole new system of subway lines to entirely replace the Loop in downtown Chicago in the late 1960s, rising costs caused the program to be split into parts: the “Core Plan” seen here, with the balance to be built later. As it happened, none of it was ever actually constructed.

The three components of the “Core Plan” — the Franklin Street Subway (red), the Monroe Street Distributor (blue) and a small linking section of the Randolph Line (green) — were chosen because they could be built with a minimum of disruption and provided the best integration with the existing system.

The map itself has a nice clean architectural feeling to it, perfectly suited to the presentation format it was intended for. One odd bit of 1970s styling is the use of lower case for the extant line names — “dan ryan”, “douglas”, etc.

See also: this great panoramic map from 1977 when the Franklin Line was the last surviving part of the plan, and this article over at Chicago-L.org outlining the entire sorry history of the project.

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