Submitted by James, who says:

This is a dream/concept I have for light rail transit in the Harrisburg, PA region. For a rather small metro area, there is pretty bad traffic, and oddly spaced suburban development of varying densities. I believe light rail transit in the region would spur more responsible developments and relieve traffic on both back roads and expressways, while encouraging walking. The system focuses on connecting suburban communities with the central core and other high density job or leisure destinations.

Transit Maps says:

This is a rather nice little map that James has made here, depicting a realistically-sized light rail system for the city it might serve. The downtown loops remind me a lot of Denver’s light rail, or even Portland’s back when the Yellow Line ran along Morrison and Yamhill, looping back around at 10th Avenue.

James has taken a fairly diagrammatic approach, using 30-degree multiples, which gives a nice, dynamic feeling to the map. The angled routes help him place his labels quite efficiently, though this can make the labels on the horizontal routes look a little tightly packed in comparison. In general, I do think that some work could be done to even out the spacing between labels: they’re quite bunched in some sections, but there are some large, uneven gaps as well. The northern leg of the Green line stands out most in that regard for me, going loose-gap-tight-loose once it diverges from the Purple line.

With diagrams like this, I really like to see if I can create a visual “hook” out of the arrangement of lines: a compositional axis or design feature that helps hold the whole thing together as a unified piece. On James’ map, I keep looking at the way the Green and Purple lines almost come together as a “wine bottle” shape to the top right of the map. If that shape could be made a little more visually attractive – by making the shape more symmetrical and having the two lines join to each other at the same place, for example – then it could be this diagram’s hook. Sometimes, further investigation of shapes, patterns, grids and axes are required to find the most harmonious arrangement of elements.

James’ HART logo is a really sweet concept, though I think it could use some tweaking to make that “love heart” shape a little more even and symmetrical.

Overall, definitely a very solid effort that’s worthy of some further exploration and refinement.

See also: a future DC Metrorail map by James (November 2015).