Submission – Historical Map: Boston Elevated Railway System Map, c. 1946

March 19, 2014
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Kindly sent my way by Ross Howard from his personal collection is this great old map of the Boston Elevated Railway (or BERy).

Ross thought it may have been from the 1930s, but a little Googling has revealed that this version – the seventh edition – was released in 1946-1947, making it the last BERy map before its operations were taken over by the MTA, itself a predecessor to the current MBTA.

The map itself is a fine example of precise mid-20th century cartography, making good use of minimal colour. I also like the great typography and the wonderful compass rose logo on the cover. The house ad for travelling via “El” to the Airport is interesting: shuttle buses still run from the Blue Line to Logan to this very day.

Historical Photo: Streetcars on an Inclined Railway, Cincinnati, 1904

March 18, 2014
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Not a map, but included because this is possibly the strangest piece of transit infrastructure I’ve ever seen. Discovered while researching the post about Cincinnati’s abandoned subway, this photo shows what happened when that city’s streetcars met the steep hills surrounding the downtown area.

At this time, the streetcars were used in conjunction with four of Cincinnati’s five inclined railways: the Mount Adams Incline, Mount Auburn Incline, Bellevue Incline, and the Fairview Incline. The cars would be driven onto the platform, which was level and was equipped with rails and (in most cases) overhead trolley wires. The platform, riding on its own rails, would then be pulled up the hill by the cable, carrying the streetcar. Upon reaching the top, the streetcar could simply be driven off the platform onto the standard track along city streets. The 1872-opened Mount Adams Incline began carrying horsecars in 1877, and it was later strengthened for use by electric streetcars, which were much heavier.

More information on the inclines here.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Historical Map: Proposed Cincinnati Rapid Transit System with Subway, c.1912

March 18, 2014
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And here’s where Cincinnati’s long, troubled history with public transit began…

This map shows early route plans for a proposed rapid transit system, roughly corresponding to the modern Alternatives Analysis process. By 1917, a modification of Scheme IV as shown here was chosen and put to a public vote to procure $6 million worth of bonds for construction. The vote passed convincingly, but the United States had entered World War I just eleven days previously – and the federal government had forbidden the issuance of bonds for capital works programs.

The project was put on hold.

When the war ended, estimated construction costs had more than doubled. Work began, but by the time money ran out in 1927, only a short 7-mile section had been dug or graded, and no actual track had been laid. The emergence of the automobile in the intervening years contributed to the project’s final downfall. Despite attempts to restart the project in the 1930s and 1940s, it remains uncompleted.

Four underground stations still remain in the short stretch of completed tunnel, while three at-grade stations were demolished in the 1960s when Interstate 75 was constructed. In the 1950s, a water main was laid through the tunnel, simply because it was already there and obviated the need for expensive tunneling. The original bond was finally paid off in 1966 at a total price of $13,019,982.45 – a lot of money for nothing.

More recently, the tunnels were proposed to be used as an integral part of the MetroMoves transit plan that was convincingly voted down in 2002.

Cincinnati’s transit woes continue to this day with the drawn-out and controversial Cincinnati Streetcar project, which has finally started construction.

Read more about the Cincinnati Subway here.

Source: allensedge/Flickr

Fantasy Map: Highways of the Netherlands Diagram by AS Veen

March 17, 2014
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Inspired by (but not derivative of) my own Interstates as Subway Map, here’s a nice diagrammatic take on the “A-Road” highway network of the Netherlands. It’s a relatively simple system, so the one-colour approach used here works quite well. It also illustrates the European tendency for major highways to bypass or loop around a city, rather than putting an Interstate right through the middle of downtown, as so often happens here in the U.S.

Design-wise, the map is nice and clean and easy to follow: the longer highways have reassurance markers placed along their length to keep you on track. The urban areas are called out with a minimum of fuss, but help to give valuable context to the road network – however, maybe Maastricht could be included as the obvious “final” major destination of the A2 before it exits the country?

Another interesting excercise here – if up for a challenge! – might be to overlay the European E-Road network on these highways to give a broader pan-European context to the network as well. For example, the E-19 route starts in Amsterdam, follows the A4 through The Hague, onto the A13 and A20 past Rotterdam, before heading south on the A16 into Belgium. The other two-digit E-Roads in the Netherlands are the E-22, E-25, E-30, E-31, E-34 and the E-35.

Overall, this is a lovely effort that simplifies the highways of the Netherlands down to their simplest elements, and looks good while doing it.

Source: asvdveen/Flickr

Fantasy Map: Springfield Transit Authority Map from “The Simpsons”

March 17, 2014
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From the Season 25 episode that premiered last night, “The Winter of His Content”. Looks like the (supposedly abandoned!) system has had a complete overhaul, expansion and rebranding since its previous appearance (second image).

Then again, Springfield’s never made very rational decisions about public transit (monorail monorail monorail…)

Source: Simpsons Wiki

Photo: A Washington DC Metro strip map that’s just bound to cause confusion…

March 16, 2014
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Here’s an example of an overly designed strip map that’s gone horribly wrong. This photo was taken by Bryan Rodda, who notes that the sign makes it appear that Foggy Bottom-GWU is the name of the main interchange station between the Silver, Blue and Orange Lines in the center of the photo.

Anyone who knows the DC Metro system will know that the station in question is actually Rosslyn, but the map makes this horribly ambiguous. The problem stems from the fact that all the station names are offset from their markers up and along a 45-degree axis. It seems a reasonable thing to do in theory, but what it has actually done is position most of the labels almost directly above the next station marker to the right, where it can reasonably be confused as belonging to that marker.

Good design should not create confusion or make things unnecessarily ambiguous for the end user – it should always simplify and clarify: something this map absolutely fails to do.

Source: Bryan Rodda/Twitter

Historical Map: Hamburg Hoch- und Untergrundbahn, c. 1912

March 12, 2014
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A beautiful old map showing Hamburg’s Ringbahn and spur lines. I believe that this map is from no later than January 1912, and it may be from even earlier, as the legend denotes that all the routes shown in red (the beginnings of today’s U-Bahn system) are “intended for execution” – that is, planned or under construction, not actually built.

Construction of the Ringbahn began in 1906, and the first section between Rathaus and Barmbek stations was opened on February 15, 1912. The ring was completed by the end of June that year. The spur lines as shown on this map opened in stages between 1913 and 1915.

See also: this amazing Hamburg train carriage ceiling map from 1915.

Source: mapsolutely/Tumblr

Unofficial Future Map: Metro Denver Rapid Transit by Steve Boland

March 10, 2014
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Long-time readers will know that I’m not a huge fan of Denver’s current light rail map (April 2013, 2 stars). And it seems that I’m not the only one, as Steve Boland of calurbanist.com has turned his hand to designing a new map. We’ve featured his excellent Bay Area Rapid Transit map previously (Feb. 2013, 4.5 stars).

His Denver map includes all the FasTracks extensions – light rail along I-225 through Aurora, BRT lanes on US 36 to Boulder and new commuter rail lines to all points north, including a line out to Denver International Airport (finally!). Interestingly, he’s chosen to color-code the services by corridor, rather than by route designation, which actually works quite nicely and simplifies the map in the dense downtown core. The map also makes the peak-hour only nature of the “C” and “F” light rail routes visually obvious on the map by adding a white stroke to their route line: a nice usability touch.

Technically, the map is infinitely better drawn than the official one: no wobbly route lines here! I do miss the sweeping arc that the light rail lines make from Auraria West around to Union Station – I always felt that if it was drawn better, it could be the defining visual “hook” of the official map – but the squared off look does fit in well with the overall aesthetics of this map.

Personally, I find the kink in the “G” line at Aurora a little visually distracting in such a clean diagram, but Steve tells me he really wanted to show how the line leaves the I-225 corridor at that point. As he consistently labels all the main roads that transit travels along on the map, this is probably a fair point.

An oddity: without knowing how all the new lines will fit into RTD’s fare structure, the map has to constrain that information to the currently existing parts of the system – which actually highlights the new parts rather nicely.

Our rating: That’s much better! Clean, crisp, functional informational design that builds excitement for the future of transit in Denver. Four stars.

Source: Calurbanist website

Photo: Boston Layers

March 7, 2014
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An old Boston T map peeks out from underneath the broken remnants of a recent edition, somewhere along the Orange Line in May 2013. It’s interesting to see that while the two maps occupy the same physical space, their use of it is much different. The older, simpler map fills up its space with bold lines and large type, while the modern map is more geographically based and complex – with the addition of bus routes and the Silver Line – and the type on it is correspondingly smaller.

Source: Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council – MAPC/Flickr

Submission – Historical Map: Informational Leaflet, Metro de Santiago, 1975

March 5, 2014
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When moon-monolith sent me the new Santiago Metro map that I featured yesterday, he also sent me this fascinating old map from 1975: the year that the Metro first opened.

The map itself probably redefines the term “basic” when it comes to transit maps, with some very coarse route lines and type-written station names. However, I’m more interested in the map as a very early look at the current system.

At first glance, it looks like the map shows two extensive lines – Lines 1 (Red) and 2 (Yellow) – with planned future routes for Lines 3, 4 and 5. However, in 1975, all that was open was a small stretch of Line 1 between San Pablo and La Moneda stations. You can just make out this section on the map, as it’s ringed with a thicker black outline – although the map makers erroneously identify the eastern end as Neptuno station, not San Pablo (which seems to be missing a station marker anyway).

So what the map really shows is the existing system, with fairly well-developed plans for the rest of Line 1 and Line 2. Then things get a little nebulous with the other planned lines. As we can see on the current map, Lines 4 and 5 follow different routes to those shown here, while (a completely different) Line 3 is still under planning to this day!

Also, due to the very early stages of planning shown on this map, many stations have completely different names to the current system, or were never actually built.

This map is certainly not going to win any awards for its looks, but it’s definitely a fascinating historical document of the early days of Santiago’s Metro.

Source: Tercera Cultura article on “Ghosts of the Santiago Metro” – Spanish