A very rudimentary and crudely printed bus map from Beijing in the early 1950s. Identifying landmarks seem to consist solely of the city’s ancient inner and outer fortified walls (which were about to be mostly torn down by this time) and what looks like the outline of the Temple of Heaven towards the bottom of the map.
The original forum post (see source below) says that some of the routes shown here are still numbered the same today and follow very similar routes, such as the 5, 9, 14 and 23. This despite an absolute explosion in the service in the intervening years: in 1956, there were just 27 bus and trolley bus routes. By 2011, the state-owned Beijing Public Transit Company operated 948 routes with almost 24,000 vehicles!
Source: mashke.org, a Russian forum for tram enthusiasts)
As the first segment of the new DC Streetcar on H Street and Benning Road nears completion, here’s a look back at what existed a long, long time ago. As can be seen at this time, no fewer than ten streetcar companies operated in the District. By 1895, Congress authorised consolidation of the companies and the larger, more successful systems bought out the smaller ones.
The map itself is very handsome, with the distinctive grid of the L’Enfant Plan very evident, especially compared to the relatively haphazard development north of “Boundary Street” – now Florida Avenue. Interestingly, the track of the Columbia Company (shown as yellow on the map) runs along H Street from its intersection with Benning Road past today’s Union Station: the exact same route that is nearing completion now, 122 years after this map was drawn up.
More information on the history of streetcars in Washington, DC on Wikipedia.
Taylor Gibson’s aerial photo map of Portland’s rail and streetcar routes is one of the most popular posts ever on Transit Maps, so I thought I’d pass on this update to it, which now shows the bus network as well. The colours used match the official TriMet system map, although Taylor hasn’t shown peak hour-only services like the 51 up through Council Crest.
What this view really shows to effect is Portland’s grid-like bus network, which you can read more about (and learn why it’s so good) on Jarrett Walker’s Human Transitblog.
Source: Submitted by Taylor to the Transit Maps Facebook page
The Rhätishe Bahn (or Rhaetian Railway) is a publically-owned Swiss railway, serving the huge and mountainous canton of Graübunden. The Swiss Federal Railways extend only a few kilometres over the cantonal border to the capital at Chur, as seen at the top of this interesting little map. Placed underneath the window on trains, between facing rows of seats, this map features something I’ve never seen on a diagrammatic map before: elevation contours.
Four colours — green, brown, blue and white — signify four bands of elevation, all the way up to 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) above sea level! Because of this, it’s quite easy (and very interesting!) to see how the railway mainly runs along valleys at lower elevations, and where tunnels are needed to cross from one valley to the next.
Once hemmed in by old city walls, then by the Boulevard Périphérique, the Paris Métro has rarely ventured outside the city proper into the suburbs. That is about to change with the ambitious “Le Grand Paris” plans shown here. Extensions of the existing Métro Lines 11 and 14 will take them far out into the Île-de-France, while new Lines 15, 16, 17 and 18 will encircle the region with orbital routes. Extensions to the RER E and a comprehensive network of regional trams will complement the system. All this is planned to be completed in just 17 years’ time, by 2030.
An absolutely lovely official government map of Perth’s burgeoning tram network in 1920. The Western Australian state government had taken over the system from private operators just a few years prior to this. The alternating colours along the routes would seem to indicate fare segments, at a penny per segment. Five pence fare to Nedlands!
The map is beautifully drawn, and has two cleverly integrated insets to show the longer routes out to Osborne Park to the north and Victoria Park over the Swan River to the south.
Starting from the city of “Decisionville” in the “State of Accountability”, our commuter must make up his mind (Decisionville, get it?) as to which line to take: the “Great Celestial Route” to salvation, the “Way That Seemeth Right” that totally isn’t, or the ominous “Great Destruction Route” leading – predictably – to “The City of Destruction”.
Scenic detours can be had through charmingly named towns like Grumblemore, Lewd Castle, Crap Hollow and Treasondale. Perhaps a day out at Scandal Beach along the shores of the intriguingly shaped Beer Lake? Murder Gorge and Suicide Tunnel are probably best avoided, however.
The copy at the bottom left of the map reads:
“This unique map will make a lasting impression for good on all who study it. The names of states, towns, railroads, lakes, rivers and mountains are all significant. A copy of this map should be in every home, hotel, railroad station, and public place. It makes an interesting study for school children, both in the public and Sunday schools. It will cause many a one to leave the Great Destruction Route and finish his journey on the Great Celestial Route. Price 35 cents.”
Strangely, though, the map seems to indicate that there’s no way back to the Celestial Route from the other lines. Better make the right choice before you leave Decisionville!
The Liverpool Overhead Railway operated from 1893 to 1956, and was a unique example of an American-style elevated railway in the United Kingdom. It was the world’s first electric elevated railway and the first to use automatic signalling and electric signal lights. Serving Liverpool’s then thriving docks, it quickly earned the affectionate nickname, “The Dockers’ Umbrella”, as the elevated structure sheltered dock workers from the rain as they moved from dock to dock.
This attractive 1930s tourist brochure shows the route of the LOR, and also writes at length about the points of interest to be seen along the way. I definitely recommend clicking through to the large size on Flickr to see some of the best early 20th century British Imperial trade propaganda you’re ever likely to read. See also the rather lovely brochure cover here.
The railway suffered substantial bomb damage in World War II, and by the early 1950s was in a very poor state of repair. Unable to afford repairs, the operating company went into voluntary liquidation and the line closed in 1956. Dismantled shortly thereafter, very little trace of this interesting railway remains today.
With the removal of intercity train routes from the new Sydney Trains map, the question is – where did they go?
The answer: onto a new map of their very own! Aesthetically, it’s very similar to the Sydney map, part of what I understand is a major effort to unify all transit services that Transport for NSW provides. The layout of the lines is very clear and easy to understand, and having separate maps makes a lot of sense to me: the people who commute into Sydney on these Intercity lines have very different needs to those who use the main Sydney network. I’m especially pleased that the Hunter Line out of Newcastle is off the standard Sydney map, as it serves a completely separate urban area!
However, because of the long, linear nature of the routes, there’s a lot of empty space left on the map to fill with something… and I’m not sure that an amorphous “Blue Mountains” shape is the right approach. It’s highly simplified, but there’s some overly precise shapes in it: the triangular cutout to the west of Campbelltown looks particularly weird.
The simplified representation of the coastline also presents some problems. The area around Sydney looks good, although I do wonder if the tiny representation of Port Hacking is really necessary. The Hawkesbury River is fine as well, as it intersects the Central Coast Line and is generally considered to be the border between Sydney and the Central Coast region.
However, the representation of Lake Macquarie is both poorly handled (it actually has an outlet to the ocean, and is separated from it by land that’s less than 2 kilometres wide) and unnecessary. If it’s included to help reference stations to geography, then why not also include Tuggerah Lake near Tuggerah and Wyong stations, or Lake Illawarra near Port Kembla at the bottom of the map? The (completely imaginary) spit of land that the Port Kembla branch of the South Coast line currently sits on just looks weird. Even in a stylised map like this, geography should be included to inform the user, not to simply fit around your route lines.
Again, I’ll reserve final judgement until October 20th when the map is officially released, but this map is currently a bit of a mixed bag. The route lines look great, the background is less inspiring.
Sent my way by Nick Stylianou, this is supposedly the new Sydney Trains system map that will be released concurrently with a whole slew of timetable changes on October 20th.
I’ll reserve my judgement until I see the final map – this may be a working draft with final amendments still to be made – but there are certainly some radical changes from the current map (Sep. 2012, 3.5 stars), not the least of which are the rebranding of lines as “T” numbers and the abolition of the Northern Line and Inner West lines as separate entities. It certainly feels weird to look at a Sydney train map without a Red Line: I spent much of my youth travelling from Epping for school and design college!
As a result, almost half the map is now dominated by one route colour: the yellow T1 line now has five separate terminus stations! Meanwhile, the tiny little Carlingford line still gets to be blue. I also feel that the terminating stations throughout the map could be referenced simply with their “T-number” designation, rather than redundantly repeating the entire line name. Inconsistently, this approach is abandoned where there’s no space – Olympic Park only gets a “T7”, and Lidcombe has no “T3” at all.
I’m not a fan of the twists that the T3 Bankstown Line has to take between Dulwich Hill and Birrong, and while I appreciate the effort taken to stylise the harbour and coastline, I feel it could be more elegantly done to match the rest of the map better.
On the positive side, the removal of intercity services gives the map much more room to breathe, and spacing of stations on the T4 Illawarra Line is now much more consistent with the rest of the map. Future works have been integrated into the map, so it’ll be able to grow with the system.
Other notes: the Metro light rail line has been removed from the map (not sure if that’s good or bad), and Homebush station is now being shown as a spur of the main T2 line… something to do with service patterns from there?
I’ll be watching for the final map with interest, that’s for sure!
