A beautiful old map showing scheduled morning peak service (both actual service and absolute maximum capacity) into Manhattan below 60th Street. The thicker the lines, the greater the service – much like modern service frequency maps! Being 1954, the subway is still divided into its three separately run divisions: BMT (Yellow), IRT (Blue) and IND (Red).
Source: Ward Maps’ Facebook Page
What a fantastic photo!
More than anything, it illustrates how people actually use maps in real life. Now that a destination has been reached via the Tube, a street map is required for the next stage of the journey. There’s some serious study of that map going on here!
Also, look at the Tube map on the wall behind our geographically-challenged subject. Charing Cross Road goes right past Leicester Square tube station, where I’m almost certain this photo was taken. You can see that countless fingers have instinctively pointed at that station on the map as people start to physically trace their route. As a result, Leicester Square has been completely worn away, leaving a big grey hole on the map at that location (right in the middle of the map if you’re not familiar with London).
Source: David Solomons/Tumblr
A charming, if simplistic, map of commuter rail services offered by the Key System company. Some sources on the Internet date this to 1941: however, the prominent “Exposition Ferry from Ferry Bldg.” callout box would seem to link this map to the timeframe of the Golden Gate International Exposition held on Treasure Island between February 1939 and September 1940.
These dates mean that the Bay Bridge, the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco and the transbay commuter rail routes as shown on the map are all pretty much brand spanking new. By 1958, commuter rail over the Bay Bridge had ceased operations: the Key System replaced these services with buses, and were themselves taken over by AC Transit in 1960. AC Transit’s B, C, E, and F lines still roughly follow the corresponding Key System routes today.
Source: shanan/Flickr
A lovely above-door strip map from Portugal’s capital. By sacrificing geographical reality (only the Tagus River gives any sense of orientation), the three lines are able to be laid out for maximum clarity and legibility. The comprehensive legend has symbols for connections to the Metro, the private Fertagus commuter rail line to Setúbal, ferries, and buses. It even has a “camera” icon for stations with points of interest nearby, and a little “umbrella and beach towel” indicating stations with connections to the Atlantic Coast beaches.
If I had one complaint, it’s that the green oval indicating the centre of Lisbon looks a little overbearing and tacked-on compared to the simplicity of the rest of the diagram.
Source: loose_grip_99/Flickr
A very interesting early topological transit diagram from Istanbul. It’s tricky to date precisely: the best I can do is the range 1923–1939, based on the lines shown and the fact that the STM was dissolved at the latter date when transit in Istanbul was nationalised.
It’s probably roughly contemporaneous with other early topological maps like George Dow’s work for the LNER in 1929, although I actually see this map being born out of necessity, rather than being any great pioneering design work. That’s because the map is printed on a small ticket, and was used by the ticket seller/conductor to mark the destination that the ticket is valid to. Note the blue marks on “Aller” and “Bechiktache” – this was sold as a one-way ticket to that destination. Obviously, a geographical map couldn’t fit into this tiny space, hence the necessity for this simplified topological representation.
The other interesting thing about this map is that Istanbul is flipped along the axis of the Golden Horn. Destinations that should be on the left of that waterway (looking at it on a standard map, with north to the top) are shown on the right and vice versa. The tram bridge across the Golden Horn is clearly shown on the map (as “Pont”, bridge in French). I know that Arabic reads from right to left: is this flipping of locations a concession to that?
Finally, I adore the little squiggly arrows that show how the lines connect between each stop.
Our rating: Amazing transit ephemera from the early 20th century. Five stars!
Source: Ottoman History Podcast/Flickr
An interesting two-color bus map from 1975. Hot pink!
Strangely, while the service area boundary is heavily squared off and stylised, the routes themselves are presented very accurately. Really not the most usable map, as the route numbers are very difficult to follow from end to end. The meaning behind the dotted route lines also doesn’t appear to be explained at all on the map, but may be elsewhere in the timetable book in which this map appeared.
Our rating: Probably better when combined with the rest of the information in the timetable book, but doesn’t really work in isolation like this. Groovy mid-70s design, though. Two stars.
Source: Herbert Skardon/Flickr
I’ve featured a couple of dodecalinear maps recently (both for Amsterdam – here and here), but this future transit map for Austin and San Antonio has got ‘em covered. It’s a hexadecalinear map. That is, there are sixteen possible directions for a route line to head from any given point.
Interestingly however, the angles between the route lines aren’t evenly arranged. Instead of 0 – 22.5 – 45 – 67.5 – 90 degree arrangement, this map uses 0 – 26.5 – 45 – 63.5 – 90. Ultimately, it doesn’t make a huge visual difference, and the resulting grid is adhered to accurately. If anything, it helps to limit the width of the map because of the long diagonal line from Austin to San Antonio.
Normally, I’d say that a 16-directional transit map is total overkill, seeing as most maps only have eight directions to move in and manage perfectly well, but this actually looks very striking and effective while probably also more closely conforming to the actual geography of the area. The legend is also excellent, clearly delineating currently operating, planned and under construction routes for all the transit modes.
I’m not so keen on the completely unnecessary angled labels for many of the stations: there’s plenty of room for horizontal labelling on this map (it’s okay for the street names to follow the direction of the road). The project logo is also pretty blandly generic and doesn’t really fit in with the stylish look of the map itself (Neutraface at work again!)
Our rating: Attractive and full of promise for the future – hugely important in trying to affect a change of mind-set regarding transportation options in a auto-reliant area like Texas (where – like large parts of the U.S. – the most popular new vehicle is a Ford F-150). Four stars!
Source: Project Connect website
Submitted by Alain Lemaire, who says:
this map might interest you – in response to your blog post of Joan Zalacain’s Amsterdam tram map.
It seems the 30/60 degree paradigm is indeed well suited to Amsterdam’s topological layout. Too bad this once official map is no longer in use today.
Transit Maps says:
Thanks to Alain for sending this beauty in! Simply put, this is lovely work. What I really like about this map is the way it combines multiple tram routes into just four colours, each representing a different service pattern:
This approach also has the benefit of implying service frequency: the thicker the line, the more often a tram comes along. Other services — the Metro and NS trains are incorporated with a minimum of fuss, and there’s clear information about connecting services where appropriate. Large bodies of water (but only the Amstel, not the city’s famous canals) give some geographical scope to the map. If I have one complaint, it’s that I’m never really a fan of keylining a yellow route line with black: it always looks a little overpowering to my eyes.
Our rating: Fantastic, restrained, useful European 1980s design. Four-and-a-half-stars.
A rather odd map of Lithuania on the wall at the Klaipeda inter-city bus terminal. Ostensibly, I guess it depicts the coach network, or even just the nation’s main highways, but it does seem odd to have a city – Alytus – marked on the map when there’s no apparent way to get there.
There’s also a couple of interesting choices made for international destinations: Tallinn and Riga (the other Baltic state capitals) are fair enough, as is Kaliningrad in the Russian exclave of Kaliningad Oblast… but Frankfurt and Freiburg im Breisgau? Freiburg is almost 2,000km by road from Klaipeda – that’s one heck of a road trip! Berlin? Never heard of it.
But at least the map is shiny. And it has a cool coat of arms on it, too.
Source: roomman/Flickr
Another stunning panoramic painted rail map from the Alps of Switzerland – its very similar to this one of the Zentralbahn (Nov 2012, 4 stars), which can actually be seen on this map entering from the lower left and terminating at Interlaken.
The map shows the railways around the Jungfrau mountain, operated by different companies, but marketed together as “Jungfrau – the Top of Europe”. The Jungfraujoch station sits almost three vertical kilometres higher than Interlaken, and is the highest railway station in Europe. The last 7 km of the trip is all within a tunnel through the massive mountain range (shown as a dashed line on the map above): two intermediary stations have panoramic windows to observe the spectacular scenery.
The map is quite beautiful, making the absolute most out of the spectacular landscape, although the sheer lushness of the illustration can make some of the text a little hard to make out. As an added bonus, other connecting services outside the Jungbahn network – be it rail or aerial cable car – are also shown in black.
Just in case this map has inspired you to head off to Switzerland to catch the next train, be warned that this trip is not cheap. The trip from Kleine Scheidegg station (the start of the actual Jungfraubahn to the summit) costs 120 Swiss Francs (roughly €100, or $US130). If you want to come from Interlaken Ost, that’s a mere 196 CHF (€160/$US211). Ouch!
Our rating: Stunningly beautiful illustrated map. Four stars.
Source: guywong/Flickr
