I love, love, love this photo of wayfinding signage in Chicago. Anyone know which station this is? I’m guessing one of the Wabash stations on the Loop, but don’t know enough about them to narrow it down further.
Edit: Knowledgeable readers have identified this sign as being at Clark/Lake station – thanks!
Source: k.james/Flickr
Here’s a nice little bus network map sent my way by long time Twitter follower, Gordon Werner. Designed by Smartmaps, Inc., it shows the seasonal shuttle bus service on Nantucket Island, known as “The Wave”. Almost predictably, “Ride the Wave!” is their slogan. Is the surf even that good in Nantucket?
Have we been there? No — only to the next island over, Martha’s Vineyard.
What we like: Nicely executed, attractive looking bus route map that neatly doubles as a guide to the major sights and attractions of the island. As the majority of users of the bus service would be visitors to the island, this is a welcome addition (the summer population of Nantucket increases five-fold, from 10,000 to 50,000 people!). Lovely nautical-themed border around the map, although I feel that it could perhaps have been divided into half-mile increments for scale, rather than being purely decorative. Simply lovely little compass rose. Shows bike routes as well.
What we don’t like: The “Wave” logo itself is probably the weakest part of the whole map, and its modern design stands a little at odds with the olde-world nautical theme of the rest of the map. On a map of this small a scale, it would be nice — and useful — to have every stop marked, rather than just two or three in the main downtown area.
Our rating: Solidly designed, useful and attractive. And it’s hard to dislike a map which has Windswept Cranberry Bog as a destination. Four stars.
Source: Official NRTA website via Gordon Werner
“London Transport Museum holds over 5,000 posters and artworks in its archives and, on October 4, 2012, some 300 original London Underground advertising posters from its collection will be auctioned for sale through Christie’s South Kensington saleroom. Demand at the auction is likely to be high but if you can’t afford an original, reprints of the images shown here are available through the London Transport Museum shop. You can see more of the posters for sale on the Christie’s website.”
Not transit maps today, just some glorious old London Underground posters.
Boston seems to rival only Washington, DC for old system maps being left in place at stations and on trains. This photo was taken in August of this year, but the map dates from between 2004 to 2008 (the extension of the Silver Line to City Point is the giveaway). I’d probably lean towards the earlier end of that range, due to the “Silver Line Waterfront” designation.
One thing to note is how much cleaner this map looks than the current one: helped a lot by no geography at all, no key bus routes, and interchanges with commuter rail being marked with a neat purple square rather than the entire line.
That’s not to say that the map isn’t without its little quirks, though – the large initial capital letters on the station labels are pretty ugly and the triple asterisk as a footmark notation at Bowdoin station is faintly ridiculous. And the Silver Line still joins onto the loop around Logan Airport the wrong way…
Source: Mr.Konstantin/Flickr
Oktoberfest started yesterday in Munich, so I thought it would be appropriate to share this fun little map from 2008 of Munich’s beer gardens laid out in the familiar style of that city’s S- and U-Bahn map.
However, beware! Although this map looks quite similar to the official one, the “lines” shown here don’t seem to correlate to the actual routes in real life — I would not recommend using this map on your Munich pub crawl, especially after a few Maßkrüge of fine German beer!
Source: pubstops.co.uk
How to sell New Yorkers on a new stadium: point out they don’t have to drive to it. (Source: ad in the 2nd Avenue F train station.)
The problem with doing a subway-themed ad that will appear in the actual subway itself is that it’s not allowed to look anything like the official map. So we end up with this weird Vignelli wannabe instead. However, it does get its point across quite effectively, so in that regard I would call it a success.
engers:
When it comes down to it, I still prefer an actual printed transit map in my hands, anyway. I’ve navigated London, Paris, Berlin, Boston, New York and more without an iPhone map: I think I’ll get by in the future as well.
By all accounts, Grand Theft Auto IV is a pretty awesome game. However, it would seem that the game’s designers are lousy urban planners, as this has to be the most ridiculous subway layout I have ever seen. Seriously, it looks like two racetrack layouts from a 1990s video game have been superimposed on the city with some stations added at random.
What is the point of the northern track between Huntington St and the Airport if there are no stops along it? And don’t even get me started on the whole system of inner and outer loops for each line that change route designations at some undetermined location along the way. There are two actual subway lines shown on this map (the Algonquin-Bohan loop and the Algonquin-Airport loop), but it somehow takes eight letters and numerals to describe them.
The game’s designers are basically just adding noise to make the system seem more like a “real” subway than it actually is – probably because “Liberty City” is meant to be a cipher for the Big Apple itself, which has a big, complex subway system with lots of routes.
But at least it’s cheap: a trip on the LTA only costs a dollar! I wonder who subsidises that?
Source: loh_junwei/Flickr – link no longer active
