New Project: New York Subway Map in the Style of the London Underground Map

February 9, 2019
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If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I’ve been working on this project for a while now, but I think the time has finally come to share the final product. (Click on the image to view it larger).

Prints of this map are available in my online store, starting at just $38 plus shipping for a 24″ wide by 32″ print. Click here to get one!

This map is an evolution of one I initially made as a quick throwaway project back in 2016, but lots of great feedback from many, many people has really helped it become much more complete and comprehensive. While my original map only featured the subway itself, this one includes PATH (and parts of New Jersey!), the Staten Island Railway (added after overwhelming popular support), the JFK AirTrain, the Roosevelt Island Tram and indications of easy connections (either directly adjacent stations or those within a 0.3 mile radius) to the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and NJ Transit.

While the map is faithful to the London Underground style, there have been some changes made for a few reasons. All the icons have been redrawn to better match their New York equivalents (check out the Roosevelt Island Tram icon!) and to avoid using any official Transport for London design assets in the map. The typeface is ITC Johnston Sans, a commercially available font for which I hold a license. All the colours have likewise been tweaked to be similar—but not identical—to those used on the Tube Map.

For legibility’s sake, I’ve used a thin white keyline to separate route lines of the same colour when they cross each other but don’t otherwise interact. This mainly happens with branches of the orange IND 6 Avenue line, as seen to the left. The official Tube Map uses keylines like this in a couple of places (but not very consistently), so I thought adapting it for this specific purpose would be fine. It certainly adds a bit of clarity to some potentially confusing areas of the map, as does the addition of a few strategically placed reassurance bullets that help a reader follow the lines from end to end.

More details of the map in the gallery below:

By popular request, prints of this map are available in my store starting at just $38 plus shipping for a 24″ x 32″ print. Because this is a vector file, I can print this one right up to a massive 44″ wide by 58.5″ deep. Go get yourself one!

As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome. This one has been a lot of fun to work on and improve with the assistance of so many wonderful people—thanks again to all of you!

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Submission – Historical Map: New Jersey Commuter Rail, c.1971–1976

February 8, 2019
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Submitted by Shaul Picker, who says:

I have a Flickr and save these images from eBay listings and elsewhere. This is from the NJ DOT, now NJ Transit. This map is from the 1970s, as indicated by the presence of the Bayonne Branch.

Transit Maps says:

This is a great find, Shaul – thanks for sharing!

The best I can do to date this is that it’s after 1971 (the formation of Amtrak), but before 1976, when commuter rail services in New Jersey were divested to Conrail until 1983. The Bayonne Branch, a shuttle service known affectionately as the “Bayonne Scoot”, ran from 1969 to 1978, so its presence here doesn’t give any more information. Interestingly the map shows the western end of the line as Roselle Park, when I believe that it actually ran through to Cranford. Some of old alignment at the eastern end of the Bayonne Branch is now part of the Hudson-Bergen light rail line.

As for the map itself, it’s a bit of a glorious mess with routes and labels heading off in all directions, but it’s still quite legible and usable despite that. It certainly has a very 1970s vibe to it! The main interchanges are very clearly denoted, and I must give full credit for including PATH (operated by the Port Authority, not the New Jersey DOT) on the map. There’s absolutely no correlation between the colours of the route lines on this map to those on the current NJ Transit rail map. Note also the absence of Seacaucus Junction (which didn’t open until 2003) and the original name of Pavonia Avenue for the Newport PATH station.

Submission – Historical Transit of Dunedin, New Zealand by Sam van der Weerden

February 6, 2019
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Submitted by Sam, who says:

After finishing this map early last year I think it’s finally time to submit it!
Dunedin, NZ had the second cable car system in the world (after San Francisco), as well as an extensive network of trams, with some ferries and rail as well. This is a map of the greatest extent of that old network, including historical closing dates and old line numbers. None of this infrastructure is around now (pretty much all cable cars, tramways and metro rail got canned in NZ from 1950-2000), but it’s still a fantastic piece of history for our small city.

Transit Maps says:

Sam sent a very early version of this map to me (quite) a while ago, then asked me to hold off on publishing it while he reworked it. Fast forward to now and we have this lovely map in a modern style that revisits the halcyon days of rail-based transit in Dunedin.

I particularly like how the greenbelt of parks forms a logical boundary between the detailed street grid of the city and the more stylised surrounding suburbs. Wisely, Sam has labelled all the streets that the cable cars and trams ran along, so this approach works well. His colour palette is bright and pleasing, though interestingly, the cable cars tend to get darker, duller colours (which is one way of quickly identifying them, I guess!).

I’m not thrilled by the transparent fill underneath the legend that the coastline and rail and ferry lines can be seen through. The lines interfere too much with the legibility of the type and don’t add that much to the meaning of the map. The lines could simply end at the edge of the map proper, with labelled arrows pointing in the direction of the final destinations. The cheeky way that the Andersons Bay line inserts itself between different sections of the legend is quite fun, though.

Finally, while Sam notes the ending date of each of the services (“Until 8/1947”, etc.), he doesn’t tell us when each service started. As I doubt they all sprang into existence on the same date, this information would be really interesting to show.

Source: Sam’s website

Historical Map: European Rail Connections from Frankfurt, 1928

February 1, 2019
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Here’s a superb visualization of the fastest travel times by rail to major European cities from Frankfurt am Main (here rendered in its obsolete English form of “Frankfort”) in 1928.

The striking time bands – a form of isochrone – are rendered in bold alternating concentric “target” circles around the city itself, represented by a modernist “F” logo. For the most part, the cities seem to placed along correct headings relative to Frankfurt, although the time scale means that actual distances aren’t necessarily conveyed accurately. Poor old Lisbon takes some 72 hours to get to, far more than even distant Moscow or Odessa!

The map is from a publication produced by the City of Frankfurt entitled Frankfurt-on-Main: Economic Facts and Statistics, almost certainly produced to entice foreign (English?) economic investment in the city.

Our rating: A wonderful little graphic, highlighting Frankfurt’s central location in Europe in a bold, compelling way. Five stars!

Source: @chaosforscherin/Twitter (account no longer active), with a H/T to Taras Grescoe

GIF: Evolution of a New Unofficial Santiago Transit Map by Jose Ureña

January 30, 2019
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Jose sent me a link to this still-evolving project via Twitter the other day, and his post on Medium about it is well worth reading, even through the filter of Google Translate. He’s got a lot of great ideas, and it’s always fun seeing how other people approach codifying their design principles for a map.

What really caught my eye was this GIF showing the evolution of Jose’s map, all the way from the initial red horizontal Line 1, through to a (nearly) finished map. The little tweaks and edits along the way are quite fascinating to see – almost as if we’re watching Jose “solve” a puzzle.

Submission – Official and Future Maps: Trinational S-Bahn of Basel, Switzerland, 2019 and 2030

January 30, 2019
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Submitted by Simon S., who says:

I recently travelled through Basel, in North West Switzerland and noticed this map. It shows the suburban train network of the city, that reaches into Germany and France. I think the map itself is quite well made (very simplistic), but my subjective observation is that the system isn’t as unified as it seems – neither DB nor SNCF advertise their respective as “S-Bahn Basel” or “RER Bâle”. You can also notice that it is a Swiss-made map through the station names: Lörrach Dammstrasse, for example, is actually spelled -straße but Switzerland doesn’t use that letter.

Transit Maps says:

I think there’s a reason why the system isn’t as unified as it first appears, Simon. The Trireno initiative is a long-term plan that aims to have S-Bahn style rail service (30 minute headways on the branches, interlined to 15 minutes or less in the core) in and around the Basel conurbation by 2030. This map only reflects the current, early stages of the program – with the S-Bahn confined to Switzerland and connecting services in France and Germany handled by existing regional trains. The proposed 2030 system can be seen in the map below – looking much more complete and impressive.

Design-wise, the two maps are pretty similar (good!). The route lines are a little too spindly and thin for me, and the station labelling is inconsistent – why are they angled on the purple S9 line, when they’re horizontal on the adjacent blue S3? I do like the subtle national border markers – they’re there if you look, but as the idea of the system is to build up stronger transit that transcends boundaries, they’re very small and restrained.

Our rating: Not extraordinary, but solid enough. Nice to see that the design language scales up to the 2030 map pretty well. Three stars.

Source: Trireno website (in German)

Submission – Unofficial Map: Rail Transit of Dortmund, Germany by Moritz Köhler

January 27, 2019
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Submitted by Moritz, who says:

It’s me again, Moritz – this time with an unofficial redesign of the light rail and regional rail map of my hometown, Dortmund. The light rail network itself is based on a simple principle where the trunk routes form a triangle in the city centre, thus allowing to reach every station with no more than one change of trains at one of the three central intersecting points. To depict this structure in the simplest way possible, I’ve chosen a 60-degree grid, which also allows the reduction of bends in the lines to a minimum. This network is then supplemented by the suburban and regional rail lines. They have the same thickness as the light rail lines to emphasise their importance also for journeys within the city, as in my opinion especially the suburban rail lines (S-Bahn) have to be presented to the user visually much more equal to the light rail as they are in the official map.

I have, however, left out most of the stations that are not within the city (= fare zone) boundaries of Dortmund as you’d have to consult the regional rail map anyway if you wanted to plan a journey out of the city; this way the fare zone border has to be marked only where there is an exception. Finally, I got rid of the “U” station markers as they are a historical relict connected to the development of public transport in the region. (They were used to differentiate between “Stadtbahn” and “Stadtbahnvorlaufbetrieb” routes on the one hand and tram routes on the other hand, but this technical difference is completely irrelevant to the user as they have the same speed and frequency. This can be seen in the official map legend, where the difference – although made! – is not even explained.)

I’m curious about your opinion!

Transit Maps says:

Oh, I do like this, Moritz! Very clean and simple, and the teardrop shape that the U45/U46 makes is rather lovely. The 30/60 degree angles work well, and for the most part the schematic representation maps fairly well to reality – the exception being the northern leg of the U47, which takes quite a different trajectory. That said, I can see why you’ve done it the way you have.

Possibly the only part that is slightly confusing is the two light grey Regionalexpress lines running east out of the Hauptbahnhof, as it’s a little difficult to tell how they relate to the lines coming in from the other directions. It might be that the two separate lines aren’t required: RE services run along this line with some stopping at Schamhorst and Kurl, and others not. It’s not always the map’s job to depict every single service pattern.

The “H-Bahn” had me intrigued, so I had to look it up. It’s one of those rarest of rail transit systems – a suspended railway!

Our rating: Clean, modern, stylish: there’s a lot to like about this! 3.5 stars.

Mash-up Map: TriMet MAX in the style of BART

January 24, 2019
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Those TriMet designers are at it again! Just a week or so after their superb TriMet/WMATA mash-up comes this new map that reimagines Portland’s MAX light rail as the Bay Area’s BART.

On first glance, it’s another near-perfect rendition of the source map and there’s a lot of neat touches. The reworking of TriMet’s logo to match BART’s famous lower-case “ba” logo is wonderful, and the accurate depiction of the Red Line’s corkscrew to get from Gateway up towards the airport is masterfully done. Reducing WES to the “Beige Line” seems somehow appropriate, and the call out box to show its limited hours is perfect.

A couple of minor quibbles: the real BART map contains no vertical route lines at all, so they look a little “wrong” here. However, rejigging all of them to the slight rightwards angle that BART uses would be problematic, so I can see why that’s been left out. Also, it looks like the typeface used is Akzidenz Grotesk, when BART uses Frutiger. Some more blue locality labels for Gresham, Beaverton, etc. would have been nice. Finally, a couple of typos that immediately stood out: “TRIMET sytem map” at top left, and “Albina/Missisissipi“.

A fun reaction to this one on Twitter:

Source: TriMet/Twitter

Historical Map: Map of the Laurelhurst Addition and Streetcar Lines, Portland, Oregon, c.1912

January 23, 2019
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Here’s a handsome map from a prospectus produced in the early 20th century to promote the exclusive new Laurelhurst addition in Portland, Oregon. Prominently shown in yellow “gold” ink are the three streetcar lines that provided service to the neighbourhood — the Rose City Park line, the Montavilla line, and the Sunnyside line.

Streetcar lines to other parts of the city are also clearly shown, just not given the exclusive treatment of the other three. Downtown, the Portland Hotel is shown, which is now the location of Pioneer Courthouse Square. Also of interest are the names of other additions and neighbourhoods — some are still in use, like Ladd’s Addition, Irvington and Montavilla. Others not so much… the Tabasco Addition didn’t seem to catch on so well.

Source: Architectural Heritage Center

Submission – Unofficial Map: Copenhagen Train and Metro Network by Kristoffer Bæk

January 19, 2019
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Submitted by Kristoffer, who says:

I’ve made a map of my hometown Copenhagen’s transit system as it will look from summer 2019, when the circle metro line opens after a ~10 year long construction phase. A regional rail line to Ringsted will open at the same time.

There are two local train systems in Copenhagen, S trains and Metro, but the official maps for the two systems use quite different map styles. Once the circle line opens, however, I feel that the two services should absolutely be combined in one map. I don’t know if there’s going to be an official combined map though, I haven’t seen any signs of it. I have used the current colors for the S train lines, but changed the metro line colors, as the official colors (green, yellow, blue, and orange) are too similar to the S train line colors, in my opinion. Also, I wanted the two systems to have a slightly different color scheme.

Transit Maps says:

I caught a glimpse of Kristoffer’s map on Twitter a little while back and liked what I saw, so I’m really pleased that he’s submitted the finished piece to the site. It’s a lovely map too, skillfully and confidently executed in a very clean and modern style. I particularly like the minimalist but effective legend at the bottom, and the colours throughout are gorgeous. The gradient in the water is particularly well-handled, as this type of effect often has the potential to look awful.

Kristoffer has resisted the temptation to make the “circle line” a literal circle, and I think it’s a wise choice – a circle wouldn’t fit in with the angularity of the rest of the map. The generous corner radii used help to soften the shape of the line, which works well.

Some minor things: I’m not too fond of having line bullets angled with their line, as it makes them a little harder to read and changes their shape relative to straight ones (a square becomes a diamond, for example). There’s probably a case for having the “C” line move over to run adjacent to the other lines between Svanemøllen and Hellerup stations, just to avoid the big gap between the lines at Hellerup. The little jog of the main line railway between Central and Nørreport could be a little smoother to be in keeping with the generous curves I mentioned before.

Our rating: Clean, modern and rather wonderful. If there is to be a unified rail map in Copenhagen’s future, can it look like this, please? Four stars.