Passers-by looking at a pre-H.C. Beck Underground map outside Strand station in 1937. At a glance, it looks like the Fred Stingemore map, but expanded to show the whole system (the pocket card only showed central London). Parkland also seems to have been added – the large dark blotches dotted all around the map.
Source: Londonist.com
In the late 1960s, Chicago actually seriously considered knocking down the elevated parts of the “L” and replacing it all with a modern subway network. The plan originally called for multiple lines, but these got whittled down over the years for a variety of reasons – lack of funding being one of the major ones.
By 1977, all that remained on the table was the Franklin Street Subway, shown in red in the handsome illustrated map above. It would have cut across to the western side of the Loop and passed directly under Sears Tower, which apparently was built to allow basement-level access to a planned station there. In effect, the subway would have acted as a downtown relief line, offering an alternative north-south corridor through the city.
This map was featured in the 1977 annual report for the Chicago Urban Transportation District (CUTD), the body created to oversee the project and raise some capital for it via a local sales tax. Note the white area on the map: this shows the district where the tax would have been levied.
By 1979, rising costs and shrinking funding sources sounded the death knell for the project, and the “L” continues to rise high above the streets of downtown Chicago.
Source: Chicago “L”.org website – lots more information about the history of this abandoned project here!
Update: Correspondent Dennis McClendon has provided the following information about the map’s creator, which is great to know:
We might mention the actual cartographer: Eugene Derdeyn, whose Perspecto Maps created similar Perspectovision oblique views-to-the-curved-horizon for a number of clients in the Chicago area. I think Derdeyn died in the 1990s and his daughter updated selected projects for a few more years.
Submitted by Ryan VanSickle and Christian Hurst. Ryan says:
I’d like to submit the official proposed BaltimoreLINK system map. In addition to its frequency mapping and radial design (something I haven’t seen much in official maps from transit agencies), it’s got a few features that indicate a sense of humor – monsters in Chesapeake Bay, and Lil’ Linky the advice bus. There’s no elaborate compass rose to match the tallship and giant octopus, though.
The radial design seems to reflect an emphasis on new connections that don’t require travel downtown. The proposed bus network redesign is portrayed using a few methods – color-coded CityLink routes (new frequent limited-stop services), and thicknesses/hashing on other routes to indicate frequency. Interestingly, the light rail and Metro Subway lines have been somewhat de-emphasized to thinner black lines and left out of the frequency mapping.
Transit Maps says:
Frustratingly, this diagram is only available on the project website as a medium-resolution JPG, and much of the type and detail is therefore too small to be easily legible. While I understand that this is just a draft diagram and is subject to change, it’s disappointing that a zoomable format like a PDF hasn’t been used.
As it is, much of the workings of the proposed network remain a mystery to me, though it can be determined that the thick, brightly-coloured routes are frequent CityLink buses running from the suburbs to downtown, supported by radial LocalLink routes, shown in grey. There are also Express BusLink services, which provide limited stop service to downtown as well as making an express ring around the periphery of the city. More on the proposed network here.
What’s really noticeable about this diagram its hybrid nature – a rigid street grid in the core, but a radial diagram in the outlying areas. The transition between the two styles is actually handled very deftly, and there’s still a good natural flow between the two. I also quite like the large airplane denoting the BWI branch of Baltimore’s light rail system: an instant visual indicator of the line’s destination. It looks quite dynamic, almost rocketing off the bottom of the page.
I’m less enamoured with the sea monster in the bay: a quixotic touch that seems a little out of place on such a modern-looking diagram. Almost venturing into “Here be Dragons” territory…
Our rating: Overall, this looks quite promising, although it’s hard to tell for sure without being able to read the legend properly. A tentative three stars at present.
Source: Maryland MTA website
Submitted by thesandpeople100, who says:
Cutaway diagram of the Paris Metro’s Opera station. I came across this working on a project for a hypothetical addition to Palais Garnier but couldn’t find any information on its origin. Any ideas?
Transit Maps says:
A reverse image search on Google found the answer to this pretty quickly: this beautiful cutaway appeared in the July 1910 issue of Popular Mechanics. Unfortunately, this month isn’t available in Google Books’ archive of back issues of the magazine, but there are some good details about the article on this web page (scroll down to get to the cutaway).
The author seemed pretty impressed by what he saw in Paris back in 1910:
Of all the wonderful engineering work done by the Metropolitan underground railways of Paris, the most complicated is that under the Place de l’Opera, where three great tubes cross each other, all of which must have station facilities in the crossing’s tangle. The three tubes, the platform, stairways, and elevators constitute a veritable Chinese puzzle, and the wonder is that the congested underground and overhead traffic has not been even more disturbed during the work.
Submitted by Dan Reed, who says:
Tysons Corner, Virginia is the archetypal suburban edge city and as traffic becomes unbearable, officials are hustling to get people on transit, particularly the new Silver Line with four local stops. The owners of Tysons Corner Center, one of the nation’s biggest malls and a tourist attraction in its own right, seem to have made this “spider map” showing all of the bus and rail service to and from the mall. I think it’s a great idea, though the execution feels thrown together, to say the least. I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
Transit Maps says:
Anything that encourages the use of transit rather than single-occupancy vehicles to reach edge cities like Tysons Corner (already the 12th largest employment centre in the United States and growing rapidly) is to be encouraged, but this map is pretty bare bones and not very attractive. As Dan says, it all feels a bit slapdash, with route lines and labels criss-crossing each other at all sorts of random angles. Metrorail stations only get shown if they have a bus service that goes to Tysons, and only the four stations that are within the Tysons area have a linking route line. The rest just exist in splendid isolation, with no indication of how they connect to the rest of the system at all.
These faults are mitigated a bit on the website, where the map is somewhat interactive: hover over a route and all the others fade back, allowing you to trace a route more easily from beginning to end. A further click is then meant to take you to that route’s timetable, but it seems that most of the regional bus operators have re-organised their websites since this map was made. All you get now for many of the routes is a 404 page. Oops! An interactive map that links to external websites must be kept up to date or it becomes useless and frustrates users.
Our rating: Well-meaning, and a start at getting commuters to Tysons out of their cars, but unattractive and difficult to use. The unmaintained interactive version will not win any friends. 1 star.
Source: Access Tysons website
Submitted by Voystok, who says:
Here’s my fantasy map for the non-existent rapid transit system of Split, Croatia! I made this as a practice project in Illustrator as I’m preparing a portfolio for a college application. The geography is largely distorted and the city lines (M1 and M2) are very disproportionate to the other lines (M3 and M4) which are suburban. I hope one day this city will have a transit system like this.
Transit Maps says:
I like this quite a lot, Voystok, though I feel that it can’t quite decide if it’s ultra-minimalist or something a little more representational of reality. Compared to the straight-line simplicity of the route lines, the zone boundaries seem a little complex and detailed, for example – almost appearing as if they’re the mountains behind the city that hem it to the coast.
So I see two choices: make it more representational, or more minimalist. For the first choice, you might give some indication of the distinctive peninsula that Split sits on, and use the famous old town/palace as a landmark. Make the sea blue! That sort of thing.
To make it more minimalist, you’d simplify things even further. Pare the zones back to an absolute minimum of shapes and extend the darkest Zone 3 grey all the way to the edge of the map. Eliminate the kink in the M2 line and just have it head directly across the loop line, and even up the vertical spacing of that loop a little so that there’s no wasted space.
One more thing to note is consistency in your iconography. Look at how your interchange stations differ depending on whether they’re on a horizontal or vertical section of track. When the M1 Circle interchanges with the M2, both dots straddle the dark blue line… but when the M1 meets the M3 and M4, the dark blue dot sits directly above the dark blue line, with the other dot sitting fully outside the line. It’s a little inconsistent, although I can see why you did it.
One particularly good thing about this is that I can look at an actual map of Split and see how this could work in reality – especially the conversion of mainline trains northwards out of the city to a more metro-like service.
Keep up the good work, this is a very promising start!
A lovely old map showing Mexico City’s extensive tram network in 1910. Solid red lines are electric street-running trams, ticked red lines are electric trams on exclusive right-of-way, while green lines are humble mule-pulled trams… of which there are still quite a number. In fact, mule-pulled trams continued to be used in Mexico City up until the 1930s. Electric substations, mule stables, carbarns and other company properties are also highlighted on the map.
Streetcars hung on longer in Mexico City than many other North American cities, with the last line – by then running old PCC cars – only closing in 1984, and being replaced almost immediately by a modern light rail line.
More information on the history of streetcars in Mexico City over on Wikipedia.
Submitted by Pierre, who says:
I’d like to suggest this map that I immediately found particularly bad designed. It represents the bus network in a small French region, Puy-de-Dôme. Besides the fact the number of the lines are very hard to read, I find quite difficult to follow each line and the center looks totally messy.
Transit Maps says:
Pierre is right on the mark with his summary of this map… it’s really quite dreadful in so many ways.
Poorly-drawn, low-contrast route lines all converge upon Clermont-Ferrand, with a minuscule route number embedded within each one. Lines on either side of Clermont’s “station box” use the same colour, making you think they’re a continuation of the same route – until you pull out your magnifying glass and see that they have different route numbers. Label placement is everywhere, and the narrow, bitmappy-looking typeface really doesn’t help.
By far the best thing on this map is the nifty isometric illustration of the bus, and I’m pretty certain that even this just a slightly modified stock library vector file. Slap the right livery on it and call it done!
Finally, one wonders what the town of Égliseneuve-d’Entraigues did to deserve being shown on the map, but to have absolutely no connections to it…
Our rating: Quite abysmal. Half-a-star – just because of the bus – but it’s still the latest addition to the Transit Maps Hall of Shame.
A visual exploration of BART ridership throughout a typical workday. Watching the video below is fun, but the actual tool – made with HTML/CSS, JS, .d3.js, Sketch and BART ridership data – is even better. Click here to view it.
After you’ve watched it through to about 2pm, some controls will appear down the bottom left to change the speed of the simulation, and also switch between “inbound” and “outbound” trains (which I think should be labeled more simply as “westbound” and “eastbound” as the path always follows a train’s trip from one end of the line to the other). Ray tells me that only showing one direction at a time was an intentional tradeoff, so as to not overwhelm the viewer on top of handling performance in the browser.
Ray’s also written a short piece on the background behind the project here, which is an interesting read.
Source: YouTube
Submitted by Dan Malouff, who says:
Denver has opened several new rail lines over the past year or so. Apparently, with the most recent one, they launched a new system map. Finally they’re using consistent angles!
Transit Maps says:
So far, this new design only seems to be on in-car strip maps: RTD’s website still uses a version of the horrid old “wibbly lines” diagram. Small steps!
It’s certainly a vast improvement over what’s come before, although I can’t help but think that it’s been influenced by Theo Ditsek’s excellent unofficial redesign (June 2015, 4 stars). I definitely did a double-take when I first saw this, as the resemblance was immediately obvious to me without even having to go back and look at Theo’s diagram.
All that aside, though, and it’s interesting to note that despite the diagram’s improvement, it still really doesn’t fill the space available on the strip map terribly efficiently… lots of empty space all around. Still, at least they’re not distorting the darn thing to fit the space anymore!
Also of note is the minimal branding for the “University of Colorado A Line” – here reduced to a tiny label running alongside the route – and the continued conversion of the line letters from the old square shape to a more New York Subway-style circular bullet.
Our rating: Another much-improved map (like the UTA strip map from yesterday), even if it seems a little familiar. Three-and-a-half stars.
Source: SkyscraperPage Forums via Dan’s submission
