Historical Map: British Airways Worldwide Route Network, 1975

March 4, 2016
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Via: airlinemaps:

A vintage British Airways worldwide map from 1975, just a year after the carrier was just created through the merger of BOAC and British European Airways (BEA).

This map is a fantastic airline-meets-railway design that could be on the Transit Maps blog. Routes to destinations connect to main trunk lines that by and far lead to London, more like the current British National Rail map than an airline route map. By not including any landmasses, BA can (and does) divorce itself from geographic logic and shows routes as it sees fit.

This is not the easiest map for a passenger to follow. BA did publish a more airline-network style map with the above diagram.

Compare it to this 1936 Imperial Airways map on Transit Maps.

Possibly one of the most abstract transportation maps I’ve ever seen, although I do find it quite visually pleasing with the strict usage of only three different angles. Working out exactly where in the world your destination is located is a bit of  challenge, though…

Source: mpar21 on Flickr

Historical Map: Bus Map of Tokyo, c. 1950

March 4, 2016
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Not a lot of geographical context here, although the central hub is pretty easy to discern. Does good work differentiating lines with a limited colour palette. Can anyone translate the legend at right that shows dashed/thin/thick lines? Is this an early attempt at frequency mapping?

Note: Thanks to all who have told me that the lines are thick for express routes, thin for normal routes, and dashed for “special” routes. So it’s service mapping, not frequency.

Source: Old Tokyo

Historical Map: Poster Promoting the Bakerloo Line Extension to Stanmore, 1939

March 4, 2016
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By the mid-1930s, the London Underground’s Metropolitan line was suffering from congestion caused by the limited capacity of its tracks between Baker Street and Finchley Road stations. To relieve this pressure, a tunnel was constructed between the Bakerloo line’s platforms at Baker Street and Finchley Road and three Metropolitan line stations (Lord’s, Marlborough Road and Swiss Cottage) were replaced with two new Bakerloo stations (St. John’s Wood and Swiss Cottage). The Bakerloo line took over the Metropolitan line’s service to Stanmore on 20 November 1939, as noted on the poster.

The poster itself is a striking piece of graphic design, with bold colours, rough brushed typography and an unusual black variant of the famous roundel with the circle and bar separated from each other. The style of Beck’s diagram (then only 6 years old) is referenced, but not copied faithfully. Interestingly, the typeface used seems to be closer to Gill Sans than Johnston.

Source: London Transport Museum collection

Update: The City of Luxembourg Adopts Jug Cerovic’s Bus Map!

March 3, 2016
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Jug writes:

Hi Cameron, I have got some great news from the “maps as works of art” front:

Since yesterday Luxembourg has a brand new official bus map! Since last summer I have been working with the City of Luxembourg to adapt my map to their particular needs and now it is going live.

The main features of the map are:

  • Geographic centre/schematic outskirts
  • The pentagonal Old Town (Ville Haute) as a symbolic landmark in the center of the map
  • All line angles are multiples of 18°, relating to the pentagon
  • Frequencies: Thick line = high frequency, thin line = low frequency
  • On the central corridor the lines are grouped by common direction and their frequencies are added. 19 lines turn into only 5, simpler to understand and navigate.
  • Information hierarchy: bright colors for main lines, light colors for secondary tangent network.
  • Cityscape: remarkable buildings, bridges, parks…

I am particularly happy and proud today, I finally managed to have a city adopt my map and seeing it on bus stations makes me full of joy 🙂

Transit Maps says:

A victory indeed, and one that I feel that I played at least a very small part in (as I wrote about both the terrible old map and Jug’s original alternative version before the story was picked up by other media both here in the States and in Luxembourg). 

Still, the real credit here goes to Jug’s beautiful work and to the City of Luxembourg officials who saw that he had a better solution for their bus riders and worked with him to bring things to fruition. 

Looking at the final map, it’s great to see how little has changed from Jug’s initial concept – a different typeface, some corrections to a few routes, a couple of colour changes and the addition of parks and some notable buildings. And I have to say that the map looks fantastic when installed in the bus stations, as seen in the photo above.

Congratulations to all involved!

Illustrations of the design process on Jug’s website (a must see!)

Historical Map: Vancouver City and Suburban Lines, c. 1930

March 3, 2016
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Via: illustratedvancouver:

A Guide to Vancouver, the complete map by Peter Hugh Page, a pamphlet by BCER circa 1930, pre-Lions Gate Bridge. “BCER Takes you everywhere!” From the VPL Special Collections, SPEMAPC 388.46 V223b 1930

A charmingly breezy little map of streetcar, interurban rail and motorbus services in Vancouver in 1930. Hand-drawn by one Peter Hugh Page (even the BCER logo!), the map features a number of crudely drawn but amusing vignettes of life in the city. These include a crowded “sightseeing car”, an amourous couple in a park, and an assortment of golfers dotted around the map (in a very similar vein to this 1941 map of Winnipeg, Manitoba).

Submission – Historical Map: The Bogue Plan For Seattle, 1911

March 2, 2016
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Submitted by SounderBruce, who says:

Of Seattle’s many, many unsuccessful attempts to build a rapid transit system, none sting more than the century-old Bogue Plan. Rejected by a landslide of 10,000 votes (out of 40,000 total cast) on March 5, 1912, Virgil Bogue’s ambitious comprehensive plan to convert the regraded remains of Denny Hill into a Beaux-Arts civic center reminiscent of European city centers would have been well served by 91 miles of rapid transit lines from as far away as Tukwila, Edmonds and Bothell. Bogue was not satisfied with the existing streetcar system, commenting that its frequent stops would not adequately serve future surburban riders; the streetcar network would be scrapped in favor of electric trolleybuses thirty years later.

Among the long list of specific routes was a subway under Third Avenue whose stations would have had entrances inside of mercantile establishments (familiar to users of Westlake Station). Other proposed corridors, such as the Ballard-U District and West Seattle lines, are now under consideration for the next expansion of Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail system, expected to be put to public vote in 2016.

Transit Maps says:

What a beautiful map! And what ambitious plans! It is to be noted here how many of the rapid transit lines were to be underground or elevated, with such lines spreading far out into the suburbs. Many of the general transit corridors seem very familiar even now, although a lot of that has to do with Seattle’s constricting geography. I’m intrigued by the split in line 5 around Green Lake (northbound to the east, southbound to the west?), while the routing of line 4 through Queen Anne just seems like the work of a madman.

Source: SounderBruce/Flickr

Historical Map: Planned Glasgow Subway Expansion Map, 2007

March 1, 2016
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In the lead-up to hosting the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Glasgow and the SPT came over all excited and proposed this spectacular “East End” expansion to the Glasgow Subway, potentially throwing away over 100 years of circumrevolutionary transit perfection. 

As we now know, none of this ever came to fruition, saving everyone from having to call the expanded system “The Pair of Specs” (or something equally lame) instead of the current awesome “Clockwork Orange” sobriquet.

The map itself is nothing to write home about; a bare-bones future planning map that gets the idea across with a minimum of fuss and fanfare. It’s still very interesting because I hadn’t seen this map before, nor did I know that there was ever any thought to expanding this venerable system (the third oldest underground metro in the world after London and Budapest).

I do wonder about the service pattern for this proposed system, though: two separate circles, or a figure-eight?

Source: CityMetric article about the failed expansion

On That “Most Complex Subway Map” Article

March 1, 2016
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Thanks to everyone (and I do mean everyone!) who has sent the recent “The World’s Most Complex Subway Maps as Determined by Scientists!” article to me – from various sources, including this take from CityLab. 

However, when I read the full academic paper that all these articles are based on, I think that everyone’s got the wrong end of the stick. The study is not of map complexity at all, but of network complexity. 

The methodology outlined at the end of the paper makes it very clear that a theoretical topological network has been assembled for each city based on information from Wikipedia and data feeds from the relevant transit agencies, with travel and transfer times accounted for within each model. These models are then tested mathematically – entirely with equations – to determine the complexity level of each system. 

At no point is an real official printed map used, nor are there any usability tests performed by real humans. It seems to me that the actual design of a map – which can make a simple network incomprehensible or a complex one easy to navigate – is not considered at all in this study. So while the study is interesting, and reveals a lot about the maximum amount of information that a human can reasonably hope to remember (the start point, two interchange points and the end point, basically), it really doesn’t say anything about how map design can help or hinder that process. 

In other words: According to the study, New York has the most complex transit network in the world, but not necessarily the most complex map.

Source: ScienceAdvances Journal

Sidenote: If you’d like to read a proper usability test paper for transit maps, check out this one that Max Roberts did for the Paris Métro, comparing “standard” octolinear maps to his curvilinear version. [PDF]

Historical Map: Pneumatic Mail Tube Network, Paris, 1967

March 1, 2016
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Paris’ other underground transportation system. This is a fantastic and detailed map of the once-extensive network of pneumatic tubes used for whisking messages, post and telegrams from one side of the city to the other. Established in 1866, the system remained in use until 1984, when it was finally supplanted by “modern” technology like fax and telex machines. At the system’s apogee, there were over 460 kilometres (285 miles) of tubes running beneath the city.

Notable on this map are a few hand-drawn additions and deletions, suggesting that this map actually represents the system a few years after its nominal date of 1967. A small inset at the bottom right shows the (presumably separate and secure) governmental pneumatic tube network.

See also this map of New York’s similar network. 

Source: Eupalinos Ugajin/Flickr

Submission – Official Map: Weekday Rail Service Map for Belgian Rail

February 29, 2016
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Submitted by Jim, who says:

I came across this horrendous mess of lines and angles. Its the Weekday Service map for Belgian Rail – the national rail company for Belgium. Sorry its only in French/Dutch, but I think the drawing speaks for itself. I know making a map for a whole country is no easy feat but I feel like there must be some improvements to be made, especially around Brussels.

Transit Maps says:

Yep, that’s pretty awful, alright. The chaotic tangle of thin lines in and around Brussels is almost impossible to decipher, with lines criss-crossing at all angles without any attempt to layer or order them effectively. The insipid labelling doesn’t help either – local trains get a green number slapped on top of a green route line, with a low-contrast drop shadow between them – and the massive, sprawling map legend is pretty unattractive as well.

About the only thing I really like from this map is the “wide” station dot used to show where a single route number bifurcates (or joins together, depending on direction of travel). See route 4 at Kortijk, which splits to go to either Poperinge or Lille, France.

Our rating: Cheap and nasty; almost impossible to use in the area around Brussels. One star.

If you want to see pretty much the same map, just executed a heck of a lot better, check out Arne Nys’ unofficial map of rail in Belgium (November 2014, 3.5 stars).

Source: Belgian Railways website (PDF)