Submission – Historical Map: Streetcars of Kingston, Ontario, 1910 by Noah Gaffran

January 13, 2022
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Submitted by Noah, who says:

Here’s my map of the streetcar services operated by the Kingston, Portsmouth & Cataraqui Electric Railway in 1910. I was inspired to do this after seeing several maps of historic tram networks including the ones on this website [See my historical maps of Portland, Spokane and Yakima – Cam].

The system opened on Princess St in 1893. By around 1898 it had reached its largest extent as shown in this map.

In 1910 the system was increasing service on most routes but the Williamsville shuttle eventually closed due to poor track quality and ridership.

Unfortunatley, the system was plagued with financial troubles. In 1905 after a dispute with the city, the system was taken over by a group of citizen owners who continued to operate it as a public service, but it would never again turn a profit. Countless financial difficulties and disputes with the city and the electric utilities filled the 1910s and 1920s, but the streetcars kept running. It even survived a carbarn fire in 1909.

Sadly, a second fire in 1930 proved to be the last straw. All but one passenger trams were burned as well as the carbarn itself, and it was decided to abandon the unprofitable lines once and for all.

The styling for the diagram itself was inspired a bit by the Montreal metro’s dark background, bright lines, and combination of sharp corners in the landscape and smooth bends on the lines themselves. I went for bright fluorescent colours to stand out against the dark background. The route names are as far as I know accurate but I added the numbers. Just for fun I also added the mainline connections of the time as well.

Transit Maps says:

Nice work, Noah! I always love it when someone takes the time to research and document old streetcar networks, preserving that knowledge for the future. I often find that information about them is very fragmented… a bit in this book, something on a wiki there, an old diagram from somewhere else, and so on… so compiling everything in one easy-to-read map is a great way to consolidate that knowledge.

Design-wise, I like the dark background contrasted with the bright route lines… very stylish! I wonder if there’s a better way to show the main line railroads, as the dashed lines look like under construction roads at first glance. A thinner solid line in a colour that’s not quite as bright as the streetcar lines (a purple/mauve maybe?) might work.

As this is very definitely a map and not a diagram, perhaps you need a scale bar and maybe even some sort of period-appropriate compass rose. Labelling the bodies of water would be good as well.

The main area that needs some love is typography. It looks like you’ve used Microsoft’s Calibri throughout, which is a fairly workmanlike, generic “Office” typeface – not really period appropriate or visually striking. If you have access to them, then an early 20th century gothic typeface like Franklin Gothic or News Gothic could be a better choice. Push yourself here, as good typography can really elevate a project like this.

Submission – Unofficial Future Map: Consolidated Rail Map of San Francisco by Griffin Ashburn

January 10, 2022
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Submitted by Griffin, who says:

Attached is a diagram/sort-of fantasy map I recently made showing all the various rail services and connections in San Francisco. I’ve never been a fan of how Muni shows service connections on their official map – BART is typically included, though never Caltrain, nor BART’s connection to the airport, which I think is a fairly important to have.

I also decided to include the F Market & Wharves street car line, which while not connected that seamlessly to the rest of the Muni “metro” system, still serves as an important line for commuters in the city. Also included is the upcoming central subway expansion on the T Third Street line, which brings the line north into downtown with new underground stops north of market street.

Finally, it’s worth noting that this map depicts Muni’s service patterns prior to all of the various COVID cuts, with all light rail lines continuing downtown under Market Street.

This was the map of any sort that I’ve made, done as a challenge to myself to see if I could even do such a thing. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out (or honestly more shocked I was even able to get it done).

Transit Maps says:

Welcome to the wonderful world of transit map making, Griffin!

This is a good, solid effort that builds upon the existing Muni style to include more unified transit information for travellers, which is pretty much always a good thing. Showing BART all the way down to San Francisco International Airport is a great idea, so well done there. It’d be nice to perhaps show the SamTrans “SFO” bus from the airport terminals to Milbrae (which are timed to connect with Caltrain services) just to provide a more complete picture of transit options at the airport, but that may be outside the scope of a rail diagram like this.

If there’s an area that does need work, it’s the labelling of stations. Even though the official Muni Metro map does it, I will never be in favour of labels that are the same colour as the line they serve – there simply isn’t enough contrast between yellow text and a white background to be easily readable, for example. The different colours used also make the map look disjointed and give visual preference to darker labels. All the labels represent a station, so they should all have the same importance in the diagram’s hierarchy. Pick one dark hue with sufficient contrast to the background – it doesn’t have to be black, as the London Underground map shows – and stick with it throughout.

Similarly, I just can’t endorse labels set all in lower-case. Just don’t. Proper capitalisation of place names aids readability, and looks so much better.

Also, work a bit on the placement of your labels relative to the stations they serve – be consistent with how far away they are and whether they sit above/below or alongside the station symbol. The label for the SF Zoo at the end of the L-Taraval line seems to be floating in empty space, for example.

Finally, this isn’t really a comment on this map but on the whole Market Street arrangement of services, with the F streetcars running on the surface, the Muni Metro cars on the first underground level and BART at the bottom – all requiring some kind of transfer between them. Is this level of detail – splitting all these services up into discrete “boarding areas” joined by a connecting transfer line – necessary on a map like this, or is the detail as shown here okay? It’s something to ponder…

Our last word: A very solid first effort (I’ve seen plenty of unified San Francisco rail maps that aren’t as good as this), though some love could be given to the labelling to make it even better.

Source: Griffin’s website

Historical Map: Baltimore United Railways & Electric Co., 1929

January 7, 2022
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A charming map of streetcar services – and a few of those newfangled gas buses! – in central Baltimore from 1929. Points of interest are clearly illustrated, and the map is surrounded by vignettes of life and architecture in this “historic, pleasant, thriving city”. A prominent cartouche proclaims that “STREET CARS and BUSES in Baltimore go wherever there is anything to see…” and little streetcars have been drawn running along major thoroughfares.

As a side note, the United Railways & Electric Co. as shown on this map declared bankruptcy in 1933, and was reorganized into the Baltimore Transit Co. in 1935. The last streetcar in Baltimore ran until 1963.

Source: David Rumsey Map Collection

Submission – Fantasy Map: Service Patterns on the GO Transit Lakeshore Line by Ze Han

January 5, 2022
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Submitted by Ze, who says:

As a little mapping exercise I made a fantasy-ish strip map today of what tiered service patterns on the GO Transit Lakeshore Line could hypothetically look like after the Regional Express Rail (RER) project is finished. Some of it is fairly reasonable/already proposed/under construction, such as the East Harbour or Park Lawn stations, Eglinton Crosstown, Ontario Line, etc.; while some parts of the map are a little more far in the future or are unproposed thus far, such as a GO service to Brantford, Cobourg, Uxbridge, etc.

I based the map design on West Japan Railway Company’s strip maps as I wanted to kind of demonstrate a parallel as to how Torontonians/people from the GTA can reimagine the GO Transit system; not just as a simple commuter rail system, but a more complex rapid transit or regional system with different service patterns, like in Japan. Unlike Japan, however, I also included some “limited express” services that I’d imagine GO could hypothetically operate as well, adopting the “limited express” model that Japan Railways employs for longer-distance rail.

Transit Maps says:

A rather lovely hypothetical diagram here, and one that definitely wears its influences proudly on its sleeve – the JR West lineage is immediately obvious, right down to the “some trains do not stop at this station” central black dot symbol and leader lines joining stations to connecting services information.

If there’s one thing I’d like to see as an improvement, it’d be a consistently-applied horizontal grid. At the moment, most of the routes on the opposite sides of Union Station don’t quite line up horizontally and it creates a bit of visual imbalance – something is “off”, even if the viewer doesn’t quite know what is causing it. I’ve demonstrated how using a grid and aligning horizontal elements to it across the entire width of the diagram could work below. Note how aligning routes to the grid allows the ST and LE branches to mirror each other exactly on their unified horizontal axis instead of the curve on the ST branch finishing further to the right as it does on Ze’s version.

Of course, the grid could then be used as a way to place the connecting services information consistently as well, and so on… forming an underlying basis for the whole diagram.

Our final word: An excellent application of a proven strip map design that I feel could be made even better by adherence to an underlying grid to give a little bit more structure to the diagram.

Submission – Historical Map Recreation: Southern Electric 1934 Carriage Map by Paul Cooper

January 3, 2022
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Submitted by Paul, who says:

Attached is my re-draw of the Southern Electric Map, dated 1934, showing the electrified services (using 3rd rail top-contact 750v DC) serving South London. These were displayed in frames inside carriages, normally printed on heavy-grade card.

The temptation to correct some of the ‘issues’ of the original (the station names appearing over lines, odd spacing of lettering that doesn’t appear to be consistent and some rather interesting angles for the station names) was real, but I went with originality…

I believe this was one of the last designs to show the geographical nature of the network, before the tube-inspired topological maps took hold.

Was a real labour of love to redraw – but it’s a lovely piece to have on display.

Transit Maps says:

I managed to track down an image of the original map that Paul has so lovingly recreated and it looks like he’s done a really fantastic job of it. Perhaps the background is a little overly dark and the blue a little too aqua – but if Paul’s aiming for an aged, yellowed paper look then it’s actually quite effective.

I definitely agree with Paul’s view on alterations to these old maps when digitally recreating them. Generally, I’ll only ever fix egregious spelling mistakes and leave the rest pretty much as it was on the original. I find that you can actually learn quite a bit about design trends and typography of different eras if you do – compare the relatively loose letter spacing of the 1950s to the extremely tight letter spacing of the 1970s, for example.

Well done, Paul – this looks great and you should be proud of your efforts to recreate it so faithfully.

Historical Map: Express Road Services Through The Thames Valley, c. 1950

January 2, 2022
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Starting the New Year off right with this lovely illustrated map of coach services from London through the Thames Valley to destinations like Oxford, Reading and Worcester. Designed by illustrator Derrick Sayer, the simplified route diagram is presented on the back of a beautiful swan, acting as a symbol of the Thames. Another contemporaneous poster by the same illustrator uses a jumping fish as the backdrop to the diagram, to slightly less visual effect.

At the time, South Midland Motor Services were an operating division of the Thames Valley Traction Co., explaining why routes of both companies are shown on the map. Service to Oxford ran about once an hour, alternating between the Henley and High Wycombe routes.

Source: David Rumsey Map Collection

Submission – Unofficial Map: NYC Ferries by Evelyn Fischer

November 1, 2021
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Submitted by Evelyn, who says:

Hello! I just thought I’d send you my attempt at making the NYC Ferry network a bit less intimidating to navigate. While many of the issues are with the network itself (the stopping patterns are absolutely bizarre), I’ve always thought the official map made the network far harder to navigate than it should be. So here’s my attempt to fix that!

Transit Maps says:

Like Evelyn, I’ve never really been a fan of the official NYC Ferries map: it’s sloppily drawn and can’t decide if it’s a Vignelli-style diagram or a geographic map. Eventually it fails at being either, with too much room being taken up just to show the trip all the way out to Rockaway that could be better used to expand the complex East River routings and some absurdly overly-detailed coastline in Jamaica Bay.

Evelyn’s solution is distinctly diagrammatic and just looks so much better. The bold line colors cased in black really pop out of the sombre blue and grey background and are easier to follow as result. Some slight tweaking of the official colours has been made, especially to the Soundview route, which is much lighter than the official dark purple. Perhaps this makes the Rockaway and Soundview colours a bit too similar, but some tinkering could fix that pretty easily.

Labelling is generally good, though perhaps I would have stacked the Pier 11/Wall St label just to keep it well away from the St. George route line. The Brookfield Place Terminal and Corlears Hook labels are the only other area of worry: it might be possible to slide Brookfield Place a little further to the left to get a bit more empty space between the two labels.

Of particular note is that even though this is a schematic diagram, Evelyn has implied the long haul out to Rockaway without having to take up huge amounts of empty space in doing so – great work!

One thing I personally don’t like on ferry maps is too many sharp curves – ferries don’t make tight 90-degree turns out on the water, but big, lazy arcs. So the section from Astoria to Roosevelt Island to Long Island City – a whole bunch of stacked 90-degree angles – bothers me on both versions of the map. I feel there has to be a solution that looks more naturalistic: maybe the route uses curves similar to those at the Brooklyn Navy Yard stop at Roosevelt Island, just to break up the rigidness of that part of the route?

Other things I’d like to see: some sort of dash on the Governors Island (note that there’s no apostrophe in the name!) route line to immediately indicate its seasonal nature. The Staten Island Ferry – no, it’s not a NYC Ferry route, but it absolutely should be shown as an alternative for the travelling public. Finally, I believe that a route from Pier 11 to Coney Island will be launching before the end of the year, so it’s be great to see a version that incorporates that.

Our final word: Compact, bright, and more than a little bit fun. Really, really nice work!

Submission – Historical Map: Amsterdam Tram Network, 1930 by Alain Lemaire

October 28, 2021
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Submitted by Alain, who says:

I have created a map of the Amsterdam tram network as it was in 1930. In this year, the network reached its greatest extent in terms of number of lines: 25.

It was rather easy to find out the trajectory of each line, as there are plenty of digitised resources available online. I used another map I created last year of the current tram network as a base, and made the appropriate changes from there. I mainly wanted to show the underlying structure of the network in 1930 (which is strikingly similar to today’s) and the trajectory of each individual line.

Initially, I didn’t plan on including individual stops, primarily because I couldn’t find a good source for it. Someone else pointed me to a digitised copy of a booklet from 1930, including all stops for each line, available online via the website of the ‘Stadsarchief Amsterdam’ (Amsterdam city archives). That allowed me to figure out where the stops would have been back then, though I didn’t label them, as that would have distracted from the original purpose of this map.

The map legend shows all lines with their route signs as they were in shown on the front and back end of each car, including the original line colours. These line colours are still displayed on today’s (digital) tram displays, though they have lost their original meaning a long time ago.

If you want to read more about the design process, please visit my blog. It’s in Dutch, but I’m confident Google Translate will do a pretty decent job translating it to English [I can confirm that this is the case – Cam].

Transit Maps says:

Now, this is a project that I heartily endorse, having now done many similar maps myself. And this one’s a beauty that really highlights just how similar the network in 1930 is to that of the modern day: there may be less routes now, but they still traverse much the same routes as then.

What really makes this piece work for me is the attention to detail. The diagram uses multiples of 30 degrees to draw its route lines—immediately evocative of a hexagon—so Alain uses the hexagon as a motif throughout the map. Numbered route bullets, station dots and even the decorative border framing the diagram all get the treatment, yet it never looks overdone and the whole design remains nicely understated. Particularly nice is how the symbol for one-way stops are a “slice” made by overlapping two hexagons and removing the part where they both overlap. Both the rather lovely typeface and the old-time spelling of place names give the diagram some lovely verisimilitude as well – these really sell it as a period piece.

I also welcome the inclusion of the distinctive coloured patterns used on each route’s headboard in the legend, as these are such a distinctive feature of old tram lines (Sydney also used a very similar system). Some say that these headboards were designed to assist illiterate riders, but I always feel that they just made each tram more easily-identifiable at a distance.

Alain’s handling of the insane terminus at Amsterdam Centraal is pretty awesome, with all the lines that go around what must have been a very crowded loop collapsing down to one line with the cross-town lines “bumping” around them. Line 22, which looks like it just made clockwise laps around Amsterdam Centraal (to the ferry terminal on the IJ?) is a very curious thing indeed! I’d perhaps like to see this level of detail extended to all the turnaround loops and one way sections that the system used, as I find that type of thing fascinating, but I can also see why Alain opted not to.

Our final rating: A gorgeous historical map that I could look at for hours. Great work, Alain!

Source: Alain’s website

Submission – Sea-Tac Airport People Mover Diagram, 2021

October 27, 2021
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Submitted by Chris, who says:

Sea-Tac has three inter-terminal people mover systems. They’ve introduced a new system map with color routing designations.

Transit Maps says:

Boy, this diagram makes really hard work out of something fairly simple. The colour-coding is fine if it helps people find the right train to get to their terminal, though I personally never had a problem with understanding that the North train loop took me to the North satellite terminal.

However, the diagram itself is unnecessarily vague about just about everything that could be useful to know, like: where are the stairs/escalators/elevators that move you between levels to get to the train platforms? And where exactly are the A and D gate train platforms located? They seem to float in some sort of limbo that’s not actually physically connected to the terminal on the diagram, which is just insane. In reality, they sit underneath the departures level about at about the point where the top layer narrows down, which might just be a handy detail to know if I’m using this diagram to find out how to get there.

All this ridiculousness seems to be in aid of keeping the two satellite loop lines (Blue and Green now, I guess) as visually simple as possible, but is it worth it if the rest of the diagram is such hard work? The drop shadow effect between the two levels of the airport is very pretty, but do we need it at all? It just seems to add detail and visual clutter where none is needed.

Our final word: A convoluted mess that’s probably going to stress airport travelers out more than they already are. Good luck using this to transfer between terminals in a hurry!

Source: Photo by Chris

Submission – Official Map: Green Line Route Map at New SLC Airport Station

October 26, 2021
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Submitted by Mike, who says:

The construction of the new terminal at Salt Lake City International Airport necessitated constructing a new light rail station, which opened today. One interesting new thing for UTA at the station is a line map. While these have existed on board UTA’s TRAX light rail and FrontRunner commuter rail trains for a while, this is the first time they have used this kind of map at a station. I do feel that this kind of map is useful in this context. However, I feel the map is lacking somewhat. First off, it might not be obvious to riders new to the system that the icons represent transfer points to other UTA rail services, so a legend might be helpful. Another big complaint is that UTA continues to leave off any information about bus services, which would be helpful in encouraging riders to use connecting buses. On the other hand, the one really helpful thing that this line map does include is mentioning that the Green Line does go downtown, which is probably the most sought after piece of information for people arriving at the airport and looking to ride the train downtown.

Transit Maps says:

Thanks for the photo, Mike! It’s good to see that UTA is moving in the right direction when it comes to passenger information – particularly at the airport, which may be people’s first introduction to the city’s light rail system.

This strip map does the job, but still somehow feels a bit loose and incomplete compared to the best examples from around the world – Berlin’s being a prime example. Part of it is the typeface, which I believe is Hoefler&Co.’s Whitney. While it’s a fine typeface that is designed to be used for wayfinding purposes, I find its use here a bit flat and underwhelming. At first glance, it comes across looking more like Microsoft’s Calibri, which is almost never the desired result. Some quick fixes: move all the labels to the left a bit (to match the gap to the icons on the left of the route line), track all the letters out a bit for readability and increase the font size as much as possible.

I think the icons to the left of the line are generally fine and easily understood. It’s explained at the top of the map that this light rail line is the “Green Line”, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to assume that the “Blue Line” and “Red Line” – which also share a similar icon – are also light rail. The “S-Line” and “FrontRunner” are a bit more problematic as they’re not explained quite as conveniently. Adding “Commuter Rail” underneath the FrontRunner label solves that problem – maybe it needs to also be “S-Line Streetcar”? I’d try to avoid adding a legend to a simple strip map like this as it just increases the amount of information that needs to be parsed by a reader.

Our final word: Has all the elements of a fine strip map, but somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It’s still perfectly usable, but not quite as good as it could be.