A neat little “on the subway” character sketch, complete with a cameo from the New York subway map in the background. Love it!
Source: amirocks/Flickr
Illustration: On the Subway, with the Subway
Historical Map: Chicago Surface Lines (Streetcar) Transfer Ticket (date unknown)
A tiny little map of Chicago with streetcar lines and the underlying street grid printed on the obverse of a transfer ticket. It seems to be mainly used for indicating the time and place that the transfer was issued, rather than for any attempt at navigation of the system.
If I’m reading the clock face at the top of the ticket correctly, this transfer was issued at 3:35 (or 7:15) on July 2nd by a conductor on the Archer Avenue line. Note that this line is highlighted in red, and the zone that the transfer was issued in is also punched out on the map.
I’m presuming here that the road grid is the basis of the “zones” that the rather stern directions on the reverse of the ticket refer to. My favourite part is “Reverse riding will be subject to the questioning of the conductor.” Busted! I’m also thinking that the red “NE” and “SW” at the top right of the ticket indicate the initial direction of travel to make the conductor’s task easier in this regard. This makes sense, because then all the information that’s related to the Archer Avenue line itself is printed in red on top of the standard green ink… a clever cost-saving printing method.
I don’t have a date for this ticket, but it can’t be later than 1948, as that’s when the Archer Avenue line was abandoned. It certainly has a late 1930s-early 1940s feel to it.
Source: Metropolitan Planning Council (who erroneously label it as an “old CTA map”).
Photo: Red on Red
An old photo (taken in 2005 at Charles/MGH station according to the metadata over on Flickr), but even then the spider map was out of date. Love the red wall for the Red Line.
Source: quicklyfailing/Flickr
Historical Map: MAX Light Rail, Portland, Oregon, 2001
Portland’s MAX light rail system as it appeared just after the initial opening of the Red Line. Note that the Red Line doesn’t continue out to Beaverton as it does these days, but turns around just west of downtown. Later, the Yellow Line would turn around here as well, before it was rerouted down the transit mall.
The map itself does a nice job with a relatively simple system. The gracefully curved Willamette River is actually one of the better representations I’ve seen on a MAX map, and the four zones (1 through 3, plus the old Fareless Square) are shown with a minimum of fuss. The split platforms at PGE Park—as it was then—could have been handled better, as the eastbound platform just ends up looking like it’s missing a label. As well as the usual park-and-rides/transit centers/paid parking garages, the legend for this map also helpfully shows the location of food concessions and “Quick Drop” zones (what a lot of other transit systems call “Kiss-and-Ride”, which is just adorable). However, the legend itself might have been better placed at the top left, rather than the bottom right, just to give it a little more room to breathe.
Our rating: As a first effort after becoming a multi-line system, this isn’t half bad. Workmanlike rather than stunning, but it lays the groundwork for the maps that came after it. Three stars.
Source: The ZehnKatzen Times
Photo: Tokyo Metro Line Legend
Work in Progress: Making a Grid!
Making a grid! Using existing elements in a design to create a comprehensive, useful grid that can be applied across the rest of the map.
See my Sydney Festival Route Map project page for more information.
Updated DC Metro Veterans Day Map
Update: the Washington DC Metro Veterans Day Map now includes the Rosslyn–Pentagon shuttle bus service (shown as a dotted blue line with relevant call-out box). It’s like they’re reading my mind!
Source: WMATA website – link no longer active
Project: 2015 Sydney Festival Route Map
If you’ve ever been to Sydney in January, then you’ll know that the Sydney Festival is a big deal. Running for almost the entire month, it brings together the very best in the arts from around Australia and the world – music, dance, performance and more. So I was more than a little bit excited when I was commissioned to produce this thematic “route map” of highlighted events, to be used both online and in the Festival’s printed program/brochure.
While the Festival had produced a route map along similar lines in 2014 (left), they were looking to improve upon it and tie it in a little more with their overall branding, so they reached out to me for assistance. My original connection to Sydney certainly helped me get the job, I think!
The brief was quite open – I was given the branding colour palette (which is modern and bold, very appropriate for transit map design!), the fonts to use (Helvetica Neue Condensed), and an Excel spreadsheet of the “route lines” and “stops” with some required “interchange stations” noted. The order of the rest of the stations was left up to me – whatever was needed to make things fit nicely onto the required paper size (296 x 190mm, a little smaller than an A4 sheet).
It only took me a very few preliminary sketches to work out exactly what I wanted to do. The Festival Express line was described as the “essential selection”, so it made perfect sense for it to be a circle line, joining and linking all the other lines. This line had ten stations, with seven of these interchanging with other lines. I spaced these stations evenly around the circle, with an angle of 36 degrees between each one (360°/10 = 36°). This led to the first major design problem that I had to solve – getting these equally spaced stations in the right position so that I could use standard 45-degree route line angles for the rest of the map. Fortunately, this was solved easily by simply rotating all the stations nine degrees clockwise around the circle (36 + 9 = 45), as seen in the following GIF:
Now that the central circle was defined, I could use it and the “key station” as shown above in pink to help define a solid grid to build the rest of the diagram. It’s easier to show this in an image than it is to describe it:
Of course, the final placement of all the route lines was a bit more of a “trial by error” process than this, but the grid was instrumental in helping me make decisions! I also used the grid for the initial placement of station markers, although these were often moved around a bit to fit some longer event names in.
The previous route map had placed each event’s relevant page number from the printed program inside the station circles, which made them quite small and difficult to read. I moved them off the route lines and into colour-coded boxes next to the station labels. I had a bit of fun at interchanges, where the outline of the box becomes a gradient between the two or three colours of the intersecting route lines.
The map only went through a couple of iterations before being signed off on and accepted by the Festival, more than a week ahead of schedule. Personally, I really couldn’t be happier with the final result, and the client absolutely loves it as well.
Historical Map: Proposed City Railway Company Lines, New York, c. 1890s
Cutaway diagram, map, and accompanying text describing the construction of an electric motor-powered rapid transit subway that would have run through the basements of “fire-proofed buildings constructed along the line”. Despite shallow excavations of only nine-and-a-half feet, the blurb promises “no perceptible vibrations from the passage of trains”. Hmmm.
nyplmaps:
The City Railway Company, rapid transit passenger lines [189-?]
This map shows the location of a proposed underground rapid transit line and an “alternative line” in Manhattan and the south west Bronx. There is text describing the proposed line and a section cut diagram of transit tunnels.
Official Map: Veterans Day Service, Washington DC Metro
An interesting modification of the Washington DC Metro map sent my way by a couple of readers. On November 11, there will be no Blue Line trains at all, with those trains instead becoming “special” Yellow Line trains designed to get as many people to the National Mall as quickly as possible. The reason? The “Concert for Valor”, which is expected to draw a staggering 800,000 people (I really feel sorry for those who still have to go downtown to work normally that day).
Smithsonian station will be closed as it is “within the security zone for the concert”. In place of normal Blue Line services, a shuttle train will run between Arlington Cemetery and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport stations, as shown on the map with the unwelcome return of one of the ugly call out boxes that used to litter this map. The shuttle is shown as a dashed pink line, just to really reinforce that This Is Not The Blue Line.
Not shown at all, but described on WMATA’s Veterans Day Service Advisory web page, is a special express shuttle bus between Rosslyn and Pentagon stations. It might have been helpful to actually indicate this bus service on the map, as it allows riders from the western part of the network to access the southern part (and the Arlington Cemetery shuttle train) without having to brave the potentially massive crowds downtown.
Matt’ Johnson (as always, my man on the ground in DC) says that he expects these maps to be posted all over the system and in railcars for the big day… and then “liberated” by passengers as the day wears on.
Our rating: Takes the standard map and makes the required amendments to communicate the one-off service changes reasonably neatly, but really could have included information about the Rosslyn-Pentagon bus to help riders get around the “missing link” in the system more efficiently. Three stars.
UPDATE 10/24: A newer version of the map now includes the shuttle bus information as a blue dotted line with call-out box. Have an extra half star, WMATA!
Source: WMATA Veterans Day Service Advisory page – link no longer active