This is just beautiful.
Artist Hwan Lee has walked (yes, walked!) to 261 Métro stations in Paris, sketching their many and varied entrances, from the spectacular Hector Guimard-designed Art Nouveau édicules at Abbesses and Porte Dauphine to the more prosaic entrances of the modern Ligne 14. The lively sketches of each entrance are arranged nicely onto a stylised Métro map, with Lee’s walking path denoted by a trail of feet all over the city. Delightful!
Source: Hwan’s Behance profile
London’s certainly come a long way since the Metropolitan Line first opened in 1863 with wooden carriages and steam engines. I wonder what a Victorian-era Londoner would think of this modern skyline, all soaring, glimmering, curving glass?
Source: transportforlondon/Tumblr – link no longer active
Front cover for a 1977 map of BART and connecting bus services with some great late-1970s typography: tightly spaced Helvetica, yum! That BART icon is also pretty amazing and is just asking to be digitally recreated. However, there’s something screwy about that map, as much of BART appears to be located in or underneath the San Francisco Bay. Global warming, perhaps?
Hardly: some quick Photoshop analysis reveals that the underlying map has simply been erroneously rotated 180 degrees and flipped horizontally: that’s the San Mateo Bridge at the “top” of the Bay. Whoops!
Source: Luke O’Rourke/Flickr
About as simple and directly to-the-point as a line map can get. Really, it’s just a bulleted list, with each station’s icon serving as the bullet. Of note though, is how each icon has its own very distinct shape within the square (with a rounded corner) framework. Each is easily identifiable, even from a bit of a distance.
Source: dogseat/Flickr
Another great planning map from almost 100 years ago. Melbourne, of course, is one city that has retained its trams over the years, rather than tearing them all out, only to eventually replace them with light rail or new trams in the modern day.
Here’s a great map that we’ve just added to our archives today. Authored by the M&MTB’s Chief Engineer T.P. Strickland in 1923 and overlaid on a Sands & McDougall map of Metropolitan Melbourne, it shows the extent of the cable tram network and the electric routes inherited by the Board four years earlier in 1919, and a slew of proposed lines as outlined in the “General Scheme for Future Tramways.” Some of these were eventually constructed, many others remain unrealised.
Most curious: the proposal for lines on the Footscray system to Sunshine and the City via Dynon Road; the original plan to join Spencer St/Clarendon St via Hanna St (now Kings Way) to Toorak Rd; a curious loop arrangement near Caulfield Station; the extensive network in the bayside suburbs of Elsternwick, Glenhuntly, and Moorabbin; and all of the connections in the inner northern suburbs of Fitzroy, Northcote, Preston, Brunswick, and Coburg.
This is a nice little map from Jonah, whose transit map version of his Noland Trail Map I featured back in July last year. The map certainly does a good job of placing the new light rail line in a regional context, with the Elizabeth River and the Interstate highways defining the surrounding area nicely. Points of interest and county/city borders are nicely shown as well.
However, I disagree a bit with Jonah’s informational hierarchy. I believe that all the Hampton Roads Transit services – be they light rail, commuter bus (yet another MAX acronym!), regular bus or ferry service – should be higher up the hierarchy than the Amtrak and Greyhound services which operate far more on an inter-regional/national level. That is to say, local commuters and residents really don’t use them on a regular basis to get around the area. In particular, having Greyhound buses shown as a thick, dark grey line, while the Hampton Roads buses are a recessive, hard to see, light grey makes little sense. They should also be grouped together in the legend, rather than having the Amtrak/Greyhound services split them up as they currently do.
Minor things: I find the double curve between the MacArthur Square and Civic Plaza stations a little overly-fussy (a single 135-degree angle would work better); it’s Amtrak, not Amtrack; and the legend could have less Random Acts of Capitalization in it… “Daily” is capitalized, for example, but “complex” is not? I personally prefer legend text to be set in sentence case (easier to read, only proper names get capitalized), but if you’re going to write in title case, you need to be consistent about the way you apply it.
It’s still a very attractive map, and certainly one I could envision at bus stops and light rail stations in the area with a little more polish.
Downtown Norfolk Transit Network (Draft)
For fun last year, I did a transit map version of my Noland Trail map. Since then I’ve really wanted to do a real transit map, but unfortunately I live in one of the most transit-boring regions of the U.S..
The main focus is the new light-rail line (The Tide), and its connectivity with the existing bus transportation system. I was excited that light-rail was coming to the region, and bummed when I saw the map. I guess I’m spoiled by all the great work on Transit Maps. Included on this map is the new Amtrak NE Regional train which originates from the downtown area, Greyhound Bus routes, and all of the connecting arterial bus routes.
Bottom line and the point to all my side projects – had fun creating, learning and expanding my skillset, on another (local) map project.
Rather clever and well-executed “under construction” signage seen in Tottenham Court station back in 2010.
Source: Luigi Rosa/Flickr
Here’s an interesting map that shows a plan for rapid transit that city engineers envisioned for Seattle way back in 1920, almost 100 years ago!
The map shows a subway running beneath Third Avenue from Virginia to Yesler, coming to the surface near the railroad stations – essentially the route followed by the present-day Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Trains going up to Capitol Hill would follow a line up Pine Street that would be alternately underground and elevated, ending at 15th Avenue East. An elevated line would serve Pigeon Point in West Seattle, while surface rapid transit would connect with the existing streetcar service at stations in Fremont, lower Queen Anne, and the University District.
Source: Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr
Submitted by keks63, who says:
I really enjoy your blog, so I thought I would submit the transit map of my nearest German city. The network features 9 tram lines (1 to 10, they did not make a line 7 for some reason), and several bus and ferry lines. The city has about 200,000 inhabitants, and the tram serves all the important areas, you do not need a car to live in Magdeburg, which is very nice. I find this map quite good to use, however there is some confusion going on around “Alter Markt” and “Allee-Center” stations. But all in all, I think it’s a good transit map for a medium-sized German city.
Transit Maps says:
This is almost the archetypal German transit map: clean and clinical design that conveys a lot of information without any fuss. The trams are given the highest priority, followed by the bus lines and then the S-bahn, which has its station names highlighted in the distinctive green used almost universally across Germany for such services.
While I don’t necessarily find the Alter Markt/Allee-Center area difficult to understand, the way the routes seem to overlap randomly as they cross here is a little odd. There’s also one glaring mistake: the icons cover the station name at Jerichower Platz on the east side of the map where tram lines 5 and 6 join.
Our rating: About as German as a transit map can be. Three-and-a-half stars.
Source: Official MVB website
