“This Red Line train is bound for Chard of Many Colors via Black Beans”. Taken at the Trader Joe’s West Newton store… mostly recognisable as the MBTA “T” map, but with a few additions and exclusions. The Silver Line is now a light shade of blue and promises wild salmon, while the commuter rail lines now seem to sprout randomly from the end of “T” lines in a variety of different colours. Nice hand lettering, though! Side […]
Submitted by Guy Delco, who says: I’m in Boston regularly for business, and find myself on the T often. Downloaded the EmbarkBOS app. It has a particularly good rendering of the MBTA system. I particularly like the way they capture the several commuter rail lines out of South and North Stations in varying shades of purple. You’ve probably seen it, but if not, here’s an image screen-capped from my phone. Transit Maps says: Actually, I […]
Taken from Cambridge Seven Associates’ 1965 Manual of Guidelines and Standards. A design classic in its purest form, only slightly marred by the poor registration in the manual itself (the dots should all be centred along each route line). Source: MIT Libraries
I retweeted this hilarious (If somewhat exasperated) map of expected MBTA rail services last night, but it’s too good not to share properly on the site. Apparently, there’s been a bit of snow in Boston lately. Source: Sara Morrison/Twitter (sent my way by quite a few readers) – link no longer active
An audacious plan for expansion of rapid transit in Boston by electrifying the existing commuter rail lines. Bears quite a few similarities to this fantastic diagram from 1945, which also advocated rapid transit along railroad rights-of-way. peopleneedaplacetogo: Map from a 1972 proposal for the Boston subway lines to take over the commuter rail lines far out into suburbia, with the Green Line reaching Newburyport, the Green Line reaching Haverhill, the Red Line Fitchburg and Ayer, […]
I thought I was all done with “to scale” maps of North American rail systems, but then Dennis McClendon (see previous posts from him) sent in this beautiful series of maps that he produced for Planning magazine back in 1984. Dennis himself says: Given this week’s Tumblr theme, I thought you might be interested in these maps that I did in 1984, when I worked for Planning magazine. The “new wave” of modern light rail […]
Thanks to pretty much the entire Internet for sending me a link to Boston Magazine’s story about Maxwell Roberts’ work on alternate MBTA “T” maps. I’m not going to review them all, but I would recommend that you click through and evaluate them yourself. Personally, the rotated hexalinear version shown above is my favourite.* What I’m interested in talking about is Roberts’ approach to transit map design. Whereas most designers will automatically gravitate to a […]
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
Posted by Seiji Tanaka on his Twitter account, here’s a fictional MBTA map at an LA Metro station for film/TV shooting. The map is at the fictional “Rockwater” station on the equally fictional Yellow Line (replacing the real world Orange Line). We’ve covered fictional transit maps from TV shows and movies before (this weird DC Metro map from the TV show “Leverage” springs to mind), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where the […]
Submitted by emotingviamemes, who says: This is an old Boston Elevated Railway Company map from a user guide I purchased at the wonderful Ward Maps store in Cambridge, MA. It’s a lovely relic of its time! The rest of the guide gives transit directions to landmarks and points of interest. I’m not exactly sure why the modern day Blue and Red Lines are the same color on here, unless some color had faded with age. […]
