Here’s an interesting find! This is the oldest original transit map that I’ve ever come across, showing the nascent horsedrawn omnibus lines of Paris in the early 19th century. The original source of the map – the State Library of Victoria in Australia, of all places! – tentatively dates the map to 1828, the year that the buses first made an appearance in the city. However, I’d be inclined to place it a little later […]
Via: clientsfromhell: I designed a bus route map with specific routes highlighted in various colours. Client: Hmm, how about we make the route with the pink line more wiggly? Me: I guess, but it represents a route with fixed stops. The roads are fairly straight. Client: The road is straight, sure, but I want the route to be more wiggly. Thanks. I have no words. Isn’t the whole idea to make the route look as direct and convenient […]
Submitted by Bruno Heemskerk, who says: Flixbus is quite a new company with bus services between several European countries. Transit Maps says: This is another good example of what I call a “boast map”, in that it shows the impressive extent of the network, but reveals very little about actual routing (that’s for the website to tell you). For example, a little poking around on that website tells me that you can only directly reach other destinations […]
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. […]
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 […]
Here’s a gem of an old map, sent my way by long-time follower, Mike Christensen. It’s an overview map of the UTA bus system in Salt Lake City from 1979, done in that cheerful cartoony illustration style that was so beloved at the time. I especially like how there’s a slight perspective to the whole map, as if we were looking towards Salt Lake City from an elevated viewpoint far to the south. I’m also loving […]
Submitted by Cyryl, who says: Kielce is a mid-sized (200,000 inhabitants) city in Poland, well-known across transport enthusiasts for its extremely inefficient transport system, consisting of over 60 infrequent (most of them make under 10 trips each way per day) lines. Local transport authority tried to make things a little bit easier… and produced something equally awful. It’s not easy to make meaningful scheme when you have nearly fifty lines on one stop, but this […]
Submitted by xoverit, who says: There was one other map inside of the 5 August 1935 Michigan Official Motor Bus Guide, and it’s quite different [to the Eastern Michigan Bus map previously featured – Cam], though suffering from the same cheap paper. Charmingly over-ornate, my favorite detail is that Poseidon seems to have taken up residence off of the Sleeping Bear Dunes. As for the map’s practical purpose, I guess it gets the job done. […]
While we’re talking about the Flatiron Flyer, I do like this simple little interactive map on the RTD website about the project. You simply click on your start and end destinations and it tells you which route(s) you can catch and what your fare options are. Neat! (Again, I think that the numbering would have worked better if the current FF5 had slid down to be FF3, moving FF3 and FF4 up one spot each, […]
Submitted by Steve Mohan, who says: RTD just began Service on the Flatiron Flyer, which is a basically a rebranding of all the Denver-Boulder routes. As part of this, they updated the timetables system-wide to include a map of the route. Because they’re selling this as BRT, they’ve added this rail-like route map. Personally, I like it. It’s simple and easy to read. The color coding of each route corresponds to the color of the […]
