Awesome old publicity photos that seem to feature a helpful TTC guide explaining the system map to Betty Draper. Also, the illustrations around the map itself are kind of incredible. The newfangled subway has only been open for three years at this point in time. Compare to this similarly amazing TTC photo from 1966. Source: torontohistory/Tumblr – site no longer active
Here’s a fun little piece sent my way by Montreal-based designer Corey Landels: the Métro de Montréal redesigned in the style of the iconic London Underground map. While it’s definitely a fun little homage, I do feel that Corey could have pushed a little harder to match the designs more closely and demonstrate a better understanding of the “Beckian” principles at play behind the design of the Tube map (in short, absolute simplification of route […]
Or to give it its full title: 1956 Populations and Estimated 1981 Populations of the Four Natural Sectors of Greater Winnipeg also General Form of Rapid Transit System Designed to Meet Basic Transit Needs of 1981 Notwithstanding Street Congestion. A lovely old planning map from the “Future Development of Public Transit in Greater Winnipeg” report by Norman D. Wilson. It shows the very general concept of a proposed rapid transit system along with the expected […]
Submitted by Sean Hunt, who says: A (sadly, slightly blurry) image of the Montreal Metro’s maps on the platform, displaying clearly which direction the line is going as well as the time to each station along the way. Transit Maps says: A nice, clear way to integrate travel information for a single line into a system-wide map. Reducing the width of the lines for the other routes instantly raises the designated route (here, the Blue […]
While we’re on the subject of the Toronto Subway map, here’s a beautiful version from the mid-1970s. This particular map is in a preserved subway carriage at the Halton County Radial Railway museum, and shows the subway as it was before the Spadina extension was opened in 1978. This is actually probably my favourite version of this system’s map: it has nice horizontal station labels alternating to either side of the route lines (although Finch […]
What goes on underneath the printed map. The lights for the future Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension stations are already in place in the upper left of the map. Fortunately, the map hasn’t been stolen by someone to reveal these inner workings: it’s simply been moved to the left. This being Toronto, however, it’s probably only a matter of minutes until someone makes off with it to hang on their bedroom/dorm wall. EDIT: As ytomatoboi points out, […]
Via: pw3n: Introduction: This is a fantasy/proposed transit network for Victoria, BC, Canada. I’ve been working on this off-and-on since the summer of 2011. It’s been a long process because I’ve tried to make this work not only as a nice looking graphic, but also as a maybe, somewhat, kinda plausible and functioning transit network. No destroying entire neighbourhoods and no monorails. However, with that in mind, I should mention I have absolutely no background […]
My Twitter feed and inbox are both absolutely overflowing with references to this map from the “xkcd’ web comic, so here’s a post about it! xkcd has always been a comic for geeks, and has a long history of awesome map-related work – my favourites include this Lord of the Rings movie narrative map, and the particularly carto-nerdy discussion of map projections – so it’s nice to see the strip’s attention turn to this particular facet […]
A rather lovely (and somewhat prescient) figure from a report prepared by the New York engineering firm of Jacobs & Davies for the City of Toronto in 1910. It shows plans for a system of “subway streetcars” – a combination of at-grade and subterranean routes – both ahead of its time and prohibitively expensive, especially for a modest city like Toronto at the time (which had a population of just 350,000). Source: levyrapidtransit.ca via @bgilliard
Lots of people have requested this map, but I’ve held off for a while as some extensions to the system and amendments to the map itself have been made. Calgary Transit actually released a preliminary version of this map last year and asked for public input on it via an on-line survey, which is good to see. However, it’s not the most thrilling map, and there’s still one quirk with it that could cause some […]
