All posts tagged: cartography

Historical Map: Sydney Buses CBD Map, 2000

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Historical Maps, Unofficial Maps

From the back of a Gregory’s Street Directory by the look of things, and very much in their house style. I’m not sure this map is actually helping things that much: Sydney’s labyrinthine network of streets is partially to blame, but the flow of arrows and lines could also be much clearer. The strange decision to make the background black for the second half of the suburb list (to the right of the map) has […]

Official Map: Dallas DART Light Rail System, 2012

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Official Maps

Hot on the heels of Miami’s new Orange Line comes another one: this one belonging to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) system. This new line will eventually bring light rail to DFW airport, an essential transportation link in any large city, I feel. Have we been there? No. What we like: Relatively clean and simple compared to many American transit maps. The street grid is visible, but subsidiary to the main information. The downtown […]

Official Map: Miami-Dade Metrorail System, Florida, 2012

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Official Maps

Miami’s Metrorail just opened a new station at Miami International Airport, and decided to create an entirely new line (the Orange Line) to celebrate. Along with that, comes a new system map… which is, unfortunately, pretty terrible. Have we been there? No. What we like: The icon for overnight/long-term parking lots is actually pretty neat. What we don’t like: Poorly chosen background colours make the road grid hard to distinguish from the background. On that […]

Historical Map: Old Cleveland RTA Route Map

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Historical Maps, Photography

This looks like it may be affixed to a door or wall of an old train carriage (see the window just above the placard), which means the type on the rail map is incredibly small. The naming of the main railway station as “Public Square” rather than “Tower City” means this map is pre-1991 (when the station changed names), although the general aesthetics and typography would lead me to suspect that this map is from […]

Historical Map: Chicago Plan Commission – Rapid Transit Facilities, 1945

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Historical Maps

Here’s a gorgeous pre-CTA planning map from Chicago in 1945, outlining all sorts of grandiose ideas for expansion of the subway system, almost none of which have actually come to pass. There appears to be a proposed second Loop, which would have run more east-west than the existing one. There’s also a planned subway line heading out to the northwest, but this doesn’t follow the same alignment as the Blue Line, and a subway line […]

Historical Map: Tokyo Railway Map (English), 1959

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Historical Maps

This is not a map of Tokyo’s subway system, but main line trains. The subway lines are the blue crossed lines contained mostly within the circle of routes at the center right of the map. Just 14 years after World War II’s conclusion, the sheer amount of tracks in just the Tokyo/Yokohama area is astounding. Not the greatest cartography ever, however: the map is a bit of a mess. Source: Rob Ketcherside/Flickr

Unofficial Maps: Bus Routes of Greater Israel/Palestine

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Unofficial Maps

Here’s a pair of maps that transcend my normal method of reviewing maps and demand a more serious approach, as well as a commentary on the power of design to shape and influence our thoughts. These two maps show exactly the same thing – bus services out of Jerusalem and into Palestine. The route lines are identical on each map. The first map presents the services from an Israeli perspective, while the second map presents […]

Historical Map: Hudson River Tubes, 1909

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Historical Maps

Basically an advertisement for the newly-opened Hudson River Tubes — still in use by PATH trains today, over 100 years later — with the H&M lines proudly and boldly displayed in red. Planning for the future is also on display, making the service look somewhat bigger than it really was. From my limited research, it seems that the extensions shown in Manhattan were never actually built. The Hudson Terminal Buildings (shown in the photo inset […]