All posts tagged: cartography

Official Map: Transports en Commun Lyonnais System Map, Lyon, France, 2012

March 15, 2012
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Requested by clubmaintenant. Another fine example of a multimodal map, this time from Lyon, France. This map shows Métro, tram, bus and funicular service, as well as indications of connections to SNCF mainline train services in a map that wears its London Underground influences on its sleeve. Have we been there? No. What we like: Lovely clear layout, with almost all lines reduced to horizontals or verticals – only a few 45-degree route lines are […]

Historical Map: East Berlin U-Bahn and S-Bahn, c. 1989

March 9, 2012
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As a direct contrast to my previous post, here’s the East Berlin perspective of transit in that divided city. Notice anything? West Berlin has almost been entirely excised from the map: a small, empty, featureless area totally encircled by extensive East German rail lines as well as the Berlin Wall: here referred to as the “state border”. A powerful statement of East German superiority if there ever was one. Have we been there? Yes. What […]

Official Map: Metro de Santiago, Chile, 2012

March 6, 2012
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Here’s another example of a metro map overlaid on a city’s street grid – this time from Santiago, Chile. This system has some marvellous innovations, with a bike sharing program (BiciMetro) and libraries (BiblioMetro) integrated at many stations, but the map somewhat fails to live up to those modern, forward-thinking ideas. Have we been there? No. What we like: Clean layout, with large easy-to-read (if not particularly stylish) text. The roads are given the right […]

Official Map: Bus Transit of Spokane, Washington, 2012

February 9, 2012
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Well, it certainly didn’t take long for people to set me right after my blanket statement that bus maps are “just” boring old geographically-accurate road maps with routes on them. I’ve had a flood of submissions, comments and tweets on the subject, complete with links to some very interesting examples of bus-only maps. This one, from the city of Spokane in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, definitely caught my eye. For a fairly […]

Official Map: Boston MBTA Rapid Transit/Key Bus Routes Map, 2012

January 23, 2012
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I haven’t really looked at the Boston MBTA map since I was there for a few days in the middle of 2008, but I certainly don’t remember it looking as bad as this. I’ve always been mildly annoyed by the fact that not all the stations on the surface street sections of the Green Line are labelled, but my overall impression back then was of a solid, well-designed map. Just a few short years later, […]

Unofficial Map: Unified Transit Map of Riga, Latvia by Viteks Bariševs

January 13, 2012
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Yesterday morning, I got an interesting email from Viteks Bariševs in response to my assertion that transit maps rarely show completely different transit modes (bus and rail, mainly) on the same map due to their differing natures. He is working on a totally unified transit map for Riga – and that includes showing a staggering 53 bus routes, 19 trolleybus routes and 9 tram routes – a monumental task! His map certainly looks impressive, showing […]

Official Map: Sao Paulo Metropolitan Transport Network, 2012

January 10, 2012
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Unusually, this map from the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo shows services offered by completely different transportation companies on the same map. To my mind, this type of integrated map needs to be used more often – travelers don’t necessarily care who offers the service, they just want to know if they can get from point A to point B. Have we been there? No. What we like: Comprehensive and all-encompassing. Great legend, even if […]

Unofficial Map: Integrated Transit Map of Kiev, Ukraine by Igor Skliarevsky

December 29, 2011
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Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to post until the New Year, but I couldn’t wait to show this exciting new map of transit in Kiev, Ukraine. This beautiful diagram was designed by Igor Skliarevsky in his own time, simply because he was frustrated with the limitations and design of the official map. As he says on his website (pardon the Google Translate from Ukrainian), “As a designer, I find it difficult to […]

Official Map: St. Louis MetroLink Light Rail, 2011

December 16, 2011
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Not every transit map has the multiple lines and complex interchanges of the London Underground, Paris Metro or New York Subway. Many systems have but a few lines which interact with each other in very simple ways: either crossing at a central point, or – as in this map’s case – sharing a common alignment for most of their length. But just because the map is simple doesn’t mean the designer shouldn’t pay attention to […]