All posts tagged: commuter rail

Official Map: Commuter Rail Strip Map, Lisbon, Portugal, 2013

July 8, 2013
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A lovely above-door strip map from Portugal’s capital. By sacrificing geographical reality (only the Tagus River gives any sense of orientation), the three lines are able to be laid out for maximum clarity and legibility. The comprehensive legend has symbols for connections to the Metro, the private Fertagus commuter rail line to Setúbal, ferries, and buses. It even has a “camera” icon for stations with points of interest nearby, and a little “umbrella and beach […]

Future Map: “ProjectConnect” Central Texas High-Capacity Transit Vision

June 27, 2013
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I’ve featured a couple of dodecalinear maps recently (both for Amsterdam – here and here), but this future transit map for Austin and San Antonio has got ‘em covered. It’s a hexadecalinear map. That is, there are sixteen possible directions for a route line to head from any given point. Interestingly however, the angles between the route lines aren’t evenly arranged. Instead of 0 – 22.5 – 45 – 67.5 – 90 degree arrangement, this […]

Official Map: RENFE Cercanías Madrid Commuter Rail, 2013

June 12, 2013
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Following on my review of Madrid’s old-is-new Metro Map (June 2013, 3.5 stars), I’ve had quite a few requests for Madrid’s commuter rail map, operated by the state-owned RENFE rail company – so here it is! The map is a very solid effort, with unusual but effective station markers: small squares that “cut through” the route lines. The overall design is very angular, with no smoothing of the route lines or the zone boundaries that […]

Photo: Detail of a Province of Milan Transit Map, Italy

June 6, 2013
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Looks like a visually interesting and abstract map, but I haven’t been able to track down a full version on the Internet. Looks like it might show bus service (green and thin black lines) and regional rail (thick grey line at the bottom of the picture). Does anyone know where I can find the whole map? Source: mikek/Flickr

Official Map: San Francisco Bay Area Regional Transit Map, 2013

May 30, 2013
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Submitted by Reed Wagner, who says: This map appears to be part of a greater “wayfinding” campaign by the SF Bay Area MTC – it appears at major Caltrain, Muni and BART stations and presumably is elsewhere (I took this picture at Caltrain 4th & King. In comparison to the maps made by Calurbanist, it seems that the official MTC map is falling short in every regard other than information overload in a messy form. Transit Maps says: It’s pretty […]

Clockwise/Counter-Clockwise: the Berlin Ringbahn Map

May 17, 2013
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That’s enough from Boston for a while… let’s head to Berlin to look at this odd little map.  It shows the S41 and S42 S-Bahn lines, which travel clockwise and counter-clockwise, respectively, along the Ringbahn, a 37km (23 mile) loop around Berlin. While the map is packed with information – interchanges with other S- and U-Bahn services, stations with transfers to Deutsche Bahn trains, and estimated travel times between major stations – it just feels […]

Unofficial Map: MBTA Map Contest Entry by Michael Kvrivishvili

May 17, 2013
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Here’s another entry for the MBTA’s map contest, sent to me by Michael Kvrivishvili, a graphic and interactive designer from Moscow. Michael has chosen to show all of the services on his map that the MBTA does on their map – subway, BRT, commuter rail, key bus routes and ferries. He pulls it off pretty well, too, although the convoluted network of bus routes is always going to look a little busy. Like Kerim, Michael’s map […]

Unofficial Map: Kerim Bayer’s MBTA Map Contest Entry

May 15, 2013
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While I’m personally not too keen on the MBTA’s map contest, I totally respect the rights of those who still wish to participate. As they’ve told me in conversation, kudos and recognition can be very strong reasons for less experienced or amateur designers to enter. A couple of those designers have sent their entries in to me to review and share with you – this one’s from Kerim Bayer, who also produced this rather striking map […]

Visualization: Topology versus Geography in Transit Maps

May 14, 2013
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Here’s a nice little animated diagram from Fathom Information Design that compares the two polar opposites of transit mapping using Boston’s MBTA rail network as an example. Click through to play around with it, and see the benefits and drawbacks of the two approaches. It’s also super fun to watch the map morph between the two styles. In real life, most transit maps fall somewhere between these two extremes: very few use such a strict […]

Historical Map: The City of Los Angeles Showing Railway Systems, 1906

May 13, 2013
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Here’s a great old map of Los Angeles showing the already-booming rail transit network that was found in Los Angeles in the early days of the 20th Century. Electric trolleys first ran in LA in 1877, but  the “Red Cars” of the Pacific Electric and the “Yellow Cars” of the narrow-gauge Los Angeles Railway had only appeared a mere five years before this map was produced. Their lines are represented on the map in appropriate […]