All posts tagged: commuter rail

Unofficial Map: UTA TRAX and Frontrunner – a plea for good transit map design

April 17, 2013
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Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s an unofficial map of Salt Lake City’s TRAX and FrontRunner rail system. I’ve feautured another unofficial map of this system previously (December 2012, 3.5 stars), but this one is interesting because it contains a message seemingly aimed at the UTA, almost pleading for better map design. It reads: This map was created by CLF as an attempt to show how a UTA rail map can be laid out clearly […]

Salt Lake City UTA TRAX and FrontRunner: now officially the most embarrassing transit maps in the U.S.

April 16, 2013
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Seriously. Do they even care at all any more? With the opening of the new TRAX light rail Green Line extension to the airport, the UTA has updated their website with new maps. Well, only partially, which is bad enough in itself. If you go to the System Maps page, you still get a combined pre-extension TRAX/FrontRunner map (reviewed here, Dec 2012, half a star). However, if you click on the TRAX or FrontRunner icons, […]

Unofficial Map: Dallas-Fort Worth Rail Transit by Gabe Tiberius Columbo

April 16, 2013
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Gabe says: I’ve been frustrated with the Dallas rail map for a while, and decided to make a comprehensive diagram of Dallas-Fort Worth rail transit. Transit Maps says: Simply put, this is a beautiful diagrammatic map and is far more visually attractive than the official DART map (August 2012, 3 stars). There’s a very elegant, restrained feeling to this: from the subtle grey background and typography to some excellent, slightly unusual colour choices for the […]

Fantasy Map: Victoria Integrated Transit Authority by Owen Lett

April 15, 2013
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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 […]

Historical Map: Isometric S-Bahn Map, Stuttgart, 2007

April 4, 2013
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Really? After all this time running this blog, only now do I find out that the incredible isometric Stuttgart U- and S-Bahn map (October 2011, 5 stars) has an S-Bahn-only sibling? If anything, this is actually even better than that map: fewer route lines leads to more graphical simplicity. Like that map, however, it’s since been replaced with something disappointingly normal. Source: shelbycearley/Flickr

Historical Map: Outdated Sign at Readville MBTA Station (c. 1986)

April 2, 2013
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Here’s a photo taken in 2011 of a fantastic old and faded sign at the Readville MBTA station in Massachusetts. As the original poster on Flickr points out, trains no longer run from Readville to Attleboro along the Providence/Stoughton Line: trains on that line pass through Readville without stopping. Of course, the fact that the sign refers to the last outbound station as “Attleboro” is an anachronism within an anachronism, as the map shows Providence, Rhode […]

Historical Map: Kroll’s Standard Map of Seattle, 1914

April 2, 2013
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As Seattle continues with its expansion of light rail (East Link, University Link) and streetcar (Capitol Hill streetcar), here’s a look back at the city 99 years ago. This isn’t a transit map per se – rather, it’s a map of the city that also happens to show the transit network in no uncertain terms. The thick dark lines that traverse the city like veins are all streetcars, cable cars and interurban trains. Main line […]

Photo – Official Map: Opolskie Voivodeship Railway Network, Poland

March 27, 2013
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The whole map is a bit of a mess, with all sorts of random angles everywhere (both route lines and station labels), but what really takes this map into the land of the bizarre are the big photos of trains superimposed over it. It’s like someone said, “Hey, there’s a bit of white space left over – what can we fill it up with? I know! How about some shots of our trains, and we’ll rotate […]

Submission – Unofficial Historical Map: Los Angeles Pacific Electric Railway Diagram, 1917 by Sam Huddy

March 18, 2013
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Drawn and submitted by Sam, who says: Pacific Electric: Challenge Accepted! Cameron, When I read your disappointment on the uselessness of that beautiful map of the Pacific Electric at its peak in 1917 (not 1920), I wondered if it was possible to create a simplified London Underground-style map. With over a hundred routes it seemed impossible, but after several attempts, this was my end result. Any further information is on the map itself. Transit Maps […]

Submission – Keio Railway Map Bath Towel

March 13, 2013
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Submitted by Jeffery Bridgman, who says: A bath towel with the different services (different types of local/express trains) that run on the Keio lines in Tokyo. Hilarious! http://railf.jp/news/2013/02/22/100000.html Transit Maps says: Oh, those crazy Japanese! Still, one can’t help but think that Douglas Adams – whose 61st birthday would have been two days ago – would have approved. Because, after all, a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. […]