All posts tagged: Europe

Historical Maps: Railroad Spiral Tunnels of the Gotthardbahn, 1914

March 28, 2014
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In my previous post, I mentioned that the map of the Gotthardbahn showed the spiral tunnels that the track uses to quickly change elevation in areas with limited space. Here are some fantastic maps of those spirals, taken from a 1914 German encyclopaedia and found on Wikipedia. The maps show the spirals from north to south, with the distance in kilometres from the northern end of the line clearly shown along the route. The Gotthard […]

Historical Map: Gotthardbahn (Switzerland and Italy), 1898

March 28, 2014
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Here’s a beautiful Art Nouveau railway poster promoting the Gotthardbahn that links northern Italy with Switzerland and points north through the famous Gotthard Tunnel. At the time of opening in 1882, the tunnel was the longest railway tunnel in the world at 15 kilometres (9.3 miles). The map shows the then privately-operated Gotthardbahn and its branch routes in thick black lines (the Swiss Railways incorporated the line into its national network in 1907). The tunnel […]

Fantasy Map: Highways of the Netherlands Diagram by AS Veen

March 17, 2014
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Inspired by (but not derivative of) my own Interstates as Subway Map, here’s a nice diagrammatic take on the “A-Road” highway network of the Netherlands. It’s a relatively simple system, so the one-colour approach used here works quite well. It also illustrates the European tendency for major highways to bypass or loop around a city, rather than putting an Interstate right through the middle of downtown, as so often happens here in the U.S. Design-wise, […]

Historical Map: Hamburg Hoch- und Untergrundbahn, c. 1912

March 12, 2014
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A beautiful old map showing Hamburg’s Ringbahn and spur lines. I believe that this map is from no later than January 1912, and it may be from even earlier, as the legend denotes that all the routes shown in red (the beginnings of today’s U-Bahn system) are “intended for execution” – that is, planned or under construction, not actually built. Construction of the Ringbahn began in 1906, and the first section between Rathaus and Barmbek […]

Official Map: Integrated Transit of Südtirol (Alto Adige), Italy

March 1, 2014
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Sent my way by a reader known only as “mmmaps”, here’s a map of the transit system of the northern autonomous Italian province of Südtirol (South Tyrol in English, or Alto Adige in Italian). The system is mainly made up of buses (dark blue), but there’s also a backbone of rail services between the major cities (shown in light blue) and aerial cable-cars as well. While the restrained colour palette (just blues and greys) looks quite […]

Unofficial Map: Transit of Riga, Latvia by Viteks Bariševs

February 28, 2014
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Transit Maps has been keeping an eye on this project for quite some time now: I reviewed an earlier version of this map way back in January 2012, noting that it held a lot of promise for the future. At the time, Viteks was hopeful that he could get his map adopted as Riga’s official transit map. While that hasn’t quite happened yet, he’s definitely set himself up as an excellent alternative to the (pretty […]

Historical Map: Old Paris Metro Map Uncovered at Les Halles Station

February 25, 2014
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A fantastic photo from Jean-Luc Raymond on Instagram of an old Metro map that’s just been revealed behind multiple layers of billboard advertising at Les Halles station. Definitely looks like it used to have a street grid layer which has faded away with age. I’m not entirely sure of the vintage, although I’d say it can’t be from before 1979, as that’s when the RER C opened. It’s the thicker yellow line across the top […]

Submission – Maps of the Limited Accessibility of Public Transport

February 18, 2014
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Hi, you might find this interesting: we’ve recently released a project about the limited accessibility of public transport (subway + commuter trains) in New York, London and Hamburg. The results are maps with an interactive slider that let you explore how thinned out the transportation network get’s when you’re handicapped e.g. and here all the information about the project: http://mappable.info/blog/2014/2/8/accessibility Transit Maps says: The depiction of physical accessibility on transit maps of is something I’ve […]

Official Map: Brussels Integrated Transit Map

February 5, 2014
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One of the most requested maps so far — thanks to thecitygeek, bjorkborg, Mladen Stilinovic and a couple of anonymous readers for sending this my way! According to my correspondents, Brussels has recently switched from a geographical transit map to this new diagrammatic map. As you can see by comparing the two images of the centre of the city above, a lot of streamlining and simplification has taken place. The first thing that strikes me is […]