All posts tagged: heavy rail

Submission: New Washington, DC Metro Strip Map at Pentagon City

October 22, 2013
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Submitted by Peter Dovak, who says:  Spotted a new schematic installed at Pentagon City Metro station in Washington this week. I’m not sure if this is experimental or what, but I’ve never seen such detailed line info at a station here before. Not a huge fan of the execution, though, the labels are awful skewed! Transit Maps says: In the limited space allowed here, angled station labels are pretty much the only workable option. It’s […]

Project: My Reworking of the New Sydney Trains Map

September 27, 2013
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Okay, I couldn’t help myself: I just had to redraw this thing to illustrate all the points I talked about earlier – correcting the obvious errors I discovered in my technical review, and also addressing the general thoughts of my initial post. So here it is: not a redesign, but a reworking of the design concept while working within the established principles of the official map. If you’re just starting out with designing transit maps, […]

Technical Review: New Sydney Trains Network Map

September 24, 2013
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It seems that the draft Sydney Trains map that I posted about the other day is the real thing: printed timetables featuring it have been seen and scanned. So, I started looking at it again in order to write a proper review, when I started to notice a lot of little technical things that – as a designer – I found jarring and inconsistent. I opened the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator and began to […]

Future Map – Possible Sydney Trains Network Map for October 20th, 2013 Timetable Changes

September 18, 2013
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Sent my way by Nick Stylianou, this is supposedly the new Sydney Trains system map that will be released concurrently with a whole slew of timetable changes on October 20th. I’ll reserve my judgement until I see the final map – this may be a working draft with final amendments still to be made – but there are certainly some radical changes from the current map (Sep. 2012, 3.5 stars), not the least of which […]

Historical Map: Washington, DC Metro Map, 1981

September 17, 2013
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Enough of all this talk about the new DC Metro map; here’s another old one for you – and this one’s a bit of an oddity. An inspection of the southern leg of the Green Line shows that the terminus was then planned to be at Rosecroft, not Branch Avenue. The preceding station shown, St. Barnabas Road, was also never constructed The photos of the map were sent to me by Mark Greenwald, who says […]

Behind the Scenes: Evolution of the Chicago CTA Rail Map from 1996-2006 and Beyond

September 6, 2013
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This material was sent to me via email by Dennis McClendon, who runs Chicago CartoGraphics, a design firm in the Windy City that specialises in maps and information graphics. His email – which outlines his role in the development of the Chicago “L” map as used in the CTA system map brochure (the first link on this page) – is so fascinating that I’m basically reproducing it in its entirety below. In effect, Dennis is Transit […]

Unofficial Map: “Platform 2” Sydney Trains Map Stainless Steel Table by Savage Design

September 5, 2013
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Very shiny representation of the inner part of Sydney’s rail network. Design-wise, it doesn’t stray too far from the look of the official map (Sept. 2012, 3.5 stars), although I’m not quite sure why the route line that represents the peak-only East Hills services heading up through Sydenham suddenly turns northwards before it reaches Redfern. The labels for Circular Quay and St. James stations could also be much better aligned with their respective ticks. Technically, there should […]

Unofficial Map: Circular Sydney Suburban Railways by Maxwell Roberts

August 28, 2013
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I have to admit: I’m still not entirely convinced by either the usability or the aesthetics the new “circular transit maps” design trend. However, I think I’ll make an exception for this diagram of my hometown of Sydney, Australia, which is… just beautiful. Designed by the man at the vanguard of this design movement, Maxwell Roberts, this map actually has a lot of visible advantages over the current official Sydney rail map (Sept. 2012, 3.5 […]

Official Future Map: Los Angeles Metro Rail

June 14, 2013
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The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Agency released a “under construction”  map yesterday, showing all the lines that are planned for the near future: Expo Line Phase 2, Gold Line Foothill Extension, the Crenshaw/LAX Line, Purple Line Extension and the ambitious downtown Regional Connector. Overall, the map fits quite well into the existing LA Metro design aesthetic, although the crowded downtown area is now starting to make the station labelling look a little cramped and […]