All posts tagged: high speed rail

Future Map: Cascadia High-Speed Rail Network by Oran Viriyincy

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Future Maps

Created on behalf of a new advocacy group for true high-speed rail in the Pacific Northwest – the aptly named CascadiaRail – this is probably my favourite map of 2018 so far. It’s clear, beautiful, representative of the region, and is wonderfully aspirational – presenting a clear and exciting vision of a possible future. I especially like that there’s no state or national borders shown at all: the region is instead defined by the natural […]

Future Fantasy Map: Consolidated Bay Area Rapid Transit, 2050 by Adam Susaneck

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Fantasy Maps, Future Maps

Here at Transit Maps, we see quite a few unified Bay Area maps. It seems that that the fractured nature of all the different transit agencies in the area seems to frustrate quite a few people, which drives them to try and make something better. The latest is this effort by Adam Susaneck, showing what things could look like in 2050 or so in a perfect world.  It’s impeccably researched – head on over to […]

Unofficial Map: Greater Tokyo Railway Network by “Kzaral”

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Unofficial Maps

Whoa. An incredibly detailed “Underground-style” map of rail in the Greater Tokyo area – it seems to show everything from ropeways, aerial cables and streetcars all the way up to Shinkansen – by Flickr user Kzaral.  Transliterating the station names to English means that the diagram simply can’t be as compact as other maps where Japanese characters are used, but there’s still a good sense of rhythm and balance to the map. All labelling is horizontal, […]

Visualization: The remarkable distances you can travel on a European train in less than a day

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Visualizations

postgraphics: Tourists visiting Europe are often advised to travel by train rather than plane or car. Trains are considered reliable, fast and relatively cheap. But as a new research project shows, there are major differences within Europe: Whereas you can travel from London to Paris in less than four hours, traveling the same distance can last more than 22 hours in eastern Europe. A nice little series of isochrone maps showing how far you can […]

Submission – Lukas’ HSR Map Redrawn Digitally by Isaac Fischer

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Fantasy Maps

Hi Cameron! This map is in response to the map you posted by Lukas, age 12. I thought that Lukas’s map was quite interesting – the network reminded me of Alfred Twu’s high-speed rail map from last year, and the style was remarkably similar to that of my own hand-drawn maps. However, I thought that the map should not have stopped at a hand-drawn sketch, and so I took a few hours drawing up this […]

Submission – Fantasy High-Speed Rail Map of North America by Lukas (age 12)

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Fantasy Maps

Submitted by Lukas, who says: Hi, my name is Lukas and I am 12 years old. I love to read your blog and other mapping blogs. I was looking online and i found a map of a hi-speed rail system for America designed by the government. I thought the system’s design was horrible, because it was made of isolated corridors and networks that were in no way connected to one another and had too many […]

Official Map: Southeastern Rail Network, England

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Official Maps

Southeastern’s website contains the following blurb: “Our network covers London, Kent and parts of East Sussex. With 179 stations and over 1000 miles of track, we operate one of the busiest networks in the country. We also run the UK’s only high speed trains.” They should really add: “We also have a network map that makes it almost impossible to work out where our trains actually go.” I mean, what is actually going on here? […]

“Discover Japan” Map of Japanese Rail Routes, May 2012

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Unofficial Maps

A handsome diagrammatic map of rail services throughout Japan, this one from an issue of the “Discover Japan” magazine (Vol. 21, Issue 4) that seemed to deal mainly with seeing Japan by train. Without the benefit of a translation for the map’s legend, I’d guess that the thick green lines are Shinkansen lines, blue ones are regional trains and brown lines are local/other services (Update: @suldrew has let me know that it’s Green = Shinkansen, […]

Official Map: Isometric JR West System Map

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Official Maps

I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so completely, madly and totally in love with a transit map as I am with this. A giant, sprawling, isometric representation of much of Japan showing JR Group railway lines. The map is produced by the JR West company, and its operating area is shown in full detail within the green area (apart from the heavily urbanised areas around Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, where – wisely – not all […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: United States High Speed Rail System by Albert Twu

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Submitted by thethingtobomb, who says: Obviously this potential US High Speed rail system has some layout problems, but the map itself is intriguing. What’s your opinion? Transit Maps says: The problem with this map is that it’s based on incredibly optimistic projections of HSR in the United States (I believe the technical term for this is a “pipe dream”). Back in 2009, there was a big push for high-speed rail and it seemed that everyone was […]