Submitted by Harsha, who says: I’ve been a big fan of your blog for over a decade. Recently, I had the opportunity to replicate the BART transit map for a data visualization in a story I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. I would love to hear your thoughts on it! Transit Maps says: First off, it’s great to see a transit map-related infographic from a newspaper graphics team! As an interesting and attention-grabbing way […]
Submitted by Brian, who says: A few years back I made a quick sketch for my friend showing the relationships between Pixies and Throwing Muses and their associated bands. For her recent birthday I made this subway map version for her, because, of course I did. Who doesn’t want a subway map for their birthday? Transit Maps says: Any resemblance to my mid-1990s CD collection is entirely coincidental, I assure you! I like this, Brian […]
Here’s an interesting little infographic (clearly based off the official Translink map) that’s making the rounds on Reddit/Twitter/etc. at the moment, showing average weekday ridership on rapid transit in Vancouver, British Columbia. Created by u/Mobius_Peverell on Reddit with “Excel, GIMP, and two afternoons” (in their own words), it’s quite a striking graphic. It definitely shows the dominance of the SkyTrain, and the Canada Line in particular. However, it’s important to note that the 99 B-Line, […]
Here’s a superb visualization of the fastest travel times by rail to major European cities from Frankfurt am Main (here rendered in its obsolete English form of “Frankfort”) in 1928. The striking time bands – a form of isochrone – are rendered in bold alternating concentric “target” circles around the city itself, represented by a modernist “F” logo. For the most part, the cities seem to placed along correct headings relative to Frankfurt, although the […]
Here’s an absolutely wonderful diagram of rail in Indianapolis in 1907 that pares everything down to the absolute minimum required to tell the story. 43 completely evenly-spaced railroad lines (representing 18 steam lines and 25 interurbans, according to the source) enter the city, which is encircled by the aptly named Belt Railroad. The names of those 43 outer destinations spiral dramatically around the edge of the map, though the flow is perhaps broken a bit […]
Here’s one for @airlinemaps: a wonderful infographic/diagram mashup from the 1950s that packs in heaps of information, right down to the type of airplane used on each route (denoted by the colour of each line). Flight numbers, time of departure/arrival, days of service, through routing of flights… it’s all incorporated into the one graphic. And it’s trilingual as well! Compare with this very similar diagram of Polish Airlines LOT routes from 1939 (June 2015, 5 […]
A great old map on a subject matter very dear to my heart – the Interstate Highway System. Produced in 1961 by the Caterpillar Tractor Company, who stood to gain a great deal in the construction work required to complete the network, it shows the proposed completed network in white, sections under construction with blue dashes, and – somewhat counter-intuitively – sections that are open to traffic in red. It’s immediately apparent how little of […]
Here’s an unusual use of transit map design principles – a map produced by the Radioactive Waste Campaign in 1988 of the routes used to transport nuclear materials and waste around the United States. This diagrammatic approach actually works very well here – as the legend to the map says: The origin and destination of these routes are well known. However, because of government secrecy, the exact path of these routes is conjectured. Without the […]
Watching WNYC’s “Live Subway Agony Index” as the downtown 6X goes into meltdown is kind of awesome. So many UGGGHHHs. If you’ve never seen this before, it’s a service that pulls real-time MTA data for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 6x and converts it into emoji that encapsulates the current feelings of passengers at that station. Simple but effective! Source: WNYC Data News Team
Submitted by long time contributor, Kara Fischer, who asks: Clever idea? Or useless eye-candy? Transit Maps says: Definitely just eye-candy, and really only made because of the terrible ‘El’ements pun in the title. It’s certainly not useful in any meaningful way and doesn’t bear anything but a superficial resemblance to the actual periodic table of elements. Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table, by the way, is one of the most information-dense infographics ever, with both the rows and columns […]
