All posts tagged: light rail

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 […]

Unofficial Map: Portland MAX Light Rail – Super Mario 3 Style

March 29, 2013
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Here’s the latest “Mario Map” from the incredibly prolific Dave Delisle (seriously, how much cool stuff can one guy pump out?). This one is of my home town of Portland, Oregon, and Dave actually enlisted my help in checking the accuracy of the route layouts and the spelling of the station names. Considering the ridiculous length of some of the station names in the system and the limitations of the 8-bit art style, Dave’s done […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: Louisville, Kentucky Light Rail Map by Peter Dovak

March 25, 2013
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Submitted by Peter, who says: Hello!  I’m very much new to Illustrator, but I have a love of transit and a budding love of graphic design, and reading your wonderful blog has inspired me to try and pick it up.  For practice, I tried turning one of my childhood daydreams into reality — a hypothetical map for a light rail system for my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.  Louisville is a notoriously anti-transit town with just […]

Official Map: CTrain, Calgary, Canada, 2013

February 22, 2013
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Lots of people have requested this map, but I’ve held off for a while as some extensions to the system and amendments to the map itself have been made. Calgary Transit actually released a preliminary version of this map last year and asked for public input on it via an on-line survey, which is good to see. However, it’s not the most thrilling map, and there’s still one quirk with it that could cause some […]

Unofficial Map: Crosscut’s Seattle Link Light Rail Strip Map

February 20, 2013
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Crosscut, a non-profit news website centered on Washington State’s Puget Sound Region, has been talking about Link light rail’s signage for a while now. Their point about the minimal directional signage at SeaTac Airport to guide you to the train is valid, but their problem with Link’s own in-car strip map is less well founded. They recently called for new designs as part of a competition, but unfortunately didn’t receive any. So they took it […]

Photo: Los Angeles Rail Maps

February 19, 2013
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Great photo showing how the LA Metro maps are part of a larger, unified, wayfinding system. Consistency of typography and brand are key – note how the titles of each map are in the same location and typeface every time, as is the Metro logo: colour is the main differentiator of information. Source: yreese/Flickr

Submission: Official Map, Seattle Central Link Light Rail, 2012

December 12, 2012
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Submitted by Joshua Fan, who says: This is an official map of Seattle’s Central Link light rail line, which opened in 2009. It appears  in the official guide of all of Sound Transit’s services, which can be found in this PDF on the Sound Transit website. Frankly, I am quite disappointed in this map: it tries to both diagrammatic and geographical, but fails on both counts (which is a common mistake that you have pointed […]

Unofficial Map: FrontRunner and TRAX, Salt Lake City, Utah

December 10, 2012
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Brought to my attention by Garrett Smith when he submitted the abomination that is the new official UTA map, here’s a completely different take on Salt Lake City’s rail system from Flickr user H4vok_13. This map is by no means perfect, but it’s an absolute paragon of simplicity and clean design compared to the real thing. What we like: Streamlined, simplified route lines that expand the city centre and compress the outlying areas work wonders […]

Official Map: TRAX and FrontRunner Rail Map, Salt Lake City, Utah, December 2012

December 10, 2012
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Today, the FrontRunner commuter rail system opens for revenue service south of Salt Lake all the way down to Provo, and there’s a new version of the map to reflect this new service. I reviewed a previous version of this map back in July, and I didn’t have much positive to say about it then – and my opinion has not been changed with this new iteration. Quite a few people have submitted this new […]

Official Map: Sydney CityRail Network Map, 2012

September 12, 2012
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Here’s a map that has been requested quite a few times, but I’ve held off on until now. Having lived in Sydney most of my life, I think it’s difficult to be dispassionate about something I’m so familiar with… but here goes! Have we been there? You know it! What we like: Clear and easy to understand. Different types of services are denoted well, but in a nicely understated way: grey lines with coloured ticks […]