All posts tagged: MBTA

Fantasy Future Map: Boston MBTA Commuter Rail North-South Link

December 8, 2015
comment 1
Filed Under:
Fantasy Maps, Future Maps
Tags:

A fairly rudimentary map used to promote a European S-Bahn-style central rail tunnel under Boston to link North and South stations and provide through-running commuter rail services. An interesting idea, although I’m not sure that Boston has quite recovered from the last tunnel they built just yet.  The map is functional enough, but could perhaps benefit from a little more “zing” to help it be the true centrepiece of the campaign. Personally, I’d like to […]

“Light Rail” – A Real-Time Boston ‘T’ LED Map by Ian Reynolds

September 25, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
My Transit Maps, Unofficial Maps, Visualizations
Tags:

Taking transit map wall art to the next level is this piece by Ian Reynolds, an electrical engineer and computer science student at MIT. Not only does it light up and look cool, but it actually queries the MBTA API to show the real-time position of trains on the system. Very awesome. As Ian himself describes it over on Reddit, “The MBTA is a big part of life in Boston, and I built this as sort […]

Unofficial Map: Boston MBTA by the American Automobile Association (AAA), c. 2008

June 23, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Sent my way by Andy Woodruff, this map is all kinds of wrong. As it’s from around 2008, it shows an older configuration of the Silver Line routes, with an SL3 route going to City Point. However, the underlying base map hasn’t been adjusted to accommodate the diagram, so SL2 and SL3 appear to take you to destinations deep in the outer reaches of Boston Harbor, while Kendall/MIT is located in the middle of the […]

Photo: Trader Joe’s/MBTA Map

May 18, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Miscellany, Unofficial Maps
Tags:

“This Red Line train is bound for Chard of Many Colors via Black Beans”. Taken at the Trader Joe’s West Newton store… mostly recognisable as the MBTA “T” map, but with a few additions and exclusions. The Silver Line is now a light shade of blue and promises wild salmon, while the commuter rail lines now seem to sprout randomly from the end of “T” lines in a variety of different colours. Nice hand lettering, though! Side […]

Submission – EmbarkBOS iPhone App: Boston Rapid Transit Map 

May 11, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Guy Delco, who says: I’m in Boston regularly for business, and find myself on the T often.  Downloaded the EmbarkBOS app.  It has a particularly good rendering of the MBTA system. I particularly like the way they capture the several commuter rail lines out of South and North Stations in varying shades of purple.  You’ve probably seen it, but if not, here’s an image screen-capped from my phone.  Transit Maps says: Actually, I […]

Historical Map: Original MBTA “Spider” Map

February 19, 2015
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

Taken from Cambridge Seven Associates’ 1965 Manual of Guidelines and Standards. A design classic in its purest form, only slightly marred by the poor registration in the manual itself (the dots should all be centred along each route line). Source: MIT Libraries

Unofficial Maps: Maxwell Roberts’ Variants on the Boston MBTA Map

November 15, 2014
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Thanks to pretty much the entire Internet for sending me a link to Boston Magazine’s story about Maxwell Roberts’ work on alternate MBTA “T” maps. I’m not going to review them all, but I would recommend that you click through and evaluate them yourself. Personally, the rotated hexalinear version shown above is my favourite.* What I’m interested in talking about is Roberts’ approach to transit map design. Whereas most designers will automatically gravitate to a […]

Fantasy Map: Mock-Up Boston MBTA Map Spotted in LA for Filming

September 8, 2014
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Fantasy Maps, Popular Culture
Tags:

Posted by Seiji Tanaka on his Twitter account, here’s a fictional MBTA map at an LA Metro station for film/TV shooting. The map is at the fictional “Rockwater” station on the equally fictional Yellow Line (replacing the real world Orange Line). We’ve covered fictional transit maps from TV shows and movies before (this weird DC Metro map from the TV show “Leverage” springs to mind), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where the […]