All posts tagged: rapid transit

Reader Question: What are the Most Common “Line Colors” for Transit Lines?

September 29, 2015
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Question: What are the most common “line colors” for transit lines? I’ve heard of blue lines, red lines, yellow/green/silver/purple/orange/pink lines, but is there anything I’m missing? Once a transit system gets over that amount of colors, do they usually switch to Line 1/A Train/etc.? Answer: To answer your question, I’m going to point you towards Nick Rougeux’s excellent “Global Subway Spectrum” web page, which breaks down the route colours used by rapid transit systems around the world […]

Submission – Chicago Table of ‘El’ements

September 21, 2015
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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 […]

Official Map: Chicago Regional Transportation Authority “Rail Connections” Map, 2015

August 25, 2015
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Submitted by Michael Whalen (amongst others), who says: I just stumbled upon this map showing all CTA/Metra/SouthShore train connections in Chicago. There’s a lot going on, but I like how its much more diagrammatic than the regular map. I see several things that they’ve done with this map that I know you will hate, but I thought I’d leave it here for your critique anyway. Transit Maps says: There may be a few small things […]

Historical Ad: Swissair “European Rapid Transit System” Poster, c. 1980s(?)

May 22, 2015
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Sent my way by long-time correspondent, Kyril Negoda. I’m not entirely sure of the vintage of this, as the archive it resides in covers the entire period from 1980–2000, and none of the images have dates attached to them. There’s definitely an early 1980s vibe to it, though – mainly from the tightly kerned Futura Bold heading at the top. I’ve seen transit map-styled airline maps before (here and here, for example), but this one […]

Submission – EmbarkBOS iPhone App: Boston Rapid Transit Map 

May 11, 2015
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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 […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: Louisville, Kentucky Metrorail by Marc Gannon

April 15, 2015
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Fantasy Maps
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Not the first Louisville fantasy map that I’ve featured – see Peter Dovak’s map here (March 2013) – but this one takes quite a different approach. It’s certainly grander in scale than Peter’s modest two-line system. I will say that I adore the colour palette of this map: the muted background, river and parklands are lovely, and work nicely with the route line colours, which are also a little knocked back from the normal solid […]

Fantasy Map: Transit Map from 1998 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film “Dark City”

April 10, 2015
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Sent my way by Brian Stokle on Twitter.  I have to say that “Dark City” isn’t a movie I’m familiar with, although it had a pretty good cast – Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Ian Richardson and William Hurt. Let’s see: dystopian future… things aren’t what they seem… memory loss… framed for a crime he didn’t commit… the movie certainly ticks all the “1990s sci-fi movie” boxes, that’s for sure. Needless to say, “Shell Beach” is […]

Historical Map: Rapid Transit Plan for the Metropolitan Seattle Area, 1970

April 4, 2015
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A look at another stalled attempt to get rapid transit up and running in Seattle, this time from 1970. A lot of the proposed alignments look very familiar, but they are often constrained by Seattle’s difficult geography. I see that they were thinking of running rapid transit over the I-90 floating bridge – quite the engineering feat even now, let alone over 40 years ago. Even now, it’ll be the first light rail track travelling […]

Submission – Historical Map: SEPTA High Speed and Commuter Rail System, 1976

March 6, 2015
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Lovely little simplified network map that shows the SEPTA network in the mid-1970s, when commuter rail service was provided by the Reading Company and Penn Central… hence the two separate Chestnut Hill stations in the network (now denoted as East and West). Although the two systems are noted separately in the legend, there’s very little – if any – difference in the way they’re depicted on the map, although each line is labelled with its […]

Historical Map: Original MBTA “Spider” Map

February 19, 2015
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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