Submitted by Rob, who says: The TTC have decided to include a streetcar map inside the new streetcars when they start rolling out at the end of this month. What do you think of the map? With out any actual street grid information it doesn’t seem very helpful since it gives you zero context of where each route is in the street system. Transit Maps says: I think Rob is being a little unfair when […]
Not much more to say here except that this is gorgeous, despite the primitive artwork and terrible colour registration. Source: Fluoride’s memories/Flickr
Here’s a map that hyperrealcartography would love: an audacious, almost outrageous, proposal for a transit system in St. Louis drawn up by the City Plan Commission in 1919. The final proposed system shown here would have had the existing streetcars and new rapid transit lines operating side-by-side, described like this in the full proposal: “The rapid transit system is separated into two distinct systems, that for the routing of surface cars in the downtown district, […]
This is one of the earliest plans commissioned by the City and County of Los Angeles. The consultants – Kelker, De Leuw and Co. of Chicago – were asked to create a plan to accommodate a future city population of three million. Metro’s own history archive has this to say about the project: The plan shows a number of proposed immediate and future subways: one across Hollywood to La Brea Boulevard, another from downtown to […]
A handsomely drawn map that does some sterling work with just three colours (a very modern combination of black, cyan and magenta!). Of particular note is the clever way that a solid magenta line (bus service), can be combined with a dashed black line (trams) to indicate where both types of transportation share the same route without having to draw two separate lines. Interestingly, buses appear to have route numbers, while trams are designated by […]
Kindly sent my way by Ross Howard from his personal collection is this great old map of the Boston Elevated Railway (or BERy). Ross thought it may have been from the 1930s, but a little Googling has revealed that this version – the seventh edition – was released in 1946-1947, making it the last BERy map before its operations were taken over by the MTA, itself a predecessor to the current MBTA. The map itself […]
Not a map, but included because this is possibly the strangest piece of transit infrastructure I’ve ever seen. Discovered while researching the post about Cincinnati’s abandoned subway, this photo shows what happened when that city’s streetcars met the steep hills surrounding the downtown area. At this time, the streetcars were used in conjunction with four of Cincinnati’s five inclined railways: the Mount Adams Incline, Mount Auburn Incline, Bellevue Incline, and the Fairview Incline. The cars […]
Here’s a simply beautiful map from the 1920s, showing a comprehensive proposed future plan for the city. Along with the extensive and fastidious plans for the extension of the city’s street grid (the web of red extending outwards from the core), the map also shows existing and proposed streetcars with solid and dashed thicker red lines, respectively. The map also audaciously proposes that the main line railroads be placed onto an elevated viaduct through downtown, […]
A superb pair of maps that depict the trolley lines (top) and elevated and subway lines (bottom) of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) Company as they would appear after the work specified in the famous “Dual Contracts” agreement was completed. Much of today’s existing subway system came about because of this contract, as can be seen from the red (proposed) lines on the lower map. For me, the top map is even more interesting – […]
Scanned from the book “The Red Electrics: Southern Pacific’s Oregon Interurbans” by Tom Dill and Walter Grande. This handsome map shows the routing of the Southern Pacific’s electric interurban trains through downtown Portland from their northern terminus at Union Station. These trains, popularly known as the “Red Electrics” after their distinctive carriages, ran from Portland all the way down the Willamette Valley as far as Corvallis, 85 miles distant. Service started in 1914, extended to […]
