All posts tagged: streetcar

Project: Electric Streetcars and Interurbans of Yakima, Washington, 1920

October 25, 2021
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The third in my series of maps depicting electric streetcar networks of the Pacific Northwest, one that both builds on my previous maps of Spokane and Portland and adds something new to the mix: geography. The full project description follows, but you can view the map below or click here to view it in a full-screen window. At first sight, the Yakima streetcar and interurban network may not look quite as impressive as the other […]

Submission – Official Map: San Diego Trolley Diagram, 2021

October 22, 2021
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Submitted by Robert, who says: I’ve always thought that San Diego’s “Trolley” map to be pretty bad, with various clashing angles, line icons and brand names (ugh) that don’t add anything (“Sycuan” is a casino, and the Blue LIne is named UC San Diego because they’re a sponsor, not because the line extension will go there). Only ONE landmark is noted, the baseball park downtown. The only geographical feature indicated is the international border, which […]

Project: A Map of Electric Streetcars in Portland, Oregon, 1915

August 22, 2021
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Here’s a map that’s been a long time coming, and one that I think has been worth the wait. I’ve wanted to make a transit map of historical streetcar routes in my adopted home town of Portland, Oregon for at least five years now, but it’s always seemed like a very daunting task. The success of my historical Spokane streetcar map from earlier this year finally gave me the tools I needed to get this […]

Project: A Map of Electric Rail Service in Spokane, Washington in 1912

March 17, 2021
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Old streetcar maps often do a very poor job of actually showing how the routes ran – often just drawing an otherwise unmarked red line down the middle of roads on a standard cartographic map without any explanation of stops, loops or route names (see left for an example). Finding accurate information about the actual routing of individual lines can be a long and thankless process, so when long-time Transit Maps correspondent Karl Otterstrom tweeted […]

Submission – A History of San Francisco Area Street Rail Transit by Travis Emick

February 19, 2021
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Submitted by Travis, who says: I made an animated visualization of the light rail infrastructure of San Francisco from 1850–to–nowish. I was wondering if you would be interested in posting! Transit Maps says: I sure would be, Travis! This is a great 15-minute video that succinctly outlines the rise and fall of rail-based street transit in San Francisco, Oakland and even Marin County. The sheer number of competing companies in the early years is quite […]

Submission – Official Map: RideKC System Map, Kansas City, 2021

February 12, 2021
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Submitted by Jon, who says: I’m curious to get your thoughts on the full RideKC Regional Transit Map. RideKC debuted in 2015 as part of the KC Streetcar project [review of the original Streetcar diagram here – Cam], and the RideKC branding is now used for the buses on four transit systems across the metro area, in order to better unify transit across five counties and two states. This map does not show the streetcar […]

Historical Map: Lines of the Denver City Tramway Company, 1904

August 19, 2020
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A great map of Denver from 1904, showing the extant lines of the Denver City Tramway Company (DCTC) in green, with planned lines in red – rapid expansion seemed to be the name of the game! The DCTC is unusual for a couple of reasons: it used the less common 3-foot-6-inch “colonial” narrow gauge for its lines instead of standard gauge, and referred to itself as a “tramway”, a term used almost nowhere else in […]

Historical Map: Proposed Telephone Despatching System of the International Railway Co, Buffalo, 1903

August 16, 2020
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This spectacular diagram from the February 28, 1903 edition of the Street Railway Journal looks for all the world like a modern schematic diagram of the International Railway Company’s lines, but there’s a bit of a twist in the tale. It’s actually a diagram of a telephonic dispatching system that the company was planning to install on its city and interurban lines, replacing a mixed telegraph/phone system. As telegraphs needed a skilled operator at every […]

Historical Map – Vancouver City and Suburban Lines, 1923

July 24, 2020
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A charmingly simple two-colour map of streetcar and interurban lines operated by the British Columbia Electric Railway Co. in 1923. Almost everything is hand-drawn and lettered apart from the map’s title, some explanatory text and some line numbers along the streets with more services (13-14-15-16 along Broadway West, for example). This last makes me wonder if this information was added to this edition of the map, either having been previously omitted or the lines servicing […]

Official Map: Sound Transit Line Nomenclature from 2021, Seattle

April 9, 2020
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Sound Transit’s network will expand rapidly in the near future – with new Link light rail lines, extensions to the Tacoma Link streetcar and Sounder commuter rail, as well as the new Stride BRT lines along SR 523/SR 522 and I-405. With all these new services, Sound Transit has to come up with a way to identify all of them on future maps. Originally, the current Link light rail spine was going to be renamed […]