All posts tagged: USA

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

December 8, 2015
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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 […]

Unofficial Map: Chicago “El” in the Style of Frank Lloyd Wright by Maxwell Roberts

November 29, 2015
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Words cannot express just how much I love this beautiful, beautiful map by Maxwell Roberts, whose work I’ve featured on the blog many times previously. I had the privilege of seeing this map “in the flesh” at the New York Transit Museum event I attended earlier this month, and it looks even more impressive as an actual print. The map is inspired by the work of the famous architect and designer, Frank Lloyd Wright – most […]

Submission – Unofficial Future Map: Washington DC Metro by James Gibbons

November 26, 2015
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Submitted by James, who says: My redesign of the DC metro system, with the purple line and silver lines in their completed states. I wanted to do a Vignelli-style map of the system in DC, which I believe complements the relative simplicity of the system well. Regarding the abolition of the red line kink on the western arm: I think one bend to indicate the kink is still sufficient and recognizable. Transit Maps says: James […]

Submission – Official Map: New Seattle Link Light Rail “Red Line” Strip Map

November 13, 2015
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Submitted by SounderBruce, who says: Sound Transit has put up the first of the new Link Light Rail maps in its trains here in Seattle, featuring the new “Red Line” branding that will be phased in by the time the second line (the Blue Line, formerly East Link) opens in 2023. The two “Coming Soon” signs are covering 3 new stations that are opening in 2016, extending the existing line up to the Univ. of […]

Interactive Map: Archaeology of the Pacific Electric, Los Angeles by The Militant Angeleno

November 10, 2015
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Here’s an absolutely superb piece of interactive mapping that overlays the routes of the Pacific Electric streetcar system (the “Red Cars”) onto a modern Google aerial map of the greater Los Angeles area. That’s interesting enough by itself, but this map goes further, and pinpoints the still-extant remnants of this once-great network – stations, uncovered sections of old track, power substations, railway bridges and more – and has photographs from many of these locations. It’s wonderfully […]

Lyft Launches “Friends With Transit” Campaign, Targets “Last-Mile” Riders

November 3, 2015
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Say what you like about Lyft (”awesome ride-sharing service” or “dangerously unregulated upstart taxi wannabe” seems to describe the polar opposites of opinion), but this is a pretty sweet ad campaign. From the delightfully double-edged campaign name, “Friends with Transit” – which can either echo “friends with benefits”, or simply be a statement that Lyft complements public transportation – to the trademark hot pink lines filling in the gaps left behind by rail transit in each city, […]

Unofficial Map: New York Subway by Tommi Moilanen

October 23, 2015
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Redesigning the New York Subway Map sometimes feels like a bit of a “no win” for designers, mainly because it’ll always, always be compared to the seminal Massimo Vignelli diagram. That said, I’m really liking this attempt by Tommi Moilanen, which embraces not only the Vignelli map and the design language of the subway system itself, but adds its own modern minimalist touches as well. The first thing to note is that the map depicts weekday […]

Infographic: WNYC’s “Live Subway Agony Index”

October 21, 2015
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Watching WNYC’s “Live Subway Agony Index” as the downtown 6X goes into meltdown is kind of awesome. So many UGGGHHHs.  If you’ve never seen this before, it’s a service that pulls real-time MTA data for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 6x and converts it into emoji that encapsulates the current feelings of passengers at that station. Simple but effective! Source: WNYC Data News Team

Historical Map: July 22, 1974 Sketch of the Washington DC Metro Map by Lance Wyman

September 29, 2015
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Here’s a fantastic bit of Washington Metro history that I hadn’t seen before: an original working drawing of the now-iconic map from 1974, two years before the system opened (see the opening day map here). Interestingly, it looks like Wyman was experimenting with textural treatments for the route lines at this time – stripes for the Red Line, stars for the Blue, etc. – an idea I’m ever so glad he abandoned, because it would […]