All posts tagged: USA

Historical Map: 1968 WMATA Metrorail Promotional Map

May 4, 2015
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Historical Maps
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Part of a promotional brochure discovered by Reddit user Globalwrath while cleaning his grandmother’s estate, here’s a fascinating look at the early pre-construction history of Metrorail. Much of the actual current system is represented fairly well as the “Authorized Basic System” (thin black lines) and “Adopted Regional System” (thick black lines) with at-grade sections represented by pink lines instead. Station names are obviously tentative (Pooks Hill? Weapons Plant?), but the alignments are very familiar. Of perhaps more […]

Submission – New Mexico Transit Guide by Kara Fischer

April 24, 2015
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Unofficial Maps
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Submitted by Kara, who says: I’ve attached the second edition of my “NM Transit Guide,” which I previously submitted one or two weeks back. The new version includes, along with some visual changes that I feel make it more aesthetically pleasing, a feature which as far as I can tell is a unique form of presenting information – I’ve never seen it on any other transit map. On the reverse side of the guide I […]

2015 Amtrak Subway Map – Revised Draft

April 20, 2015
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Based on feedback from the first draft of this new version of my Amtrak as subway map, I’ve gone and made a few edits, additions and corrections. The major revision is a reworking of the main section of the Northeast Corridor between New York and Washington to make things a little clearer. I’m still using overlapping “multiplied route colour” lines to indicate identical service patterns, but I’ve broken the routes down into smaller, thematically linked groups: the three […]

The NY Subway Map with Background Colours Adjusted to Match the Vignelli Diagram, by Shawn Sprockett

April 17, 2015
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Mash-Up Maps, Unofficial Maps
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I saw the animated GIF above on Twitter yesterday, and Shawn was kind enough to share the whole map with me, so I present it here. As Shawn himself says: I took Vignelli’s color contrast + existing map’s geographic accuracy = the subway map of my dreams. … cheekily addressing the MTA’s Twitter account and asking them to “please fix.” Shawn’s revision definitely allows the subway lines (without doubt, the most important element of the map) […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: Connecticut Metro by Nick Fabiani

April 17, 2015
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Submitted by Nick, who says: I’ve attached my draft map of an imaginary rail system for Connecticut — if you have time, I’d love to get your feedback! We have little to nothing in the way of public transit that serves people who want to travel around and not just through Connecticut. We have some great bus systems (and our first BRT system!), but we’re served by rail lines that are used primarily for commuters […]

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

April 15, 2015
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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 […]

Draft: NEW Amtrak Subway Map for 2015

April 12, 2015
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At the end of April 2015, Amtrak's Hoosier State service between Chicago and Indianapolis is scheduled to be discontinued — the first complete loss of a service since I created my "Amtrak as Subway Map" way back in 2010. Over the years, I've been pretty vigilant to changes to the Amtrak network — adding and deleting stations as required, extending the Downeaster Line to Brunswick and the Northeast Regional to Norfolk — but a change of this magnitude gives me the chance to take a completely fresh look at this project and rework everything from scratch, instead of just tweaking the old diagram again. Let's face it – I've learned a lot of new skills and tricks in the intervening years!

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 […]