A fun little GIF from Appealing Industries that shows the construction of the modern New York Subway in sequence. I’d really like it to be just a little slower, and have a year clock somewhere. Bonus points would have been awarded for showing the construction and eventual demolition of the elevated lines as well. Still nicely done, and almost mesmeric after a while. Compare with this GIF of the Boston “T”. Source: Appealing Industries website […]
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
An (original 1992?) outdoor signage/map/wayfinding array at Baltimore’s Mt. Washington light rail station. While the main map on the central panel shows all the current stations and branches (dating it to after 1998), it looks as though there could be some patches or stickers on top of an older map to achieve this. To be honest, I don’t know why this map has to have any curves in its route line at all: I feel […]
I retweeted this hilarious (If somewhat exasperated) map of expected MBTA rail services last night, but it’s too good not to share properly on the site. Apparently, there’s been a bit of snow in Boston lately. Source: Sara Morrison/Twitter (sent my way by quite a few readers) – link no longer active
An audacious plan for expansion of rapid transit in Boston by electrifying the existing commuter rail lines. Bears quite a few similarities to this fantastic diagram from 1945, which also advocated rapid transit along railroad rights-of-way. peopleneedaplacetogo: Map from a 1972 proposal for the Boston subway lines to take over the commuter rail lines far out into suburbia, with the Green Line reaching Newburyport, the Green Line reaching Haverhill, the Red Line Fitchburg and Ayer, […]
Question: Do you know what the organizational principle is for layering subway lines on the current NYC map? I received a question from meltedchandelier yesterday that asked: Hi, I’m hoping you can solve a query that a friend and I have been able to figure out forever. Do you know what the organizational principle is for layering certain NYC subway lines on top of others where they intersect on the current version of the map […]
Sometimes ideas take a while to come to fruition… the subway section of Pittsburgh’s light rail line finally opened in 1985 and is not as extensive as this grand vision. Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via Mundania Horvath on Twitter
Via the now inactive nyplmaps Tumblr: Map showing surface car lines of Manhattan Island, August 13, 1915. This 61 x 185 cm color map with an approximate scale of 1:12,500 shows the streetcar lines operated by NY Railways, the Third Avenue System and the Second Avenue Railroad Co. that once roamed the Isle of Manhattan. I’ll reblog just about anything transit-related from the New York Public Library’s map collection, but this is even more special than […]
I thought I was all done with “to scale” maps of North American rail systems, but then Dennis McClendon (see previous posts from him) sent in this beautiful series of maps that he produced for Planning magazine back in 1984. Dennis himself says: Given this week’s Tumblr theme, I thought you might be interested in these maps that I did in 1984, when I worked for Planning magazine. The “new wave” of modern light rail […]
A follow-up to yesterday’s post: several people pointed me to this graphic by Peter Dovak that extends the concept to include all rail-based rapid transit in the USA and Canada, including people movers and monorails (but not commuter rail). transitoriented: A compilation of rail rapid transit systems drawn (but not arranged) to scale. An attempt at an homage to this classic map by Bill Rankin, updated for 2015. View a larger resolution version here.
