All posts tagged: USA

Submission – Unofficial Map: Park and Ride Commuter Bus, Northern New Mexico by Isaac Fischer

July 6, 2014
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Isaac submitted this in two parts, which I’ve combined into one post here.  Of the first image, Isaac says: This is the map that New Mexico Park and Ride provides in their system timetable; it’s probably the worst designed transit map I’ve ever seen. Not only is the design quality abhorrent, but it doesn’t even show the routes as even REMOTELY geographically accurate, and fails to include about two-thirds of the stops. Why they felt […]

Historical Map: Map of Greyhound Lines and Principal Connecting Routes, 1938

June 30, 2014
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From a booklet promoting sightseeing via Greyhound’s long-distance bus lines, which sounds like an absolutely awful way to see America. However, it’s a very handsome two-colour map that certainly highlights the apparent density of the network at that time. Source: Umpqua/Flickr

Historical Map: Theoretical Diagram of Proposed Transit System, St. Louis, Missouri, 1919

June 24, 2014
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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, […]

Historical Map: San Francisco BART & Buses Map, September 1977

June 17, 2014
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Front cover for a 1977 map of BART and connecting bus services with some great late-1970s typography: tightly spaced Helvetica, yum! That BART icon is also pretty amazing and is just asking to be digitally recreated. However, there’s something screwy about that map, as much of BART appears to be located in or underneath the San Francisco Bay. Global warming, perhaps? Hardly: some quick Photoshop analysis reveals that  the underlying map has simply been erroneously rotated […]

Unofficial Map: Transit Network of Norfolk, Virginia by Jonah Adkins

June 14, 2014
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This is a nice little map from Jonah, whose transit map version of his Noland Trail Map I featured back in July last year. The map certainly does a good job of placing the new light rail line in a regional context, with the Elizabeth River and the Interstate highways defining the surrounding area nicely. Points of interest and county/city borders are nicely shown as well. However, I disagree a bit with Jonah’s informational hierarchy. […]

Historical Map: Rapid Transit Plan by the City of Seattle, 1920

June 13, 2014
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Here’s an interesting map that shows a plan for rapid transit that city engineers envisioned for Seattle way back in 1920, almost 100 years ago! The map shows a subway running beneath Third Avenue from Virginia to Yesler, coming to the surface near the railroad stations – essentially the route followed by the present-day Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Trains going up to Capitol Hill would follow a line up Pine Street that would be alternately […]

Official Map: TRANSPO Bus System, South Bend, Indiana

June 11, 2014
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Suggested by Jeff Bridgman. This is probably a good example of how not to make a black-and-white map. They only get away with it at all because the system is so simple – there’s only 17 or 18 routes, and they have hardly any overlap because of the radial “hub and spoke” nature of the network. Yes, you can actually work out where the buses go, but it’s all just a bit dismal. There’s quite […]