All posts tagged: USA

Historical Map: The City of Los Angeles Showing Railway Systems, 1906

May 13, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps, Prints Available
Tags:

Here’s a great old map of Los Angeles showing the already-booming rail transit network that was found in Los Angeles in the early days of the 20th Century. Electric trolleys first ran in LA in 1877, but  the “Red Cars” of the Pacific Electric and the “Yellow Cars” of the narrow-gauge Los Angeles Railway had only appeared a mere five years before this map was produced. Their lines are represented on the map in appropriate […]

Historical Fantasy Map: St. Paul in the Year 1900 (Map c. 1871)

May 10, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Fantasy Maps, Historical Maps
Tags:

Definitely one of the stranger maps I’ve seen, and obviously meant to be read in a satirical light. It shows the city of St. Paul, Minnesota as an enormous METROPOLIS with Roman Road-straight railroad connections to all points (except to the “village” of New York, which is served by a “tri-weekly horse railroad”), a tunnel to “Peek-in” and a “railroad-balloonic route” to the North Pole and thence to the Moon. From America’s east coast, a […]

Photo – Official Map: Portland MAX Horizontal Strip Map

May 8, 2013
comment 1
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

The newest rolling stock used on Portland’s MAX light rail (Siemens S70 cars, known as “Type 4”) has enough room above the doors to display a horizontal version of the system map. Types 1 through 3 don’t have this space, and instead display an unwieldy portrait-oriented version of the map that bears little resemblance to geographical reality. Interestingly, this map is not the same as the official system map found on TriMet’s website or ticket machines (despite sharing […]

University of Virginia University Transit Service (UTS) Map

May 3, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Justin Tran, who says: This is a redesign I did of the University of Virginia’s University Transit Service (UTS) map. It won’t be live until permanent repairs are done to a certain bridge on Grounds that has vastly detoured more than half of these routes. Transit Maps says: This is pretty nice work here from Justin. It’s definitely been hugely influenced by the London Underground map, but works nicely in this context. I […]

Unofficial Map – Future Minneapolis & St. Paul Transit Map by Kyril Negoda

May 1, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Future Maps, Unofficial Maps
Tags:

mappingtwincities: It’s here!Future Minneapolis & St. Paul Transit Map After several months in development, I’m proud to present to you the Future Twin Cities Transit Map. A comprehensive summary of current rapid transit proposals, this version shows all existing and future light rail & BRT lines as well as select major bus routes, commuter rail and HSR connections. Detailed summary of transit improvements available at MetroTransit’s homepage. In 2030, Twin Cities are expected to join […]

A Better Denver RTD Strip Map?

April 30, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

People have already asked me what I’d do to make the Denver RTD strip map better. Well, here’s what I’ve come up with in five minutes flat. Even from this quick little “art director’s sketch”, I’m pretty certain that this concept would work better than the current iteration. Once a transit system is past a certain size or complexity, some level of abstraction on these narrow oddly-shaped strip maps is a necessity. Once the rider is […]

Lessons in how NOT to adapt your map to a different shape, Denver edition

April 30, 2013
comments 2
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

When I reviewed the new West Line Denver LTD light rail map (April 2013, 2 stars), I wondered how the new landscape format would work on trains and on station fittings. Well, one half of that question has been answered: this is what it looks like on the trains, and it ain’t pretty. Basically, they’ve just taken the map and compressed it vertically to squeeze it into the allocated space. The loop around the city, which […]

Unofficial Map: Non-Entry for the MBTA “New Perspectives” Map Challenge by Dave Ortega

April 30, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

daveortega: I love the idea of re-designing Boston’s clunky quasi-decipherable Rapid Transit Map. When I heard that the T was putting together a challenge to re-design the map I seized the opportunity. My enthusiasm cooled once I read the fine-print, but more on that later. I spent the weekend tweaking Bezier curves and aligning dots (so many damn dots), using references like Google maps and subway maps from around the world and came up with […]

Weekend Fun: Name That Transit System!

April 26, 2013
comment 1
Filed Under:
Miscellany, Questions
Tags:

Here’s something a bit different, just for kicks. These extremely abstracted topological diagrams of U.S. rail transit systems were sent to me by Herbie Markwort, who runs the Gateway Streets blog about transportation issues in St. Louis. Personally, I love the way that these diagrams look. Simplified down to their bare essentials – connecting points and termini – the systems take on an almost runic appearance. As much as possible, the distance between connection points […]

Official Map Update: Denver RTD Light Rail West Line, 2013

April 26, 2013
comment 1
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Transit Maps reviewed Denver’s light rail map way back in October 2011. We weren’t too impressed with it then, and nothing much has changed with this new edition that marks today’s opening of the new (aqua) West Line out to Golden. The map itself has had to change orientation from portrait to landscape to fit the new route in, which raises the question of how it’s going to fit into existing fittings on trains and […]