All posts tagged: USA

Weekend Fun: Name That Transit System!

April 26, 2013
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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
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Official Maps
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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 […]

Unofficial Map: UTA TRAX and Frontrunner – a plea for good transit map design

April 17, 2013
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Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s an unofficial map of Salt Lake City’s TRAX and FrontRunner rail system. I’ve feautured another unofficial map of this system previously (December 2012, 3.5 stars), but this one is interesting because it contains a message seemingly aimed at the UTA, almost pleading for better map design. It reads: This map was created by CLF as an attempt to show how a UTA rail map can be laid out clearly […]

Salt Lake City UTA TRAX and FrontRunner: now officially the most embarrassing transit maps in the U.S.

April 16, 2013
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Seriously. Do they even care at all any more? With the opening of the new TRAX light rail Green Line extension to the airport, the UTA has updated their website with new maps. Well, only partially, which is bad enough in itself. If you go to the System Maps page, you still get a combined pre-extension TRAX/FrontRunner map (reviewed here, Dec 2012, half a star). However, if you click on the TRAX or FrontRunner icons, […]

Unofficial Map: Dallas-Fort Worth Rail Transit by Gabe Tiberius Columbo

April 16, 2013
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Gabe says: I’ve been frustrated with the Dallas rail map for a while, and decided to make a comprehensive diagram of Dallas-Fort Worth rail transit. Transit Maps says: Simply put, this is a beautiful diagrammatic map and is far more visually attractive than the official DART map (August 2012, 3 stars). There’s a very elegant, restrained feeling to this: from the subtle grey background and typography to some excellent, slightly unusual colour choices for the […]

Historical Map: Washington, DC Metro Map, 1977

April 15, 2013
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Historical Maps
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As you may know, I’ve had a lot to say about recent iterations of the Washington, DC Metro Map (Rush+ map review, draft Silver Line map review), but how about a look at where it all began? This is a Metro map from March, 1977 – about a year after the system first started carrying passengers. At first glance, it looks very similar to today’s modern map… but then you realise that the only section […]

Design the Boston MBTA Map – For FREE!

April 10, 2013
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Unofficial Maps
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So the MBTA is having a friendly little “contest” for people to design a new “T” map, ostensibly in celebration of National Transportation Week. How sweet and fun! Let’s get real here, people. This is speculative (“spec”) work, pure and simple. The MBTA wants to harvest ideas for a future map from entries, but doesn’t want to pay a red cent for them. The winner gets nothing but kudos and the “privilege” of having their […]

Fantasy Map: Subways of North America by xkcd

April 8, 2013
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My Twitter feed and inbox are both absolutely overflowing with references to this map from the “xkcd’ web comic, so here’s a post about it! xkcd has always been a comic for geeks, and has a long history of awesome map-related work – my favourites include this Lord of the Rings movie narrative map, and the particularly carto-nerdy discussion of map projections – so it’s nice to see the strip’s attention turn to this particular facet […]