All posts tagged: USA

Official Map: Miami-Dade Metrorail System, Florida, 2012

August 4, 2012
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Miami’s Metrorail just opened a new station at Miami International Airport, and decided to create an entirely new line (the Orange Line) to celebrate. Along with that, comes a new system map… which is, unfortunately, pretty terrible. Have we been there? No. What we like: The icon for overnight/long-term parking lots is actually pretty neat. What we don’t like: Poorly chosen background colours make the road grid hard to distinguish from the background. On that […]

Historical Map: PATH Map, New York and New Jersey, 1979

August 3, 2012
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After all the diagrammatic maps we’ve featured so far, it’s nice to showcase something completely different – check out this awesome painted birds-eye view of PATH services between New Jersey and Manhattan from 1979. It also shows other rail services in New Jersey snaking off into the far distance, and even Lady Liberty standing guard over New York and the cutest little Staten Island ferry you ever did see. Have we been there? Yes, but […]

Fantasy Map: National Parks Transit Authority Map

August 2, 2012
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Produced for the Sierra Club and very nicely done indeed. Having Yosemite and Yellowstone as the main “hubs” seems very appropriate. Sadly, I’ve only been to three of these parks – Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Crater Lake – something I’ll have to remedy. Finally, I love the disclaimer: *So incredibly not to scale and also fictional. Source: @BRFoo/Twitter

Official Map: Rapid Transit of Cleveland, Ohio, 2012

July 30, 2012
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After posting a photo of a vintage Cleveland RTA rapid transit map, I was curious as to what the current map looked like. Oh dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked. Have we been there? No. What we like: Sadly, the best thing about this map is the nicely retro-styled RTA agency logo. As for the rest… What we don’t like: Multiple angles for route lines instead of the standard 45-degrees looks messy and poorly thought […]

Historical Map: Old Cleveland RTA Route Map

July 30, 2012
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This looks like it may be affixed to a door or wall of an old train carriage (see the window just above the placard), which means the type on the rail map is incredibly small. The naming of the main railway station as “Public Square” rather than “Tower City” means this map is pre-1991 (when the station changed names), although the general aesthetics and typography would lead me to suspect that this map is from […]

Photo: BART Strip Map in the Millbrae/SFO Direction

July 24, 2012
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Apparently, these strip maps are fairly new. I’m all in favour of wayfinding elements that help people plan their journey, but there’s some parts of this that definitely make this feel like a first draft, rather than a finished piece. The overlapping terminus dots at Millbrae and Daly City look a little odd, and the giant silhouette of a BART train indicating direction of travel is almost totally unnecessary. The real problem, though, is the […]

Historical Map: Chicago Plan Commission – Rapid Transit Facilities, 1945

July 23, 2012
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Here’s a gorgeous pre-CTA planning map from Chicago in 1945, outlining all sorts of grandiose ideas for expansion of the subway system, almost none of which have actually come to pass. There appears to be a proposed second Loop, which would have run more east-west than the existing one. There’s also a planned subway line heading out to the northwest, but this doesn’t follow the same alignment as the Blue Line, and a subway line […]

Official Map: Bus Routes of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2012

July 19, 2012
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Time for another entry in the Worst Map Contest, and this one, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, is right up there with the very worst. Have we been there? No, and on the evidence of this map, I’m not sure I want to. What we like: I will say that the labelling of the street grid along the edges is actually a very clever idea that frees up the centre of the map for the routes. What […]