All posts tagged: USA

Historical Map: Proposed Mass Transit System, Milwaukee WI, 1948

October 27, 2020
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Milwaukee dreaming big in the last days of rail-based mass transit in that city. I can’t find many specifics about this plan, though I do know that the City was attempting to purchase the transit lines in Milwaukee from its private operators at the time, so this study may have something to do with that. On this map, the thin black lines represent local services, probably a mix of diesel bus, “trackless trolley” and streetcar […]

Project: Denver Rail Network 2044 Spiral Map

October 4, 2020
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I originally posted this map on Twitter, but I’m also putting it on the blog for posterity, as well as to fully detail the design decisions that went into it. I’ve long thought that there’s been a design opportunity with Denver rail maps for a large circular arc for the light rail stations running south around the edge of the downtown area out of Union Station. I’ve doodled with ideas over the years, but I’ve […]

Historical Map: Proposed Personal Rapid Transit Demonstration Site, Denver, 1972

September 18, 2020
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Long before the current idea of putting Teslas in tunnels and calling it rapid transit, there was PRT, or Personal Rapid Transit. The idea was that many small carriages on guideways could take people directly to their intended destination anywhere along the route – described as a “horizontal elevator” by John Volpe, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation at the time. In the early 1970s, Denver beat out 29 other cities around the U.S. and was […]

Historical Map: Market-Frankford Line Map, Philadelphia, June 1968

September 7, 2020
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A great photograph of what looks like a wall-mounted map showing subway service in Philadelphia dated June 1968, with particular emphasis on the Market-Frankford Line. The map is interesting for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is that it would be one of the last maps of the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) era, as the PTC would be acquired by its successor, SEPTA, in September 1968, just a few months later. The […]

Historical Map: Boston and Maine Railroad and Connections, 1915

August 20, 2020
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I’m loving this totally bonkers diagram of lines owned, leased or controlled by the Boston & Maine RR in 1915. An increasingly complex system of line colours combined with dashes, dots and zig-zags attempts to record all the various agreements in place for line leases and trackage rights. The B&M itself is the yellow lines to the right of the map – all the other coloured lines are lines that they have some level of […]

Historical Map: Lines of the Denver City Tramway Company, 1904

August 19, 2020
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A great map of Denver from 1904, showing the extant lines of the Denver City Tramway Company (DCTC) in green, with planned lines in red – rapid expansion seemed to be the name of the game! The DCTC is unusual for a couple of reasons: it used the less common 3-foot-6-inch “colonial” narrow gauge for its lines instead of standard gauge, and referred to itself as a “tramway”, a term used almost nowhere else in […]

Historical Map: Proposed Telephone Despatching System of the International Railway Co, Buffalo, 1903

August 16, 2020
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This spectacular diagram from the February 28, 1903 edition of the Street Railway Journal looks for all the world like a modern schematic diagram of the International Railway Company’s lines, but there’s a bit of a twist in the tale. It’s actually a diagram of a telephonic dispatching system that the company was planning to install on its city and interurban lines, replacing a mixed telegraph/phone system. As telegraphs needed a skilled operator at every […]

Submission – Official Map: Muni Metro Service Resumption Map, 2020

July 20, 2020
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Submitted by Ricky Courtney, who says: San Francisco Muni is out with a new version of its map… now with the L&K and the T&M interlined. Transit Maps says: This simple little map has been prepared by Muni to illustrate necessary service changes as the Metro lines reopen after being shut down for some time due to COVID-related concerns. Whereas all the lines used to run the length of Market Street, the J now terminates […]

Historical Map: Washington Motor Coach Routes, 1923

June 24, 2020
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Here’s a delightful hand drawn and lettered map showing the burgeoning network of motor coach routes in Washington state in 1923. It would seem to have been produced as an accompaniment to an application for an additional route crossing the Cascades – shown as a yellow dashed line on the map – joining two previously unconnected segments of service. Of note is the extensive service into the Olympic Peninsula by means of a joint thru-service […]

Historical Unofficial Map: New York Subway Diagram by Synthez Design Company, 1988

May 19, 2020
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Has New York ever been so wide? This intriguing diagram from the New York Transit Museum’s collection makes the most of its landscape dimensions (possibly two pages in a guide book?) by going sideways as much as possible. Manhattan is impossibly broad, and the Bronx is shown as almost entirely to the east of it. Similar distortions happen just about everywhere, and yet – perhaps a little surprisingly – I still find the overall effect […]