All posts tagged: USA

Fantasy Map: Capital Monorail, Washington DC (1960s) by Michael Tyznik

April 7, 2020
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I’m not quite sure how I missed this one when Michael posted it to Twitter back at the beginning of March, because it’s really quite wonderful. It seems to be based on a 1959 proposal by O. Roy Chalk – the then owner of D.C. Transit – for a monorail system. Chalk considered traditional rail as obsolete, while monorail represented the future: “beautiful, silent-operating… suspended on graceful pylons for the most part.” You can read […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: RFTA Winter Bus Service in Aspen, Colorado by Joseph Van Harn

April 1, 2020
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Submitted by Joseph, who says: I recently completed an unofficial map of Roaring Fork Transportation Authority winter bus service in Aspen, Colorado (80 x 40 cm, Affinity Designer). I decided to take on this project in response to the official maps’ collective failure to portray the system’s Upvalley services. RFTA’s system map lacks detail south of Brush Creek and directs the viewer to a nonexistent “Aspen inset,” and the City of Aspen’s bus map shows […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: Bay Area Transit Strip Map by Fern Kusnetzoff-Hahn

March 30, 2020
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Submitted by Fern, who says: A few weeks ago, i made a fairly rough strip map of almost all Bay Area passenger rail services using some pens and graph paper. I was wondering if you’d like to review it? Transit Maps says: A nice effort at a Bay Area-wide topological diagram, Fern! It certainly fits into the long, narrow proportions of your average strip map nicely. I particularly like the use of a “half-grid” for […]

Official Map: Amtrak Network Map by James Niehues for Amtrak’s “The National” Magazine

February 5, 2020
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Yes, that James Niehues. As you’d expect from the acclaimed master of ski resort maps, the mountains in this map are gorgeously rendered, and Amtrak’s routes are drawn as straight red lines — almost as if they were ski lifts across the country. I particularly like it when a route line “disappears” behind a particularly tall mountain — it’s something that really sells the implied dimensionality of the map. It is perhaps unfortunate that some […]

Historical Map: Car and Bus Routes to Wanamaker’s, 1929

January 24, 2020
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A rather wonderful little map from the 1929 edition of the Wanamaker’s Diary, showing how accessible the store – generally regarded as one of the first department stores in the United States – was by public transportation. I particularly like how all the modes are clearly defined by delightful little profile illustrations – adorable little motor coaches, single cars with trolley poles for streetcars and multiple cars for the subway and elevated lines. The sheer […]

Official Map: VTA San Jose Light Rail Map, 2020

January 20, 2020
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Along with a major service revision in December 2019 that – amongst other things –closed the Almaden Shuttle light rail line, San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) also took the opportunity to introduce a new light rail map, shown here. While it’s nothing outstanding, it’s clean, clear and easy to understand – which actually puts it ahead of quite a lot of other maps out there. I would like to see another use of the […]

Historical Map: Chicago Central Area Transit Plan, 1974

December 19, 2019
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A map from on what looks like a presentation board showing the mid-1970s version of the Chicago Central Area Transit Plan. Initially planned as a whole new system of subway lines to entirely replace the Loop in downtown Chicago in the late 1960s, rising costs caused the program to be split into parts: the “Core Plan” seen here, with the balance to be built later. As it happened, none of it was ever actually constructed. […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: Greater Northeast Corridor Maglev by Adam Susaneck

December 9, 2019
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Submitted by Adam, who says: These are two maps I made for a class where I’m proposing a trans-national maglev through what I’m calling the “Greater Northeast Corridor.” Totally unrealistic, I know, but I’d love to get your opinion on the map! Transit Maps says: Oh, I do like this, Adam! When you have proposed travel times of just 18 minutes between Philadelphia and New York (as just one example), the rapid transit diagram design […]

Review: New York Subway and Paris Métro Architecture and Design Maps by Blue Crow Media

December 8, 2019
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Transit Maps previously reviewed Blue Crow’s London Underground Architecture and Design Map back in 2017, and they’ve just released two new maps in the series celebrating Paris and New York’s transit systems (there’s also another map in the series for Moscow). As before, the maps are simple but elegant in their execution, with a geographical map of the system on one side and the explanatory text and photos on the other. They come in handsome […]

Historical Map: Denver RTD Bus Network, 1977

October 2, 2019
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A great example of late 1970s American transit map design from Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) with thick, chunky route lines, minimalist design sensibilities and tightly letter-spaced sans serif headings. The map has the potential to get messy really quickly, but it’s actually all handled rather deftly and cleanly. Colour-coding differentiates between different service types (local, express, circulator and regional), and route numbers and road names are placed inside the thick route lines, which generally […]