All posts tagged: Washington

Official Yet Unofficial Map: TriMet System Map in the Style of the Washington, DC Metro Map

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Fantasy Maps, Mash-Up Maps

OMG. I’m in hysterics over here. TriMet just posted a new system map — that they themselves made — that’s a note-perfect homage to the Washington, DC Metro system map. Just look at this work of art! It’s got thick route lines, tightly-set Helvetica, lush green parks, freeways and rivers. About the only thing missing are icons for the big tourist spots, like Powells Books or the Japanese Garden or Big Pink. Of course, TriMet […]

Future Map: Cascadia High-Speed Rail Network by Oran Viriyincy

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Future Maps

Created on behalf of a new advocacy group for true high-speed rail in the Pacific Northwest – the aptly named CascadiaRail – this is probably my favourite map of 2018 so far. It’s clear, beautiful, representative of the region, and is wonderfully aspirational – presenting a clear and exciting vision of a possible future. I especially like that there’s no state or national borders shown at all: the region is instead defined by the natural […]

Submission – Unofficial Future Map: Sound Transit Network, Puget Sound, 2041 by Zachary Newell

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Fantasy Maps, Future Maps

Submitted by Zachary, who says: This map is based on voter-approved expansions to the Seattle area’s light rail network and represents what the system should look like in 2041 when the extensions are finished. The light rail, which currently has two separate lines (one runs from the University of Washington area through downtown Seattle and on to the airport; the other is a short segment in Tacoma), will grow to a sprawling system connecting the […]

Official Maps: Sound Transit Link Federal Way Extension Alternatives

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Official Maps

Here’s some interesting isometric-style maps that crossed my desk the other day. They’re part of a series of maps from the Sound Transit Federal Way Link Extension Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) Summary that outline all the proposed potential alignments from the soon-to-be-completed Angle Lake station south to Federal Way.  I believe that the maps were produced by HDR as a consultant to Sound Transit, and they do quite a nice job of comparing and […]

Submission – Historical Map: The Bogue Plan For Seattle, 1911

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Historical Maps

Submitted by SounderBruce, who says: Of Seattle’s many, many unsuccessful attempts to build a rapid transit system, none sting more than the century-old Bogue Plan. Rejected by a landslide of 10,000 votes (out of 40,000 total cast) on March 5, 1912, Virgil Bogue’s ambitious comprehensive plan to convert the regraded remains of Denny Hill into a Beaux-Arts civic center reminiscent of European city centers would have been well served by 91 miles of rapid transit […]

Submission – Official Map: New Seattle Link Light Rail “Red Line” Strip Map

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Official Maps

Submitted by SounderBruce, who says: Sound Transit has put up the first of the new Link Light Rail maps in its trains here in Seattle, featuring the new “Red Line” branding that will be phased in by the time the second line (the Blue Line, formerly East Link) opens in 2023. The two “Coming Soon” signs are covering 3 new stations that are opening in 2016, extending the existing line up to the Univ. of […]

Submission – West Coast Electric Highway Map

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Official Maps

Submitted by “Sounder Bruce”, who says: A quasi-transit map that shows electric vehicle charging stations in Washington and Oregon, centered around the Interstate 5 corridor. Transit Maps says: I really like the idea behind this map – a simplified road map much in the vein of many of my own mapping projects – but I feel like the execution lets the concept down a little.  Because of the stylised “transit map” format, the distances between […]

Historical Map: Rapid Transit Plan for the Metropolitan Seattle Area, 1970

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Historical Maps

A look at another stalled attempt to get rapid transit up and running in Seattle, this time from 1970. A lot of the proposed alignments look very familiar, but they are often constrained by Seattle’s difficult geography. I see that they were thinking of running rapid transit over the I-90 floating bridge – quite the engineering feat even now, let alone over 40 years ago. Even now, it’ll be the first light rail track travelling […]

Video: Hyperlapse of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel

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Miscellany

No map to be seen, but plenty of transit! Here’s a short Hyperlapse video that I made this week of peak-hour traffic in the transit tunnel underneath 3rd Avenue in Seattle, Washington. This is about 7 minutes of real time condensed into 30-odd seconds of high-speed footage. The tunnel is one of only two combined light rail/bus tunnels in the United States and the only one with stations: the other is the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel […]

Historical Map: Rapid Transit Plan by the City of Seattle, 1920

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Historical Maps

Here’s an interesting map that shows a plan for rapid transit that city engineers envisioned for Seattle way back in 1920, almost 100 years ago! The map shows a subway running beneath Third Avenue from Virginia to Yesler, coming to the surface near the railroad stations – essentially the route followed by the present-day Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Trains going up to Capitol Hill would follow a line up Pine Street that would be alternately […]