Submitted by Avian, who says:

Hello Cameron! Last week my WiFi was out so I was disrupted from my usual cartographic routine and decided try something outside the box. What I ended up coming up with was this cartogram showing travel time between light rail stations in the Twin Cities. I always find it to be a creature comfort when transit maps tell me travel time between stations, and it can really highlight some advantages (or disadvantages) of a system. It was a fun little endeavor and I wanted to share it!

Transit Maps says:

This is a sweet little visualization that almost seems willfully minimalist, even down to the choice of a “typewriter” font for the station labels. An unconventional choice, but I think it works given the immediacy and simplicity of the graphic. I have to admit that I never really know whether or not I’m meant to count the station dot as a “minute” with this type of graphic, although it probably doesn’t matter too much one way or the other if you account for the dwell time at each station.

There’s only one slight problem that I see: because the Mall of America and Union Depot terminal stations are the same distance down the page from the top, it could be assumed on a casual glance that it takes the same amount of time to reach both stations from The Interchange. However, because the Green Line takes a dogleg across the map, it actually takes quite a bit longer to reach its final destination. It’s not a big deal, but it does mean that the information contained in the diagram takes a little longer to parse.

Our final word: Simple and to the point, with an execution to match. Fun!