Among other things, Pasha Omelekhin’s redesign of the Berlin S-Bahn map brings the dog back: the Ringbahn’s route is roughly in the shape of a dog’s head, but in most Berlin transit maps since the 1930s it’s been shown as a circle. It also shows rivers and channels, and adds other curves to give Omelekhin’s unofficial map a flowing, organic look. [MetaFilter]
Among artist Jake Berman’s many map-related projects are a series of retro transit maps—modern maps, in a modern style, of transit networks as they were in the past. Above is one example: Los Angeles’s long-defunct Pacific Electric streetcar network as it was in 1926. Other maps include San Francisco’s cable car network circa 1892, the Chicago L in 1921, the New York subway in 1939, and more. Posters, naturally, are available for sale. [Atlas Obscura]
Maps of bus, tram and trolley networks are, I think, more likely to use geographical maps of the city’s road network as their base layer than subway and rail maps. That’s not always the case—nor has it always been the case. Take this 1947 map of London’s trolleybus and tram routes, executed by Fred J. H. Elston. Cameron Booth finds that it has “more in common with modern best practices for transit diagrams than with something that’s now 70 years old.” On the other hand, Ollie O’Brien, writing at Mapping London, thinks that this map proves that “the simplicity of the tube map doesn’t translate very well to London’s complex road network. So perhaps this is why the idea almost didn’t survive for above-ground networks, and London’s more modern bus maps (now discontinued) have always used the actual geographical network.” Christopher Wyatt, sharing the map on Twitter, notes a big, Westminster-shaped hole in the trolley network that matches London’s speed limit map: “It does seem as though there is a historical pattern of aversion to transportation equity from Westminster.”
Speaking of Washington, the D.C. Underground Atlas is a project to map all the tunnels under the city: utility, transportation and pedestrian tunnels alike, from metro and water tunnels to the underground corridors connecting congressional buildings. The maps are presented as Esri Story Maps and there’s lots of accompanying text. The project is the brainchild of Elliot Carter, who is profiled by CityLab and the Washington Post: both pieces reveal one challenge in mapping the underground infrastructure of Washington—getting past security concerns. [WMS]
An exhibition at the New York Transit Museum, Navigating New York, got a writeup in Curbed New York. “The exhibit, which has been in the works for about a year, draws heavily on the NYTM’s extensive collection of objects related to the transit system—subway maps, yes, but also cartographic tools, renderings, and other ephemera. There are also items that might be familiar even to those who aren’t transit wonks, like the New Yorker’s 2001 ‘New Yorkistan’ cover by Rick Meyerowitz and Maira Kalman.” Vignelli’s famous 1972 subway map also makes an appearance. The exhibition runs through 9 September 2019; there’s no dedicated web page for it.
Last week OC Transpo, the City of Ottawa’s transit service, unveiled a new network map (PDF) that shows the transit routes that will be in effect after the new LRT opens, which is (at the moment) scheduled to take place in November. From a cartographic perspective, what’s interesting is that OC Transpo’s new map adopts a diagrammatic, non-geographical design after years of their maps simply overlaying transit lines over a city map (see, for example, the latest, pre-LRT transit map, PDF). The approach allows the map to enlarge the more densely served core and inner suburbs and shrink the larger, but less service-dense outer suburbs—which is exactly what diagrammatic transit maps of sprawling cities are good for.
A thing I missed when it came out last year: the INAT Metro Maps app, which collects, in digital form, the 40-odd maps that Jug Cerović produced for his One Metro World project. For the iPhone and iPad; costs 99¢ in the U.S., $1.39 in Canada, and (I assume) something comparable in other markets.
Jug Cerović’s map of the Singapore MRT is a gem—literally. (Compare with the official version.) [Transit Maps]
Daniel Silva’s London Underground Depth Diagrams literally add another dimension to Tube maps: they show the elevation of each station platform relative to sea level and the ground level above. They’re available in PDF format and, naturally, are also being sold as posters. [Londonist]
The Toronto Star talks with Matthew Blackett, who for the past six years has been working on a transit map of Canada. In the figurative sense, not the literal sense: this isn’t a map of Canadian transit networks. Like many maps that draw inspiration from transit network diagrams, Blackett’s map imagines its subject as a giant city: it shows Canadian towns and cities as stops along transit lines that treat regions as neighbourhoods. (Thanks, Dwight.)
In the 1970s, Vignelli Associates—Massimo and Lella Vignelli—made a bid to design the maps for the Washington Metro. That gig went to Lance Wyman. The Vignelli Archives recently unearthed some presentation boards and design sketches from their bid; CityLab has more details. Cameron Booth notes that these are hardly new discoveries, as they’d appeared recently in Peter Lloyd and Mark Ovenden’s Vignelli Transit Maps, which came out in 2012.
Booth has recreated a digital version of one of Vignelli’s map sketches—a hexagonal grid concept that appeared in Vignelli Transit Maps—as well as a full, modern system diagram in the same style; he’s selling the latter as a poster.
Mapping London takes a close look at a 1928 map of the London Underground by E. G. Perman. Perman’s map, with its use of colour, italic lettering and focus on green spaces, seems like it comes from a completely different era, even though it was published only a few years before the release of Beck’s iconic Tube map.
Previously: Before Beck: The Prior Art of Diagrammatic Transit Maps.
Harry Beck may have created the iconic Tube map, which substituted a schematic diagram of the network for a geographically accurate map, but he didn’t invent the diagrammatic transit map. Alberto Cairo points to a number of pieces that explore examples of diagrammatic maps that were contemporaneous with or earlier than Beck’s work: Asaf Degani’s article in Ergonomics in Design points to the influence of designer F. H. Stingemore (see p. 12); Douglas Rose’s online essay comparing Beck with George Dow; and there’s a 2005 book by Andrew Dow (George’s son), Telling the Passenger Where to Get Off: George Dow and the Evolution of the Railway Diagrammatic Map. None of which is meant to diminish Beck’s achievement (I think), but serves to remind us that no innovation ever occurs in a vacuum. [Kenneth Field]
Last October I told you about a track network map for the entire French railway network, a map I just loved. That map has now been updated for 2018, which is minor news in and of itself, but (a) I love this map and (b) it’s an opportunity to point at the firm that produced the map, Latitude-Cartagene. Also to point to their other SNCF-related work, including these technical maps of the SNCF’s network and this interactive map of the network in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. All links in French. [Transit Maps]
Transit map designer Jug Cerović has reposted a look at the state of the art of European bus network maps. “I have studied more than 250 European cities and their bus maps, and have also designed a few. Here are some observations about the state of the practice.” He groups bus maps into three categories, based on how they use colour: maps that use colour to show the technology used (bus, metro, subway); maps that use colour to indicate individual lines; and maps that use colour and width to show bus frequency. Now Jug shows examples of each, and goes through the pros and cons, but he does have some skin in this game: he’s a fan of frequency maps, which he suggests solves the problems of the other two kinds, and in fact has produced frequency maps for Luxembourg (above) and Utrecht. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in transit map design.
Previously: INAT London Metro Map; One Metro World.