And finally, a bit of whimsy: the locations where the light rail lines cross the FrontRunner lines are vertically accurate (i.e., the diagram properly shows which one goes under or over the other), and there’s a little “shadow” on the lower line to give an illusion of depth. Necessary? No. Fun to do? Absolutely.

It’s not quite clear who added the hand drawn elements to the map: the O&CB was a privately-run company, but the base map was drawn by city engineers. Text that reads “Exhibit No. 7” down the bottom right suggests that this is one of a series of maps, either about the streetcar system, or the city as a whole. A report to City Council? One thing is certain: the draftsmanship is meticulous in its execution, and the lettering used is superb!

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I’ve discovered a love for oversized coffee table books. Unwieldy troves of trivia, in them novelty wins. I’d buy one browse it for a couple months. They’re books to enjoy slowly, over time, digesting niblets of facts on some geeky, specialized subject. Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World fills this niche, it makes the journey worthwhile.

I’ve come across this blog a couple of months ago, and have been lurking ever since. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at designing a trasit diagram, and having gotten some free time, I decided to redesign the S-Train diagram for Brussels. So here it is, my very first finished(ish) transit diagram. The sort of book you couldn’t imagine you needed until you got it and now you can’t imagine how you could do without it . . . It’s fantastic!” Some other unfinished or inconsistent elements: there’s some explanatory text on top of the downtown area that looks like there should have been a white box behind it. Some similar routes merge into each other (see the 105X and the 190), while others run concurrent to each other. The way that the routes south of Fisher’s Landing get cut off by the edge of the canvas as they turn onto SR 14 is careless. All the routes that go off the map should have an indication of their final destination. Existen siempre ángulos diferentes de acercamiento para el estudio del fenómeno que son las grandes ciudades, la comprensión de las soluciones urbanas que cada nación adopta sirven siempre como referencia y aprendizaje. The book is divided into six zones or sections, the first three of which being the richest. The zones are further divided into cities. Ovenden details histories, from the inception of a city’s urban system to its recent model and also includes proposed plans. These biographies of the cities are filled with beautiful reproductions of the maps as they change, grow, and become standardized.

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The book, for all its geeky pleasure, is not serendipitous. After such richly detailed early zones, the latter zones feel included simply for the tagline across the front cover: “The World’s First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth.” It drags once you understand the transit map’s history and trajectory. Even Ovenden has to devise creative ways to say the same thing over and over. Sin duda lo que más me llamó la atención de esta colorida edición es la colección misma de mapas, es en ella que encontramos el mayor valor de esta extenuante labor editorial. El fenómeno de los sistemas de transporte masivo está en franca expansión y en particular en las ciudades de asía. Ovenden does what no other design history book has ever done. Transit Maps of the World is a must-have.” Transit Maps of the World: The World's First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth Publishing EBOOK As hinted at in yesterday’s post, my first action was to make the FontRunner line dead straight from Ogden down to Orem, becoming the strong vertical axis that the rest of the rest of the diagram is then composed around. This means that the light rail lines have to slide across to meet it, but I feel that the major interchange at Central Pointe station at least gives them a visual reason to do so. There’s no right or wrong answer here: in reality, all the rail lines parallel each other very closely through Salt Lake City – it’s only the diagram’s need to enlarge the free fare zone that artificially creates a gap between them that then needs to be closed before they actually interchange at Murray Central. The official diagram makes the FrontRunner line move over; I went with the other approach.