Maps: November 2015 Archives
A map of San Francisco's subway system that almost was
As originally conceived in 1956, the system would have served all the counties bordering the bay, reaching from Los Gatos to Santa Rosa and all the way to Fairfield, Brentwood, and Livermore in the outer eastern reaches of the metro area, serving nine counties instead of the three that BART actually serves. Lines would have crossed the bays along each of the bridges. Having dealt with traffic along many of these routes, I can appreciate the convenience of taking a train instead.
The 1956 plan was unearthed was uncovered by Jake Coolidge for his master's thesis at San Jose State University. Here's his presentation putting the original BART plan in its national and local historical context. Although the images are small and hard to read, I'm struck by the similarities in graphic design with the Tulsa comprehensive planning documents from the same period.
Project: U.S. Routes as a Subway Map | Cameron Booth
This beautiful piece of cartography converts the U. S. numbered highway system into a "subway map" that follows the conventions of the London Underground map. Included are all routes from 1 to 101, plus some significant three-digit routes, such as U. S. 183 and U.S. 412. Decommissioned highways (e.g. Route 66, U. S. 99) and decommissioned sections of highways (e.g., U. S. 70 between L. A. and Globe, Arizona, U. S. 6 between Bishop and Long Beach, California) are shown as skinnier lines.
Map designer Cameron Booth (curator of Transit Maps) writes: "However, being an older road system, cobbled together in the mid-1920s from a scraggly collection of road trails, the U.S. highway system sticks to its grid far more loosely, with many routes starting or ending well out of their ordained position. This map has taken me well over a year to complete (between other projects) and I restarted my work on three separate occasions, each time almost convinced that this map was impossible. This last time, I started at the most complex intersection of roads on the map - Memphis, Tennessee - and solved it first. Once that resolved itself, clues were revealed as to how to approach the rest of the map and things got a lot easier."
