Greater New York. New York has no fewer than four different commuter rail agencies, none of which is willing to share maps.
complutense.org >> subway maps
"I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early."
Detroit. This map that I produced for the City of Detroit’s light-rail project. Phase I is projected to open 2011; Phase II is slated for 2013.
New York City Subway. This is the latest iteration of my New York City Subway map, which draws on Massimo Vignelli’s map from the 1970s— though I think my major influence here is actually from the 1968 subway map, a relatively obscure map compared to the famous Vignelli. Look closely: the line curves match the street grid about as well as can be done within the confines of a single subway map.
Bay Area 2009. With the BART system cut down to half-size, the Southern Pacific commuter trains survived into the modern day as the CalTrain commuter service. Soon, CalTrain will be upgraded into a four-track rapid transit line, and Marin is getting its own commuter service, SMART. 50 years late, but better late than never.
BART 1961 Plan. One of the little-known things about the original BART system is that it was only half-built. In the early 1960s, San Mateo and Marin both pulled out of the BART district: Marin because the Golden Gate Bridge directors didn’t think the Bridge would carry a pair of tracks, and San Mateo because local merchants were afraid of losing shoppers to San Francisco.
The future of suburbia. Suburbia’s Achilles’ heel is its auto-dependency. Curing it in the long term will require a major reworking of the modern suburb, but this long-term fix simply isn’t feasible in the short run. What can be done, however, is to redesign the suburbs to accommodate bicycles.
New Orleans 2020. New Orleans was a gigantic clusterfuck even before it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That said, it has two big advantages: first, it’s the major port in and out of the Midwest. Second, it has a famous if underperforming mass transit system. A few short streetcar extensions and a modernized network would work wonders. (NOLA cars stop every two blocks and run at 10 miles an hour.)
Northern California 2030. This is the final map in my trio of regional transportation maps. This is the most achievable of the trio, mostly because it’s cheaper than all the rest. Commuter lines would use 110-mph electric trains that share tracks with freight. High Speed lines would use bullet train equipment capable of going 220. Interurban lines use diesel multiple unit technology, because the Sonoma and Dumbarton lines are not likely to be heavily patronized as the main lines.
San Francisco Bay Area 2030. High quality version here. This is my conception of what the Bay Area’s subway and rapid transit network should look like in the foreseeable future, unconstrained by current economic and political realities. Includes a bullet train to Los Angeles and a new Transbay Tube.
California High-Speed Rail. Now that Prop. 1A passed, we’re likely to have an LA-SF bullet train by 2016, give or take a few years. (The brown line in the corner is the Desert XPress, a privately funded high speed rail line that just had its draft environmental impact statement approved.)
San Jose. The Santa Clara VTA’s map, frankly, blows. In a place like San Jose, which is one endless suburb, a diagram like VTA’s is useless. The whole point of tube-style maps is to simplify extremely complicated systems into something manageable. Since San Jose only has two lines, there’s a lot of value in showing where VTA light rail runs relative to the freeway network.
San Francisco Bay Area. Extra large version here. The biggest problem with Bay Area mass transit (aside from there never being enough of it) is lack of coordination between mass transit agencies. There aren’t any good maps of the entire system, nor can you transfer from one agency to another seamlessly. This map can help with the former problem, at least.
City of San Francisco 2030. This is the detailed map of San Francisco that matches with my regional BART-Caltrain map. It puts a rapid transit stop (rapid bus, subway, or light rail) within 3/4 mile of anyone’s house.
note: “Rapid buses” are express buses that run exclusively in bus-only lanes.
New York 1939. This is the fabled IND Second System, which would have put a subway stop within a half-mile of anyone’s house in New York City, with the exception of Staten Island, which was mostly farms back in those days.
Los Angeles 2040. Includes all of LA Metro’s currently unfunded projects. Green Line extensions to Norwalk and San Pedro; Wilshire, Santa Monica and Sepulveda Pass subway lines; lots of rapid buses in the San Fernando Valley; high-speed elevated line to Santa Ana. Light rail tracks on Exposition, Crenshaw, Slauson, Sunset and Westwood.
