The TRANSIT MAPS thread (hand-drawn or computer-generated, all are welcome)

[pdxstreetcar]

Just a first version... its needs some work still like adding the Urban Growth Boundary and darkened transit lines

Portland Rail Transit Map (by Mode)

[nito]

This reminds me that I really ought to dabble back into map making. As a 5 year old I used to stick A4's sheets together to create entire regions (one grew to around 30 sheets), detailing roads, motorways, railway lines, shopping centre, historical districts, etc...

I also a few years ago made an attempt to create a 2012 London Underground map....only for 1 week later Transport for London to produce an official version.

What I wish to do once I have finished all the bloody work I have at the moment, is to take the London city proper and London metro area rail maps and combine them. Currently both are seperate and both have 600+ heavy rail stations, ie 1,200 heavy rail (ie no trams or light rail) stations. I also hope to create four other variants. One being geographically accurate over a satellite image, another in the circuit-form showing u/c, approved and proposed lines, another showing old disused lines and another combining disused lines, current lines and new lines. The later of the maps I suspect would cover some 2,500+ heavy rail stations and I suspect my reasonably powerful laptop will struggle to pull together such a vast 'plan'. Infact thinking about it is crazy - 600 stations on one map is mad as it is, multiple that by 4 and I think I'd have to probably be unemployed to get it finished. That said, can anyone suggest such a program that could handle such quantities (I'm a geography student at uni and I can get highly accurate GIS data/images pretty easily) and would operate on what is a reasonable spec laptop?

[ajfroggie]

FYI, Nick, I've been able to operate ArcGIS 9.1 fairly easily on my own laptop.

As for drawing programs, the biggest I've attempted is Macromedia Freehand 9 years ago on an earlier computer system of mine.

[J Church]

What I wish to do once I have finished all the bloody work I have at the moment, is to take the London city proper and London metro area rail maps and combine them. Currently both are seperate and both have 600+ heavy rail stations, ie 1,200 heavy rail (ie no trams or light rail) stations. I also hope to create four other variants. One being geographically accurate over a satellite image, another in the circuit-form showing u/c, approved and proposed lines, another showing old disused lines and another combining disused lines, current lines and new lines. The later of the maps I suspect would cover some 2,500+ heavy rail stations and I suspect my reasonably powerful laptop will struggle to pull together such a vast 'plan'. Infact thinking about it is crazy - 600 stations on one map is mad as it is, multiple that by 4 and I think I'd have to probably be unemployed to get it finished.

Jesus, good luck.

PDX, nice work.

[Wright Concept]

Here's an updated version of LA's potential Transit Map, also including Busway/BRT lines.

[Cirrus]

Neat. I like your solution for illustrating busways.

[TowerDistrict]

Great work, J Church.

I can't even fathom how difficult that must have been in PhotoShop. If your maps are that good with PS, you could bang out an atlas in Illustrator. You really ought to learn it.

[Arunava]

Here's a map I did on a satellite pic of Melbourne. Nothing too fancy like different colours for different lines - it does have almost all of Melbourne's suburban rail and every tram line in the city though.


edit: if the above doesn't work, just right-click and save-as from http://users.bigpond.net.au/dasa/rp/melpt.jpg

[staff]

Which software is best to use for creating transit maps such as this one (Bangkok)? Photoshop is of course an alternative, but how do I make sure all the lines are "straight" and so on? It seems quite hard to get all the "bends" correct lined up etc.



I'm finally going to make a nice transit map for Copenhagen and Malmö.

[cabasse]

i've focused 90% of my free time this week on creating this map. also, this is my first stab at using adobe illustrator. i'm pleased with the results, and it was well worth the amount of time spent.

the big transit project being worked on here in detroit currently is interurban between ann arbor and detroit. semcog, the organization overseeing it, released 5 options they've narrowed the plan down to at the beginning of july - this is fresh stuff indeed. you can view the entire 58 page document at www.annarbordetroitrapidtransitstudy.com. (whew) anyways, from what little discusssion i've read about the release, and from my own personal opinion, option number 4 is the best. (CRT1A) it's actually in two portions, as you can see. i'll stop rambling now and let the map speak for itself. (the original is over 6000px wide!!)

[Swede]

Originally Posted by staff

I'm finally going to make a nice transit map for Copenhagen and Malmö.

Don't forget up-coming lines like Citytunneln and M3

[staff]

^^
I'll probably make a present one, and a future one (including M3/(M4), Citytunneln, the Malmö ring line and so on!).

[staff]

Come on fellas - someone must surely have some tips/tricks on creating maps such as the Bangkok one I posted above. Don't be afraid!

[MSPtoMKE]

JChurch, cartographer extraordinaire, must have some tips!

The maps i have made have been with photoshop (its what i have and what i know), but that is far from ideal for creating clean lines and pretty curves. I would think that Adobe Illustrator would be better suited for this, and for someone who knows Photoshop, probably fairly easy to learn, but that is all just a guess, i have very little knowledge of Illustrator.

I await your map, sounds like it should be pretty awesome!

[staff]

^^
Yeah, I've used photoshop as well when I've made some shitty maps. I have more experience with Corel Draw than with Illustrator though, but I guess it doesn't matter much which application you use.
I would really like to know how to make all the curves alike - I always and up with some curves being more "bendy" than other ones, and so on...

Thanks for the help.

Here's what the official rail map for Copenhagen looks like today. Unfortunately it's not really complete, and some lines are cut off (and some lines aren't even shown). I will combine a self-made map like this, with a similar one for the Malmö area. I'm sure it will be pretty huge.

[J Church]

Illustrator is best. I use Photoshop out of habit.

For curves:

1) New Image
2) Fixed-size circle (standardize for consistency in "bendiness")
3) Stroke *at 2x width of line - .5px* (e.g., if line is 4px, 7.5px stroke--trust me, it'll turn out cleaner)
4) Reduce image size by half
5) Cut or copy, paste into original image in new layer
6) Align with line
7) Use rectangular marquee (if curve is right angle) or polyagonal lasso to select area of circle that will fill gap in line
8) Invert
9) Delete
10) Invert
11) Select layer including line
12) Delete
13) Touch up (fill or copy-paste) as needed on pixel-by-pixel basis in either layer
14) Merge layers

It's probably easier in Illustrator. But the above becomes automatic after awhile. I can complete process for a right-angle curve in less than a minute.

[J Church]

Oh yeah, lines:

Right angles
1) Fixed-size rectangular marquee (don't worry about precise length; just go a little long, and delete as nec.)

Non-right angles
1) Show grid
2) Snap to grid
3) Line tool

Needless to say, always work in a new layer so that if you f* up, you're not doing damage to preexisting work. In fact it's a good idea generally speaking to put every route in a seperate layer in case you have to backtrack later.

[staff]

Thanks a lot, J Church.
It looks complicated at a glance, but I'll go through it later today.

Cheers.

[J Church]

Feel free to PM me if you get stuck. It only looks bad when you write it all out. There are lots of things we all do automatically that require a dozen or more steps, we just don't think about it because we've learned it.

[PHX31]

How about draw up the basic drawing/lines/curves accurately in microstation or autocad, saving it as a pdf, then importing or pasting that into corel draw? From there you can break up or ungroup everything and touch it up.

I have no idea the amount of time it takes to draw up these types of maps, but I do what I stated above at work for certain geometrics/figures, and it works pretty well.