CTA Tattler

Huh. Kind of interesting to compare the number of ring-like systems to star-like systems. I wonder if there's a correlation with age?

One note about the second site is that it's a little broader than subway systems. For example, in Ottawa, there is only one light rail line (the yellow line) in the map...the rest of the pictured routes are (primarily) dedicated busways. Still an interesting set of maps, though.

Hey, I can see my house!

The maps make it graphic what a treasure we have to protect and grow around here. The second one doesn't really show an even playing field, though: In Chicago only the L is shown without Metra, while places like Philadelphia and SF include lines that are really more Metra-like. I suppose it reflects the agency turf battles we have around here.

What's really most interesting is to see how these different cities have approached desigining their systems.

Compare Chicago and Paris (metros of roughly similar population and economic output). Paris has a much denser center city which is served by a much densere 'network' of metro connections. This serves the many residents of the center city well by allowing easy access from any point to any other point in town. Chicago uses a readial system that better serves a commuter market than the center-city resident becasue there are fewer stations and interconnecting lines within the central area.

This may explain why Paris is so easy to navigate by metro: there's always a station nearby and you can go very near almost anywhere else with only a single connection.

Chicago, on the other hand, excells at taking ppl from home to their office in the loop, but has limited use for travelling medium-distances (say a mile and a half) acroos the central area or for reaching a lot of important activity centers.

I think the differences between Paris and Chicago are deeper than a design approach. Remember, it's not as if someone took an existing city, and then plopped a mass transit system on top of it based on how they wanted people to move around. The systems grew piece-by-piece as the city grew, and then backfilled-in based on policies.

So by the time the automobile came along, and altered the way cities grow forever, Paris was substantially built, and movement patterns, and thus mass transit needs, were already established.

Toss in the way the automobile affected post-war urban sprawl in US cities more than in European cities, and there's really no surprise that Paris's system looks so different than Chicago's.

Of course geography affects mass transit, too. That's why if you get down to the level of bus routes you'll notice that Chicago, which is relatively flat, has many, many crosstown routes. Even transit-friendly Portland, Oregon has few crosstown bus routes!

But my main point is that transit systems don't develop by policy. They develop mainly by needs. So if the desire for the Silver Line is based on trying to make the CTA look more like Paris's Metro, that's a bad idea. But if people actually have a need to travel using the Silver Line, then eventually it'll get built despite any anti-transit sentiment.

The systems reflect the way the cities work, not some abstract design principles or policies.

Wow, one printing and a trip to Kinkos and you have a very interesting art work. The double size would be a great horizontal hanging on the wall.

This is really interesting.

I think something its wrong with the vancouver line, it includes lines that don't even exist yet, if your map shows future lines, you should add to the mexican subway maps the lines in planeation and in construction, like line 12 and trolley line in mexico city or the extra stations in the monterrey map ( those stations are already in use)

@davey: the differences in layouts are striking, and as you say, they can influence the choice a passenger gets for a given purpose. what these maps do not show, however, is that most cities depend on more than a single system---for example, over here in berlin there is not only the BVG subway, there is also the DB s-bahn, which provides several cross-town lines as well as a circle line and lines going miles and miles into the outskirts; you can use the same ticket on the many bus lines, and there are more than a few streetcars in the eastern part of the city.

another detail that the maps do not reflect are details on construction and ease of access---might seem a minor point, but in fact in cities like stockholm, london, tokyo, and the metro of budapest, you have to walk literally for hours to get from the surface to the platform and back.

budapest is interesting because it sports one line from 1896 (földalatti, the second electrical subway worldwide), which was built *directly* beneath the pavement of the street---and is so flat they specially constructed trains with low ceilings, motors on both sides. trains have the size of one or two streetcars. for a commuter this means they only have to take a few steps to the platform; in order to keep up capacity, the next train is always already in sight in the tunnel when the other has left---kind of instant gratification travelling!

i really had to learn that where trams, buses and the old földalatti line are good for carrying you even a few hundred meters, by contrast the metro (from the 1970s) is useless if you do not intend to cover a few miles at least, for the simple reason that getting to the trains is such a long long walk.