The Internet as a Subway Map

Via the friendly folks at Infrastructurist.com comes this fascinating representation of the Internet's most popular and influential websites, arranged in the form of the Tokyo metro system. Each web domain is represented here as one of the system's 333 stations. Apparently iA (Information Architects) publishes a version of this map each year. You can see it here in all its high-def glory (6740 x 4768), or in a more manageable size here. It's too cool for school. For the sake of comparison, here is the actual Tokyo subway map.

Somebody get StrangeMaps.com on the horn, stat! This is right up their alley.

Rochester, New York: "Young Lion of the West"

Approximately two lifetimes ago, I lived in Rochester, NY while completing my MBA. This period immediately preceded two amazing years I spent in the former Soviet Union, during which I fell in love with the Moscow subway and the rich public transportation networks of Europe. That experience was clearly an awakening for me, leading directly to a standing interest in transport that led to this blog.




But before all that, there was Rochester, a gritty Rust Belt town fallen on hard times. Funny how things come full circle: apparently the "Young Lion of the West", aka the "Flour City", aka the "Flower City" once had its very own subway (click here for a great writeup of the subway courtesy of the blog "StrangeMaps"). I don't recall ever hearing about it while living there, but it turns out that for a brief 29 years the city had a single subway line that ran through downtown in a former Erie Canal channel.

Naturally, there are people who look back fondly on those days, including Michael Governale and Otto M. Vondrak, who devote the above-mentioned blog to the subway. Included in their blog is this fantasy map showing what the system might look like today if Rochester's future had turned out as rosy as city planners had hoped in those heady days gone by. The Blue Line was the only one (of 4 displayed) on this map which was actually constructed. The others were all proposed at one time or another.

You can buy the Rochester Subway poster here.

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Reading about Rochester's forgotten subway got me thinking about transportation in other cities where I have lived. Below are a few notes on a couple of those cities, but look for more extensive future posts on transportation in Durham, Charlottesville, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Riga, and Boston in the weeks ahead. And thanks for reading.

Charlottesville, Virginia:

As it turns out, Charlottesville was recently considering a short streetcar line of 3 miles, running from downtown to the University of Virginia, with possible future extension north to the large Barracks Road shopping center. But the city's small population of 45,000 ultimately made the project too risky, given its $70 million price tag. Did the city ever have streetcars in the distant past? I intend to research this and write more in a future post - stay tuned!

Riga, Latvia:

Riga shares the same rich transport networks of larger former-Soviet cities such as Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, with the notable exception of a subway. Soviet authorities planned to build a subway in Riga in the 1980's, as they did for every city in the "Worker's Paradise"with more than 1 million residents. But vehement local opposition, driven in part by preservation concerns for the city's ancient core, forced the Soviets to abandon the plan. This event is now viewed as a "shot across the bow", a harbinger of the Latvian national revival that led ultimately to the small nation declaring its independence in 1990.

A Streetcar Named 'Frustration'

DC's long-delayed Anacostia streetcar line has been delayed again, this time to 2012. Click here for previous coverage of this embarrassing episode in DC transportation "planning".... The pic at right, from the Post's article, shows the revised route which, rightly, no longer runs down to Bolling Air Force Base along 295.

So it appears our pretty red, bought and paid-for streetcars will be doing a few more laps around Prague over the next three years (or more?)....

More on Proposed Metro Expansion and Re-Alignments

If you haven't guessed by now, the purpose of this blog is as much to amuse myself and organize my thoughts as it is to entertain and enlighten my readers (both of them). Thank you for indulging my narcissism, and thanks to Blogger for providing this medium for my amusement.

Metro is considering a number of proposals for the future, a few of which include:

1) Building the new Silver and Purple Lines,

2) Running some Blue Line trains across the Potomac on the Yellow Line bridge to reduce congestion in Rosslyn, and

3) Digging a new tunnel for the Blue Line across the Potomac from Rosslyn and under downtown via M Street, Mass. Ave., and H Street NE.

As posted a couple days ago, Metro's current plans for items 1 and 3 would result in something that looks much like the image above. Click on it to see GGW's post detailing these plans.

On item 2 above, one proposal for the Blue trains re-routed across the Yellow Line bridge is to designate those trains as a whole new line with their own new color. As GGW points out, this is unnecessary. The re-routed trains could simply be referred as Yellow Line trains terminating at Franconia-Springfield instead of Huntington. Here is a great old Metro map showing that the Yellow Line was originally planned to terminate at Franconia, and the Blue in Huntington. The two were switched due to a shortage of train cars - presumably, fewer cars are needed in the current alignment than the original proposal. As GGW recommends, I would support simply splitting the Yellow Line trains so that all trains crossing the Yellow Line bridge would be Yellow trains, regardless whether they terminate at Franconia or Huntington.

Finally, here is a post and pic of the alternative floated by Metro to rename the re-routed Blue trains as a new "Brown Line" terminating at Franconia/Springfield and Greenbelt.

Breaking Up the Blue and Orange: Proposed Separate Blue Line Tunnel Downtown

Readers of this blog will come to the conclusion that I admire the blog "Greater Greater Washington" highly. And I mine their posts for material shamelessly (thanks guys!). Another blog (the chief inspiration for the blog you are currently reading) is "Track Twenty-Nine", which I credit with turning my attention to the proposed re-alignment of the Blue Line into a new tunnel separated from the Orange Line through downtown. Click here to see GGW's conception of Metro's vision of the system in 2030.

Separating the Orange and Blue downtown would accomplish several things:

a) open up space and headways for the new Silver Line from Tysons and Dulles,
b) with the addition of a new Potomac River crossing, greatly increase capacity into DC from northern Virginia, and
c) catalyze transit-oriented development and revitalization in areas targeted by the city, such as H Street NE.

GGW posted a "2003 WMATA expansion" map in September and discussed this proposed Blue Line re-alignment, which would run down M Street from Georgetown to Massachusetts Ave., pass the Convention Center to Union Station, then down H Street to Benning Road, terminating at River Terrace.

This alignment along M and Mass. has always struck me as being too close to the existing east-west Metro lines (Orange/Blue west of the Convention Center, and Red to the east). In fact, this alignment sits only a few blocks north of the other lines along a good portion of the route. It would appear to me that if we separated the lines a bit more, a larger part of the core of the city could be served by Metro.

I would therefore propose an alternative alignment a couple blocks further north, along P Street instead of M. Like the alignment proposed in the 2003 WMATA expansion map, my plan would begin with a new station in Rosslyn connected by a tunnel to the existing Rosslyn station. Blue Line trains would proceed north through a new tunnel under the Potomac, through Georgetown University with a new station on campus. The line then would turn east onto P Street and proceed to a new station at Wisconsin Ave. Continuing on P St., trains would then pass through and connect with the Dupont Circle station. After Dupont, trains would take one of several alignment options:

1) turn south-east on Massachusetts Ave., then turn east to N Street to a stop on the northern side of the Convention Center (with a connection to the existing Green/Yellow Line stop), then turning south-east on New Jersey Ave.; or
2) continue on P St. through a new stop at Logan Circle, then turning south-east on New Jersey Ave. (completely by-passing the Convention Center); or
3) continue on P St. through Logan Circle all the way to North Capitol Street, onto which the line turns south towards Union Station.

Under all three options, Blue Line trains would then turn due east onto H Street with a station at 1st St. NE & H Street (connecting to Union Station Metro via pedestrian tunnel), then continuing along H Street and terminating at a new station at Oklahoma Ave./Benning Rd., at River Terrace, or at Stadium/Armory.

A map of my proposed Blue Line route can be seen here. The new line is represented here in deep red, with large black dots indicating stops and/or attractions along the route, including Georgetown University, Wisconsin Ave/P Street, Dupont Circle, Scott Circle, Convention Center, New Jersey Ave./Gonzaga, Union Station, H Street NE, and Benning Road/Oklahoma Ave.

Would apreciate your comments. From my perspective, the chief advantage of this proposed alignment is to put more of the city closer to a Metro station, making more of the city attractive for re-development into the vibrant, walkable communities made possible elsewhere by thoughtful transit-oriented planning.


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On a separate note, I have to call attention to the excellent DC map containing city streets and an overlay of the existing Metro lines and stations, which is found here. Why is this extremely useful information (combined street/metro overlays) such a rare find? And why doesn't Metro have such a thing on their website?