I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve long thought that there🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s been a design opportunity with Denver rail maps for a large circular arc for the light rail stations running south around the edge of the downtown area out of Union Station. I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve doodled with ideas over the years, but I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve never found them particularly satisfying or aesthetically pleasing. There was always a disconnect between the curved sections and the regular orthogonal lines which stopped the map acting as a cohesive whole. Until finally, I thought: what if I did away with straight lines all together?🔸澳洲幸运10预测

It was certainly a concept well outside my comfort zone, as I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页m very much used to working with straight lines and 45-degree angles. The relationship between elements is fairly easy for me to define 🔸澳洲开奖 working within these “regular” design rules, but curved lines are another whole world to me! I had to draw an intentionally loose working diagram with a Sharpie before I even started work on the computer to convince myself that this could even be done. The fat tip of the Sharpie prevented me from getting overly concerned with detail, allowing me to concentrate on the general form and flow of the map. One thing it showed me was that such a diagram was still basically topologically correct: all the lines ended up in the pretty much the right place relative to each other. Encouraged, I began!

Even with the sketch, it look me a few different versions before I finally hit upon a workable solution to my problem: spirals! Concentric circles were almost🔸澳洲幸运10预测 there, but created an ugly “peanut” shape in the middle of the map (which you can see in the working sketch), where I really wanted a smooth curve from Union Station all the way around to Peoria. Some trial-and-error gave me the right spiral decay required to achieve this and still leave room for station labelling, and then I set up a set of nested spirals for all the lines out of Union Station to act as master curves. From there, it was really just a matter of cutting the spirals at the right points and rotating/reflecting them to join back together correctly. In a way, I basically “unrolled” the spirals to go where I needed them to – along with a couple of shorter connecting curves where the lines change direction sharply (see the “G” and “W” lines). Spacing stations evenly along the curves provided a new challenge, but I was able to work out a system that gave pleasing results: there🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s a lot more eyeballing and manual adjustment of labels to get things looking optically “right” than there is with standard 45-degree maps!

The downtown loop was probably the most challenging part of the map, and I almost chickened out and made those lines straight. However, I persevered and came up with a solution that allowed me to keep everything curvy while still staying somewhat true to the real-world alignment of things. I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页m especially pleased with the way that the “L” line swoops gracefully up to join the “A” line at 38th & Blake: it made this troublesome part worth the effort!

While I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页m extremely happy with the finished product, there are still a few things that I can improve – not the least of which is learning to manipulate Bezier curves so that the end result looks more organic and a little less mathematical. It🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s a real skill, and I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页m not quite🔸澳洲幸运10预测 there yet. Some have commented that the map is incomplete without the downtown/mall shuttle buses and the Flatiron Flyer bus services to Boulder, and these concerns are completely valid. I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页m not sure I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ll ever address them, as I feel I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve done what I wanted to with this proof-of-concept map, but I hear you!

However, the map has generally been received quite well, which is pretty darn gratifying 🔸澳洲开奖 you take a left-field design approach. Some comments from Twitter are featured below: let me know what you think in the comments!

Long before the current idea of putting Teslas in tunnels and calling it rapid transit, there was PRT, or Personal Rapid Transit. The idea was that many small carriages on guideways could take people directly to their intended destination anywhere along the route – described as a “horizontal elevator” by John Volpe, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation at the time.

In the early 1970s, Denver beat out 29 other cities around the U.S. and was given an $11 million grant to explore this new technology. This map was produced by the Rocky Mountain News🔸澳洲幸运10预测 to accompany an article about the project in October 1972. This looks like the original camera-ready artwork, complete with white paint touch-ups. The reproduction in the newspaper would have been much cleaner than this. The obvious hand-lettering for some of the road labels strikes me as a bit slap-dash, and I actually wonder whether the lighter parts of the map were meant to reproduce at all or are just there as a guide for the graphic artist to draw the final map on top of. PMT cameras generally just exposed either pure black or white unless a halftone screen was employed, so I could well believe that the lighter parts would just drop out during exposure. Yes, I operated one of these cameras for the 🔸澳洲10定位胆全天计划three or f🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划years of my graphic design career…

Spoiler: the Denver PRT never got built, as public opinion rapidly turned against it once everyone realised there🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页d be elevated PRT guideways all over town (the plan was for over 100 miles of PRT track!) and the whole thing was going to be extraordinarily expensive. The initial 5.5-mile demonstration track shown here was originally estimated at $40 million, or around $248.7 million in today🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s money.

More information on this weird chapter in Denver🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s transportation history can be found in this article at the Denver Public Library.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: Denver Public Library

A great map of Denver from 1904, showing the extant lines of the Denver City Tramway Company (DCTC) in green, with planned lines in red – rapid expansion seemed to be the name of the game!

The DCTC is unusual for a couple of reasons: it used the less common 3-foot-6-inch “colonial” narrow gauge for its lines instead of standard gauge, and referred to itself as a “tramway”, a term used almost nowhere else in the United States – streetcar or trolley normally being the terms of choice. No one seems quite sure exactly why this term was employed in Denver.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: Harvard Library Archives

The map has the potential to get messy really quickly, but it🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s actually all handled rather deftly and cleanly. Colour-coding differentiates between different service types (local, express, circulator and regional), and route numbers and road names are placed inside🔸澳洲幸运10预测 the thick route lines, which generally makes them fairly easy to follow across the map. Some of the routes do get pretty squiggly and overly detailed, but overall, this is a very credible effort at showing a comprehensive overview of a large bus network. Also, RTD is still using the exact same logo today, some 40-odd years later. Awesome.🔸澳洲幸运10预测

Three-and-a-half stars out of five.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: Denver Public Library Digital Collections

In principle, I don’t mind the concept behind this at all – this is the most complex part of the map, especially with all the added bus routes now shown – but it’s just not particularly elegant. I find myself wondering if there was a way that this central part could be represented as a circle (or magnifying glass, if you will), with the C, E and W lines circumscribing an arc around the western edge. Perhaps the zones could then be represented as concentric rings expanding out from that centre rather than the somewhat awkward shapes they currently make. I haven’t sketched this out at all, but this seems like it could be a good starting concept to me.

However, I do quite like the representation of the different parts of Union Station – the historic facade and main train hall, leading to the bus  and light rail concourses – which neatly conveys the arrangement of the different services and implies that there’s a bit of a walk from one to the other.

Not so good is the lack of directional arrows on the California/Stout one-way couplet. The bus routes get them but the light rail doesn’t? And the representation of all the different Flatiron Flyer routes (seven, count them!) as one branching dark blue route line is pretty desultory. There’s not even any markers at the various termini to indicate the start and end points of the routes: the reader has to cross reference the legend and attempt to find those stops on the map themselves. The acute angle that the W Line forms as it heads west to Golden isn’t very attractive: a softer curve here would help a lot.

🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划rating: Not as bad as some are saying, but definitely not as good as it could be. I think the concept is sound, but it needs a little polishing to make it really work. Three stars.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: Denver RTD website

Denver has opened several new rail lines over the past year or so. Apparently, with the most recent one, they launched a new system map. Finally they’re using consistent angles! 

澳洲10开官网开奖 says:

So far, this new design only seems to be on in-car strip maps: RTD’s website still uses a version of the horrid old “wibbly lines” diagram. Small steps!

It’s certainly a vast improvement over what’s come before, although I can’t help but think that it’s been influenced by Theo Ditsek’s excellent unofficial redesign (June 2015, 4 stars). I definitely did a double-take 🔸澳洲开奖 I 🔸澳洲10定位胆全天计划saw this, as the resemblance was immediately obvious to me without even having to go back and look at Theo’s diagram.

All that aside, though, and it’s interesting to note that despite the diagram’s improvement, it still really doesn’t fill the space available on the strip map terribly efficiently… lots of empty space all around. Still, at least they’re not distorting the darn thing to fit the space anymore!

Also of note is the minimal branding for the “University of Colorado A Line” – here reduced to a tiny label running alongside the route – and the continued conversion of the line letters from the old square shape to a more New York Subway-style circular bullet.

🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划rating: Another much-improved map (like the UTA strip map from yesterday), even if it seems a little familiar. Three-and-a-half stars.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: SkyscraperPage Forums via Dan’s submission

However, for those – like me! – hoping for a new map to celebrate the new service, you’re in for a disappointment, as the latest offering is just a minimally-modified version of the previous map (June 2016, 1.5 stars). Wisely, the future “N” line, which isn’t opening until 2018, has been removed from the map, but almost everything else remains the same as before, apart from two very odd changes.

Firstly, the decision have the new line named by a corporate sponsorship deal with the University of Colorado. It’s now officially the University of Colorado A Line, which is a mouthful, as well as perhaps a little bit confusing. Which line do you take to the airport? The University of Colorado line, obviously! The Denver campus is probably just close enough to Union Station to justify the name inbound from the airport, but as it’s not indicated on the map that point is probably moot. 

I’m well aware that transit agencies have to look for creative alternative sources of income, but I’m really not a big advocate for this sort of naming rights deal, especially for an entire route that has very little to do geographically with the named sponsor.

The other weird update is the switching of the concentric fare zones from numbers (Zones 1, 2 and 3) to letters (Zones A, B and C). Seeing as the route lines already use lettered designations, it would seem preferable to leave the zones as numbers to easily distinguish between the two different types of information.

🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划rating: More of the same. Still 1.5 stars.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: RTD rail network map page

(Again, I think that the numbering would have worked better if the current FF5 had slid down to be FF3, moving FF3 and FF4 up one spot each, but I guess it’s too late for that now!)

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸Source: RTD Flatiron Flyer website

RTD just began Service on the Flatiron Flyer, which is a basically a rebranding of all the Denver-Boulder routes.  As part of this, they updated the timetables system-wide to include a map of the route. Because they’re selling this as BRT, they’ve added this rail-like route map.

Personally, I like it. It’s simple and easy to read. The color coding of each route corresponds to the color of the text in the timetable.

Although the map is very simplified, it does a good job of showing the general routes – including the NW/SE route of US36. The one thing I don’t like is how it shows routes 4/6 going along the same route, as the FF6 deviates through a nearby business park.

I think it’s fit for purpose and one of RTD’s better efforts, but I’m curious as to y🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划thoughts.

澳洲10开官网开奖 says:

RTD may be trying to sell this as BRT, but don’t be fooled by the hype. Because the buses travel in the High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes on US 36 with general traffic, rather than having dedicated lanes, the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy has rated it as “Not BRT”. Personally, I think “express bus” would be a better indication of the service.

Anyway, on to the map! I’d agree with most of Steve’s points: the map provides a good overview of the six new routes and has a nice, dynamic feel to it because of the angled main trunk (representing the US 36 section). The colour-coding works well and is carried across all media (schedules, website, etc.). I don’t necessarily mind the FF4 and FF6 following the same path on this very simplified overview map, as the extra “local stop” dots on the FF6 indicate the difference in the routes.

Now, if it had been up to me to designate the route numbers, I would have made the current FF5 into FF3, moving FF3 and FF4 up to a new FF4 and FF5, respectively. This would logically group all the northern termini together on the map: FF1 through FF3 going to Boulder, FF4 being the short turn-around route on US 36 (making a nice visual delineation between the two northern endpoints), with FF5 and FF6 going to Boulder Junction. The only drawback with this would be that the new FF3 would have to cross over three route lines at the southern end of the map, but I think the payoff would have been worth it.

🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划rating: A solid overview map of a new and potentially confusing system (the six Flyer routes seem to replace nine old US 36 bus routes). Nothing flashy, but it looks modern, dynamic and direct – everything you want out of a BRT express bus service. Three stars.

Possible base for new Denver rail map? I spotted this map showing the new rail lines opening in Denver in 2016 on the train. I like the design a lot more than the official rail map. It seems much cleaner and clearer then the other maps that you have shown. What do you think? Could this be a good base – clearly they’d have to add the existing lines to it – for the new map in 2016?

澳洲10开官网开奖 says:

I don’t think so, Edward, although you’re right in saying that it’s generally more attractive than RTD’s usual efforts. To me, this looks more like a piece of promotional artwork that ties in nicely with the corresponding informational web page. There’s some nice typography as well, with the ever-pleasant Proxima Nova being deployed, just as it is on RTD’s website and other materials.

However, I don’t think that this map could ever be developed into a new full system map without a lot of reworking. The neatly arranged route letters – like the notes of a musical scale! – along the main light rail trunk line would get in the way of any stations for a start. The compression of the entire downtown loop into one big grey blob is also a problem that would have to be overcome. Then there’s the awful acute angle that the W Line takes as it heads out to Golden…

I do see some potential here – this map is drawn much more precisely than the official one – and I really, really do hope that RTD is looking at completely revamping their rail map as all these Fastracks projects come online this year… but I’m not holding my breath!