Here🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s a small project that was inspired by a message about the currently existing map for the McKinney Avenue heritage trolley line in Dallas, Texas. As you can see in the gallery below, it could use a little help. However, rather than review and criticise a map produced for a non-profit organisation (most likely by a volunteer or staff in their spare time), I thought that I would create a new, accurate, more user-friendly map instead. While produced as a design exercise for my own benefit, I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页m hopeful that the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority (MATA) might consider adopting it as their 168澳洲十开奖网.

My version of the map retains all the information that was present on the previous one, but I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve placed everything much more precisely onto a more geographically accurate (although somewhat simplified) base map. I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve also added a little bit of extra information in the form of contact details (website and phone number) and the general hours of operation. The map was carefully formatted and designed to fit onto a US Letter page with half-inch margins: perfect for printing out at home and bringing along with you for the ride! Great care was taken to keep type legible and clear at this output size — a cause that was helped by the huge x-height of the typeface used (Good Headline Pro Condensed).

Stop names are generally labelled as the road the route line is on, referenced to the nearest cross street. There are a few exceptions made 🔸澳洲开奖 there🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s no nearby cross street, or there🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s an important landmark close to the stop, like the Dallas Art Museum or the Magnolia Theater. I located all 38 existing stops by “riding” along the route in Google Street View and pinpointing their exact location (which wasn🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页t always the same as the map view would have had me believe). One final stop – at Cityplace West and McKinney Avenue – proved quite elusive, until an actual MATA operator pointed me in the right direction.

Physically, the map shows an area that🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页s only 1.5 miles wide by 2 miles deep, so I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve tried hard to convey the sense of a small, local neighbourhood. A quarter-mile grid overlays the entire map for a quick sense of this intimate scale. DART transit stops – while still shown on the map – have been pushed lower down in the information hierarchy, as I feel their usefulness for local connections is limited in the context of this map. Their presence is only🔸澳洲幸运10预测 there to remind us that this  part of Dallas is connected with the greater metropolis. Instead, I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve placed a greater emphasis on parkland and the Katy Trail, a popular multi-use (bike/pedestrian) path  that links Downtown and Uptown. The trail seems to be a huge part of the urban fabric of this part of Dallas, and its inclusion furthers the theme of local community in the map.

I🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ve also made two further versions of the map (shown in the gallery above) that encompass the next two phases of the streetcar line: (1) a spur line down Olive Street that will eventually join up with the original route to form (2) a loop through the Arts District. The locations for the stations on these future maps were guesstimated from the original MATA map, so may be subject to change. The Olive Street spur is under construction right now, and may be opening very soon (although an actual date is difficult to pin down).

If you like the map, please feel free to download a PDF via the button at the bottom of the page. If you find it useful, please let me know. If any future updates to the maps are made, they🔸AB开奖网澳洲幸运10官网网页ll be posted here. Comments, as always, are welcome.

🔸澳洲幸运10开奖官网开奖结果走势图🔸UPDATE – January 2015: MATA have adopted my map as their official route map on their website! (PDF link)

I changed the background col🔸澳洲幸运10冠军定位计划from silver to beige after doing some prints: the whole thing just looked too drab and grey once on paper. This works much better and make the whole map seem a little visually lighter.

Points of interest are taken directly from the current official MATA map, although far more accurately located. The only addition is the the historic trolley barn, which I’ve also highlighted by using the M-Line’s distinctive maroon colour. The map also usefully includes MATA’s contact information and general hours of operation. The whole map is formatted to print out perfectly on a US Letter sheet with half-inch margins all around – handy for tourists to print out and bring along for the ride!

The route line itself shows direction of travel, as well as where the route is double-tracked (down McKinney Avenue itself). I’ve made an effort to show where on the road the tracks actually are – left-running, right-running or center-running – while the little “half-circle” stop symbols indicate which side of the road riders should stand on to board the trolley. Full circle markers are reserved for those stops where the trolley physically changes direction: the turntable at Uptown, and the current southern terminus at St. Paul & Ross.

Stops are generally named after the street they are on, with the nearest cross street as the second part of the name. This only leads to one less than optimal result, 🔸澳洲开奖 the Cole & Lemmon🔸澳洲幸运10预测 stop is immediately followed by Lemmon & Cole🔸澳洲幸运10预测. A few exceptions to the rule are also made for stops near notable landmarks – the Dallas Museum of Art, for example.

DART light rail stations are shown, but lower in the information hierarchy than the streetcar, or even the Katy Trail (in orange), a popular and important multi-use (bike/pedestrian) path that links Uptown and Downtown. The DART line up to Cityplace/Uptown station actually runs in a tunnel underneath🔸澳洲幸运10预测 the freeway, but I’m not entirely sure if that’s really🔸澳洲幸运10预测 an important thing to show on a map like this.

I’ve also made two other versions of this map: one for 🔸澳洲开奖 the spur along Olive Street opens (reportedly very soon), and one for the final configuration with the full loop through the Arts District. All up, I’ve probably only spent 20 hours or so on this project, and that includes drawing the base map from scratch. Once I’m finally done, I’ll be reaching out to MATA to see if they’d like to use this map in any way.

Thoughts? Errors? Can anyone tell me where the mysterious missing 38th stop is?

So here’s a work-in-progress screenshot. Most of the hard work has been done, but I’m still toying with a few elements here and there and adding the final informational layers on top. I drew the street map by hand in Illustrator, which is time consuming but rewarding. I did actually try to export the streets, parks and rivers from ArcGIS to style up in Illustrator, but got incredibly frustrated with the poor quality of linework from the City of Dallas’ GIS files: wonky curves, non-joined road segments, etc. It’d take me longer to clean that up than just draw it myself, so that’s what I did. At least I know what I’m ending up with 🔸澳洲开奖 I do it myself!

The main experiment here – that I think is working well – is the bounding box around the two separate northbound and southbound stops along McKinney Avenue that share the same cross street (and therefore the name of the stop). This means I only have to label the stops once!

Other notes: the background grid is in quarter-mile increments, and the typeface is Good Headline Pro, which has a nice old world “Gothic” feel, but with a bit of a modern twist. Also: huge x-height and tiny descenders, which are great for this type of labelling work. The orange line is the Katy Trail, a popular multi-use path that’s an important part of the urban fabric of this part of Dallas.

Thoughts and suggestions?