bgo-eiu
commented
2 years ago Tentative lists of...
States/equivalents that have "heavy rail" rapid transit systems (typically they cross cities and it would be useful to show the stops across the network:
- Massachusetts
- New York
- New Jersey
- Pennsylvania
- Maryland
- District of Columbia
- Virginia
- Georgia
- Florida
- Puerto Rico
- Ohio
- Illinois
- California
- Oregon (?)
- Washington (?) This gets longer when you include light rail. Portland's and Seattle's systems are kind of hard to define from what I know.
Northeast corridor cities with denser/older built environments:
- Boston, MA
- New York, NY
- Jersey City, NJ
- Newark, NJ
- Camden, NJ
- Philadelphia, PA
- Wilmington, DE
- Baltimore, MD
- Washington, DC
- Arlington, VA
- Alexandria, VA
claysmalley
1ec5
wmisener
Learning about this project's objectives and thinking about what it means to have a map that reflects what locals might expect to see on a map of Baltimore, a city where highway shields are rarely used and don't bear much significance for navigation, I wanted to start a brainstorming thread about ideas for rendering in cities that don't fit the motorway map mold very well. Baltimore's situation is in part related to its independence from the rest of Maryland in various respects - the state highway administration does not maintain any of our roads - and to its built environment, which is dense and reflects planning from prior to the proliferation of the automobile. Driving is not the default mode of transportation here. There are at least a few other cities like this, Washington, DC being the first that comes to mind.
Important note to make is that major updates would be required to the OSM database before it makes sense to implement anything here. As @claysmalley pointed out, part of the reason why Baltimore looked weird in Americana is that unsigned_ref has not been tagged where it should be. When I went to look at that, I also realized the functional classifications of the whole road network were really out of whack - there were major corridors marked as "minor unclassified." I am working to shift it to something more in line with the 2021 road classification guidelines on the wiki.
These are some initial observations of patterns which apply to Baltimore and Washington, DC; please share if there are any other cities which merit discussion here. (Possibly the whole Northeast corridor? Philadelphia, NYC, and the various smaller but long-standing cities in between like Wilmington, DE and Newark, NJ.)
Public transit symbology is recognizable and systemized in a way analogous to highway shields. The Maryland MUTCD book includes signage for both the Baltimore and DC Metro subway systems. Even for people using other transportation modes like driving, people are used to seeing the little "M" nodes on maps that anchor locations and refer to places in relation to train stop names.
Landmarks and parks carry a lot of weight. If you look at a map of Baltimore or DC produced for locals, you will likely see the names of major parks emphasized at a larger size than any roadway, and pinpoints on recognizable monuments and/or institutions. (Any university campus or hospital will definitely get highlighted.) People tend to think of places in relation to these landmarks more than they do the road network.
Highways are seen as something that takes you out of the city or through it, not for intra-city transportation which makes up the majority of people's trips. On various maps of the mentioned cities, you may only see them emphasized outside of the city limits and where they cut through exclusively industrial areas.
Railways are thicker and darker than roads on many if not most maps of these cities.
Alleys, service roads, paths, pedestrian streets, and cycle ways all play a much larger role in the local transportation network than they do in other cities and suburbs. For example, there are entire neighborhoods in Baltimore that are inaccessible by car as the houses are fronted on pedestrian-only ways. (See for examples - Coldspring/Cylburn area, Latrobe Homes.)
The street grid is systematized and people use block numbers to navigate. On some maps, you may see the block number, or the starting and ending house numbers, in small print along each named road. In Baltimore how this works is blocks are divided into quadrants by Charles Street going North-South and Baltimore Street going East-West. Any street which crosses quadrants is divided using cardinal direction prefixes. The numbering then starts at 0 going outward from the center point of the grid. So the 400 block of North Howard Street is 4 blocks north of the intersection of Howard & Baltimore. The 600 block of East Biddle Street is 6 blocks east of the intersection of Charles & Biddle. People will refer to where they live by the rounded to a hundred block numbers. (I have to mention - one of the funnier results of this system is the existence of East West Street and West West Street due to West Street's crossing at Charles.)
Any thoughts on this topic and what might be tenable for rendering would be appreciated.