

Boston Subway Time-Scale Map - pushmatrix
http://www.stonebrowndesign.com/boston-t-time.html

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crazygringo
Would be very cool to see this for NYC. Obviously, there's no "center" like
Boston has, but if you just considered the center to be the square of
'midtown' from 14th to 57th st, and 8th ave to Lexington, and only drew the
lines emanating from outside that, it would work the same.

And have a separate version where everything emanates from the Financial
District.

Would be AWESOME for comparing commute times when looking at job/apartment
locations. You could even add half the interval between trains, to make it
even more realistic for planning.

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potatolicious
This would be very cool as an interactive thing where you can select your own
center. Hell, it'd be great for apartment hunters who can just select wherever
their work is and go from there.

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natrius
Mapnificent might be what you're looking for: <http://www.mapnificent.net/>

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crazygringo
Wow! What a totally crazy and awesome tool.

The "bubble map" you get is quite clever.

Would be even more interesting if you could overlay different commute times,
e.g. in 5-minute intervals, and produce something topographic-map-style.

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greenyoda
The major drawback of this map is that it gives you no clue as to how to
actually get to the nearest subway station, and it doesn't tell you which
subway station is close to your destination. By focusing only on travel time
it has abstracted away a bit too much of the information that people expect to
get from a subway map. (For example, the NYC subway map shows the locations of
subway stations with respect to major streets and landmarks.)

Also, in most transit systems, travel time can depend significantly on the
time of day you're traveling. Express trains don't always run and the time
between trains increases during off-peak hours.

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wtvanhest
I'd guess from your comment that don't likely live in Boston or have spent
very little time here.

The way the city is set up, the T lines basically just run out toward other
stuff. Only when you are in downtown can you find multiple lines close so most
of the time you have only one option if any.

Check this map out: <http://mapsof.net/map/boston-metro-map#.UVnvrodOTYg>

In NYC, you can usually walk to different lines quickly.

There may be express trains in Boston, but I don't know of any??? I don't use
the T to commute, so maybe someone else knows?

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evanb
There aren't express trains, but it would still be useful to have some weekend
service posted, especially for the green line (of which there are 5 once you
get west enough!).

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myke_cameron
There ARE express trains, they're just not scheduled in advance (for example
the b line goes express from bu east to Washington to make up for delays quite
frequently).

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Grimm665
As a resident of Boston, this is correct except for the regular delays of the
Green Line. Consider this map only accurate for the three other lines and add
20 minutes to the map's estimate for the Green Line and you're probably in the
ballpark.

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dignan
Add 5-10 even for the Red line

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dcminter
Some alternative map purposing for the London Underground.
<http://www.steveprentice.net/tube/TfLSillyMaps/>

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wallflower
If you are interested in transit visualization and user experience, you might
like Ljuba Miljkovic's "Transporter: A Real-Time Public Transit App Designed
for Bay Area Riders"

[http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/student_projects/Trans...](http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/student_projects/Transporter_Thesis_1.pdf)

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carstimon
Something slightly related: the timetables made by E.J. Marey, shown in the
middle of this blog post:

<http://marlenacompton.com/?p=103>

They're also shown in Tufte's "Visual Display of Quantitative Information."

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colinyoung
I like this for the design, but for something that's even more practical for
distance discovery, check out this Chicago times map:
<http://www.mapnificent.net/chicago/>

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pixelcort
Wow, this is very cool.

I am trying to choose which station to live near in Tokyo and I wish this
existed to compare commute times from the station where I will near.

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davidjhall
I would love to see this color-coded with average house/apartment prices ---
to see if each arc is equitable or if you can see a pattern ( +10% by the
water, etc).

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andygcook
I overlayed this map on a heat map of 2013 rents in Boston:
<http://imgur.com/oZoCDtV>

It's not 100% accurate, but it gives you a rough estimate of time to the Hub
vs. rent. In general, the biggest selling point for Boston apartment seekers
is proximity to the T and time to commute to the the Financial District (near
Goverment Center). Areas near colleges (BU, MIT, Havard, Northeastern) are
also high rent because college students eat up most of the housing.

As an active apartment seeker in Boston, the original heatmap data source is
generally pretty accurate: <http://www.jefftk.com/apartment_prices/index>

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tesseract
Unfortunately it doesn't line up all that well because of the heavy distortion
of the time scale map. For example the red area in the upper left corner is
clearly the Mass Ave corridor in Cambridge, which in real life lines up with
the red line, but you can't see that in the overlay.

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acomjean
Interesting way of looking at it. Now if only they'd fix up the boston subway
(aka the T) and get that green line extension done.

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bo1024
Sorry, but I only made it halfway because I had to squint to read the text.
More contrast would be nice.

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glenntzke
Fix with your browser's style inspector or if you can access a javascript
console:

document.getElementsByClassName('paragraph')[1].style.color = '#000000
!important'

I find alternate maps like this fascinating. You really don't need to bother
with much of the description though - the maps speak for themselves!

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bo1024
How would I do this on Chrome? Thanks.

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scottrblock
Right click -> Inspect Element -> click Console (right most tab) -> paste code
and press return.

