a Boise crayon, the game of the year, and procrastination
in which i write about i have wanted to publish for a very long time then forgot about, and some seattle mariners highlights from last night
why hello, literate folk!
i made this map all the way back in January. the date is May 21 as i am writing this.
there’s gotta be some lesson here about procrastinating and something of the sort, but i don’t think i can make it here. this (admittedly not terrible) map has been sitting on my drive for six months! well i guess i had nowhere to really post it but instagram exists and the whatnot.
what am i looking at
Boise, Idaho, which is the capital of the state of Idaho. THIS IS A FICTIONAL MAP. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT AN ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF BOISE TRANSIT SERVICE. there are five “local” rapid transit lines, with that being comprised of three tram lines “metro rail“ and two active BRT lines “rapid bus“. there is supposedly one BRT line under construction, but god knows when that’ll open
there are also intercity local trains, graciously called interurbans but more akin to something like a half-assed S-Bahn or a bad commuter rail. i have intended for it to be more frequent than normal commuter rail but less frequent than say a subway or something. like every 45 minutes or so, and on pretty small trainsets. it could be comparable to eBART in Antioch, Calif., or Arrow in Redlands, Calif., but with higher capacity and demand
where its from
alright. this is a crayon fantasy map for a tram system in Boise, Idaho loosely based off of 1. existing freight rail corridors as depicted by open railway map and Cameron Booth’s lovely article Tips on Researching and Mapping Historical Rail Lines Using the Internet which linked to his research on Boise interurbans of the 1920s. the B rapid bus line and D tram-train both should follow historic right-of-ways somewhat closely.
why boise
they have a really cool underground downtown transfer hub (img from wikipedia goat SounderBruce). and i thought this station would be cooler if it was light rail too. yeah
what i’d like to add
more landmark markers. i toyed around with placing translucent green boxes where parks were along the Boise River like the WMATA map, but that didn’t look too nice. graphic design-wise, i would like to use the top right and bottom left corners of my canvas a bit more. most of the content on the map rolls in a very diagonal line from top left to bottom right, and that makes the other parts seen quite empty. the other way i’ve thought to address this was to tilt the whole map so the grid of downtown boise points up instead of sideways
from a transit design perspective a Nampa to Caldwell local BRT line would be kinda fire cus that part already lacks a lot of service after VRT the regional transit agency replaced its local buses in Nampa with on-demand transit. i am not a fan of on demand transit. it is bad.
it’s time for mariners baseball!
half of my impetus for writing this was because of the amazing mariners game last night. scoring 4 against clay holmes — one of the best closers in baseball atm — to whittle down a 1-4 yankees lead to a 5-4 mariners lead!
now i’d like to get down to my main purpose in writing this. luke raley is batting .311 and is the current average AND ops leader on the team. now where are all the doomers from a month ago saying we need to dfa raley hmmmMMMm? dfa this dfa that what we really need is to dfa yourself
goodbye and goms
Congratulations on finally getting some semblance of social media to post rants to! nice map lol (I know next to nothing about maps)
like seriously good job finally doing something with the map loll
i too enjoy buses