Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

Eisenhower Interstate System in the style of H.C. Beck's London Underground Diagram, originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

UPDATE: Prints of this diagram are now available for sale here.

Here's the result of my latest "designing stuff because I feel like it" phase: a map of America's comprehensive Interstate highway system in the form of a metro or subway map.

I came across a very different take of this on the internet last week, an incredibly simplified, very rectangular (and very orange!) diagram by Chris Yates. Many viewers of this map were calling it a "Beck style map" (after H.C. Beck, the originator of the London Underground Diagram) or a "subway style map", but on the whole, I disagreed with that point of view.

The best examples of subway maps use strong colour codes for separate lines and a clear hierarchy of detail (interchanges, major stations, minor stations, etc.) to convey a lot of information rapidly and clearly. And while there is some degree of geographical distortion in most metro maps (the centre of London in Beck's diagram is greatly enlarged compared to the outer suburbs), there should always be an underlying sense of the relationship between destinations in reality and on the map.

So that's what I set out to create - a simplified diagram of the Interstate system in the style of the best transport diagrams. Armed with Google Earth, Google Maps, Wikipedia, a gridded pad of paper and pen, Adobe Illustrator CS3, Chris Yates' map and another excellent map by Rebecca Brown that I found on Flickr, I began my Herculean task.

Early on, I decided that the "major" highways (those divisible by 5) would form the framework of my diagram. These would be thicker of line than the minor roads, and would be distinctively colour coded. Their termini would also be called out in a bolder fashion than the other roads. This was done relatively painlessly, with very little rejigging required to make all the major intersections line up. I was surprised at how much this simple grid already looked like America's borders, which gave me great hope that things were going to work out well.

Then it was onto fitting the minor highways into this grid. Even though these roads don't have specific colour codes, I strove to give some extra information in the shades of grey used: a darker gray was used for even-numbered roads (running from west to east; lower numbers to the south, higher numbers to the north) and a lighter grey for the odd-numbered roads (running from north to south; lower numbers to the west, higher numbers to the east). Each road has its number marked at each terminus, with a full key at the bottom of the map for cross-reference. A bit of tweaking was required here and there to make every road and name fit neatly (it gets a bit crowded in the eastern states!), but in general everything worked out beautifully. I even managed to show concurrency of Interstates by running the "lines" next to each other, just as they do on subway maps.

Then I added the Great Lakes, coastline, borders and the key. Done!

All up, this project took around a week to complete. There's still some little tweaks and fixes to make, and I feel sure that road aficionados across the country will be only too ready to point out my errors as time goes by, but overall, I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out!

Some oddities: I-99 breaks the grid by being placed to the WEST of I-95. Apparently, the number was written into Section 332 of the National Highway Designation Act of 1995 by Bud Shuster, then-chair of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the bill's sponsor, and the representative of the district through which the highway runs. Why? Maybe he thought 99 was a cool number for his local highway?

I-97 is to the east of I-95 (as it should be), but it is the only Interstate that does not intersect with any other. In fact, all of I-97 lies in one little county just outside Baltimore.

Oh, and here's a direct link to a much BIGGER version (more pixels than can fit on your screen!)

Posted in: chaosboy, design, driving, united states on October 29, 2009 at at 9:13:00 PM 1 comments    

Bike Culture, originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

Here in PDX we think we've got it pretty good when it comes to commuting by bicycle. After all, Portland is far and away the best city in the US for biking. It's compact, (relatively) flat and easy to navigate (hurrah for the grid system). There's also an increasing amount of infrastructure at very little cost to the taxpayer: bike lanes, special signals at intersections, lots and lots of bike only parking... yep, things are good in Bike City USA.

That is, until you visit Amsterdam and see how things really should be. Bikes are absolutely everywhere and the amount of infrastructure to support and encourage bike use is simply amazing. Bike lanes thread their way through most of the city, often separated from the main roadway by a median, always coloured red to signify them clearly. Traffic lights almost always have bike signals on them and everyone gives way to bikes as a matter of course. The main railway station - Amsterdam Centraal - has a multi-level parking lot for 2,500 bicycles and there are secure and patrolled lots dotted throughout the city as well.

The other thing that's really different is the complete lack of bike snobbery and one-upmanship that is prevalent in Portland. Hardly anyone rides a fancy 21-speed Bianchi or a Cannondale with titanium forks, nor are there any hipster fixed-gear bikes. Instead, everyone rides big, clunky, black bikes with just enough gears to get you over the steepest bridge in town, barely functional brakes, a kickstand, fat fenders and a chain guard (hence no one in Amsterdam has to roll their right trouser leg up to save it from being ripped by the front gear sprocket, the sign of a hardened Portland cyclist). These are commuting bikes, make no mistake about it. And because everyone's bikes are so similar (black, old, dented), theft also seems to be much less of a problem - most people use a simple chain to secure their bike instead of super-hardened whiz-bang Kryptonite locks that are required here if you want to see your ride again.

Also not to be seen: that old Portland favourite, the cute little tricycle baby cart that trundles along behind your bike. Babies sit in little "car seats" mounted on the handle bars, while older children just climb on behind their parents and hang on. Older people give friends lifts on their bikes just about everywhere; we often saw women wearing incredibly chic outfits perched side-saddle on the back of a bike as it whizzed by.

Things aren't perfect in Amsterdam, though - a huge amount of tourists hire bikes every day and ride around as if they're immune to the very real dangers of the road, seemingly thinking that Amsterdam is Disneyland and they're on the latest theme ride. I saw countless numbers of people get their tyres caught in tram tracks and just have a general lack of awareness that put them in danger. However, drivers in Amsterdam all seem to have a great awareness of cyclists (probably because they're so omnipresent), and this lessens the risks somewhat.

In the end, the main proof of the difference between the two "bike cities" lies in the statistics. Portland's bicycle commute rate (ie, to and from work) just hit 6.5%, up from 4.0% a couple of years ago. Amsterdam's lies at around 40%, a truly staggering number.

Posted in: chaosboy, photography, travel on October 12, 2009 at at 9:23:00 PM 0 comments    

Sighhhh.

Why are things never easy when it comes to dealing with the government? Christine and I returned from our European sojourn (more on that soon!) to find that my I-751 application had been returned to me in our absence.

Why?

Because it arrived at the processing centre on the 18th of September, which is 91 days before my Green Card runs out. And you have to send them the application within the 90 days preceding the expiration date. That's right, it got there one whole day early, so they packed the whole thing up and sent it back to me.

The really funny thing? The date stamped on the included cover letter which explained why the application had been returned was the 21st of September, which is well within the 90 day window. Ah, stubborn bureaucracy at its finest!

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on October 10, 2009 at at 9:42:00 AM 0 comments