Transit Maps will be taking a short break to observe Thanksgiving - I’ll be back on deck on Monday morning with new stuff to share. If you’re travelling over the holiday weekend — by transit or otherwise — stay safe!

To keep you entertained, I’ll leave you with a screenshot of progress on my latest subway map-styled project: Interstates and US Highways together on one monumental map (and I’m not kidding: this thing is currently 150 inches across!). When complete, I’ll be breaking it down into smaller maps of individual states and/or regions, but I’m doing it as one map to start with to ensure consistency. This is the Pacific Northwest, and it’s substantially complete apart from tweaking colours, and coastline and state borders, which I’ll be adding at the end.

- Cameron

Fantasy Map: Tops Pizza Delivery Map for Tunbridge Wells, England

Just when I thought I’d seen every possible variation on things designed “in the style of a subway/tube map”, along comes something to prove me completely wrong. This isn’t the latest Metro system - it’s a pizza delivery map.

Have we been there? I believe I stopped in Tunbridge Wells very briefly to get some photos developed and have some lunch on my way from Hastings to London, all the way back in 1997.

What we like: Actually packed full of very useful information:the suburbs and towns around the pizza store, the roads used to get there (using the classic UK system of “A”, “B” and minor roads), the delivery charges incurred — depicted in a way akin to the modern Tube map’s Zones — and even the location of petrol stations for the delivery driver. And the legend at the bottom ties the whole thing together nicely, offering an alternative method of looking information up.

As Lee Vidal, the map’s designer says, “[the map] is designed to be a handy guide for both customers and delivery drivers like myself.”

What we don’t like: The delivery fee zones are a little distracting, due to the contorted shapes they have to make to fit around the suburbs and cities.

The colours used for roads could be a little more visually appealing, although something in the back of my head is telling me that these colours are the same as those used in UK road atlases to show road classes - can anyone confirm this for me?

Finally, the location “ticks” on the grey minor roads are a little bit long for my liking, looking more like branches of the road than a stop along the way.

Our rating: Imaginative, creative, attractive and useful. Four stars!

(Source: Designed by Lee Vidal/Flickr)

San Antonio Options

Very rough alternatives for my next big subway map-style project (and when I say big, I mean BIG!).

The option on the right is definitely more accurate when it comes to the way the routes interact, but feels overly fussy and a little messy. By not showing the highways within the I-410 loop (the left option), the map is simplified a lot… which - considering the scale I’m contemplating - is probably a good thing!

Thoughts?