From Tim:

“The history of Somerville, 2010-2100″ is a community art project that is exploring what the future might be like. Both the book and the website present what we’ve found by talking to Somerville community members about the future. In the book and website, you’ll also find official government plans, think tank vision statements, and various ideas and concerns about the future from various other sources.

The Timeline section presents this material as a single timeline. In the Predictions Archive section, you’ll find the actual predictions that community members made.

We’ll be collecting predictions until the end of the year. If you’d like to make a prediction, please email Tim at future.of.somerville@gmail.com . All participants will receive full credit for their images, concepts, stories, and data. All material received by Dec. 31, 2010 will appear on the project’s website and in the final version of the book.

This project is organized by Tim Devin, and is sponsored in part by the Somerville Arts Council. The project is also on Facebook.

To download a free PDF of the book, click here: http://timdevin.com/historyofsomerville.pdf
To view the project’s website, click here: http://timdevin.com/historyofsomerville.html

A map from Samuel Wyner

I just posted some more fantastic read submissions to the futureMBTA. Head over and check them out. Great work guys, keep them coming!

http://futurembta.com

FutureMBTA Map on a journal

Thanks to Brain over at Boston Coasters I am now selling my FutureMBTA map on a variety of products. I got this journal (which will be available soon) and haven’t been able to stop holding it since. I’ve added a link on the sidebar and on FutureMBTA.com, or you can also click on this image.

I started working on this new map until real life got in the way and forgot about it until a few weeks ago when I got an email from the owner of Boston Coasters who said he was a fan and wanted to start a line of products for the FutureMBTA. I realized the map he wanted to use was the one I hated (and would probably look crappy when resized) so I dug through my files and found this new one I had been working on. A few nights of intense redrawing produced what feel is my finest map and probably the (truly) last future MBTA map I will ever make.

What makes this map different? For one thing it is the only map I’ve made that incorporates my Green Line/Urban Ring which shows how you can create a network of light rail that will work as both a suburb-downtown connector (the Green and Brown Lines) and an inner city ring line (The Yellow Line). There is also the North-South Rail Link which will enable DMU/EMU service for new stops in inner suburbs where existing commuter rail exists but currently does not serve (This is the “Indigo Line” which runs along side the regular commuter rail). Someone left a comment on one of my sites asking why I hadn’t created a unified master plan for expansion. This is the first step. I have some time off this week so I plan on further explaining what this map proposes, sort of like a thesis for the FutureMBTA.

So pretty soon you will be able to have this on coasters, journals, posters, messenger bags, etc, over at Boston Coasters. I have also created different desktop background sizes available over at FutureMBTA.

Edit:
I also have this map with inverted colors because I think it looks bad ass.

Capital construction and expansion would be handled by this parent authority or by another authority under the parent authority. The purpose of this new authority will be solely for the expansion and planning of transportation throughout the region. The new authority would not be limited to transit expansion but all aspects of infrastructure expansion in the Commonwealth; this includes highway, freight, and water port facilities.

For example the North South Rail Link would make MBTA operations much more flexible and attract many new riders but the construction costs would be so high that it would require the MBTA to realign funds from operation improvements to debt payments, thus limiting the usefulness of the entire project.

I finally got off my but and moved my Future MBTA to its own website: http://futurembta.com.

Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia transit maps! I finally got around to doing something with all these transit maps I was making. Unfortunately Google is weird about what maps they allow and don’t allow you to embed on a web page so for the time being I am just posting links to the maps. They are just first drafts but all the lines are there. When I have more time I plan on going through and adding more information to each map. Someone asked me to include stations which is on my to do list but because Google Maps already has stations with information about them for most cities I am going to hold off on this.

San Francisco Transit
Philadelphia Transit
Boston Transit

I have also redrawn the New York & New Jersey Subways map so each line has a nice image in the information box that leads to the line schedule at MTA.info.

Lastly, here is a new map of the MBTA as it should look today with the Green Line and Blue Line extensions marked as in planning and the Indigo Line (Fairmount Branch CR) distinguished as an actual rapid transit line. I heard a story that at a community meeting a few years ago someone in the audience mentioned that the branch was not on the map, which confused the people from the MBTA because it was. What the man really meant was that the line was marked as commuter rail (which is what it is) and not rapid transit. If you want to get people to think about it as rapid transit you needed to show it as a rapid transit line on the map the same as the Red or Orange Lines. This doesn’t mean it will be converted to heavy rail, which is not a good idea since this is the only other route into the city from the southwest other than the Southwest Corridor, but you can change the way people perceive the line just by changing how wide the line is on the map (which is one reason I like maps so much).