I've been revisiting my map redesign as well! (Great minds think alike.)
The way the BNRD changes the Washington St routes makes it (As far as I can tell) impossible to reasonably show the Silver Line with a full rapid transit thickness line because it needs to hit Chinatown, DTX, and South Station. Right now I'm planning to use the bus symbology (Which you can see my draft of in the screenshot) for the SL4/5 routes and keeping the full rapid transit line for SL1/2/3.
I think you have a good point on the visuals - after some level of accessibility, the subway map should just say "unless specifically noted, all stations on this map are accessible", and then a handicap symbol w/a prohibitory icon over it for the few exceptions. You don't need the visual clutter of a hundred icons to say the same thing that a handful would.
I mean should we change the definition of "in some reasonable fashion"? Should the Mattapan Line where you need to specially request a ramp be extended and have the trolley delayed a few minutes really count, or should we tighten up the stations deserving of the symbol to those only where level boarding is regularly accessible without assistance, for example?
No, they're not. Because the PCCs are fully high floor, they have a 'stand' which then has a ramp than can be extended out into the trolley. This takes ages though and needs to be individually requested. Once the PCCs are retired though and the Type 9s to to Mattapan then it will be the same.
I probably could have been clearer, but I was only referring to the station platforms. The fleet itself is a barrier that needs to be crossed, but I suppose the essence of what I'm asking is, is accessible boarding entirely reliant on the "mini-highs" and bridge plates? ie, are the platforms and station access and such largely at the old 8in accessible standard, and therefore compatible with the extending on board bridge plates of the type 8s and 9s pending fleet replacement? Or are the platforms at rail height, and therefore inaccessible by GL standards, and thus a type 9 at Mattapan today would actually make that station inaccessible?
No, they're all at ground level IIRC.
Wikipedia claims there are 5, I'm not sure how up to date that is. Two are wrecked (you can still go to Mattapan and see them) and probably not going back into service anytime soon, although the Wikipedia article claims that they're trying to get one operational from the parts of two.
From what I understand, power and weight. The existing power system couldn't handle modern LRVs (And I believe the line still uses trolley poles/wire rather than pantographs/overhead lines) and the line (and particularly the bridge in the Cedar Grove cemetery) can't handle the weight of newer LRVs either, so it never made sense to update the power system. This work will need to happen for the Type 9s to go into service on the Mattapan Line, I'm not sure what the timeline is.
All platforms are at ground level. All stations except for Valley Road have mini high platforms.
Well, the 2007 rebuild clearly wasn't very well thought through then - especially since apparently the ashmont loop needs to come down and doesn't even have a minihigh. That said, I don't see necessarily how the minihigh bridge plate wouldn't be considered mostly akin to a on-board deployable one - as long as the GL has stops that are accessible via bridge plate, I'd give Mattapan the same styling on the map.
Three questions;
Given that the D's stop spacing on that segment is geographically much wider than the C, I'd consider it a feature, not a bug.
I believe @TheRatmeister is plotting the combined SL4/5 under the bus network redesign, which becomes a single route that terminates at South Station after stopping at DTX, so no concerns with unidirectional loops.
The Mission Park/Fenwood Rd consolidation is just a presumption on my part although I think it's quite likely, but Back of the Hill has been 'soft-announced.' In the public meeting on the E branch project they mentioned that S. Huntington is too steep for platforms to be built there, which means BoTH is probably getting the axe.
I'm currently going based on the BNRD which combines SL4/5, but I might try that if I have a go at the current service patterns.
Good call, I'll probably add a 'west' turn on the B similar to how Riverside is shown on the current official map.
This is the approach I’ve been using (including in my previous design, somewhere upthread), as a “dog leg”. I’ve also omitted the transfer indicator at Chinatown and used a uni-directional marker for Silver there.
Yeah I've not been sure how to handle that. I might give Chinatown an arrow pointing inbound or something.
This is kind of the way I've always thought both SL and GL should be handled. My view is that the surface sections of the GL should be thinner lines, with the trunk at regular thickness. The idea is to indicate there is a service level difference (frequency, speed, station spacing, etc). The Silver Line works somewhat opposite to this, in that the downtown sections are subject to a lower quality of service, with the outer branches being more BRT-like. For this reason, the thin lines would be downtown, and the thick ones would be in the South End/Roxbury, the Transit Way, and the Chelsea branch.
I personally think Green should be separately color coded by end-to-end segments, as is more common in European designations. Sharing a tunnel is not the same as being the same end-to-end line.
I don't know that all of them need to be separated, but the E line should be (D too if routed alone the Hunting Ave subway). This all does beg the question: what lines should be green? The part that arguably most lives up to the emerald necklace designation is the D line from Fenway to Brookline Village and we are constantly talking about eliminating that part.
