The Black Hole of Washington DC

Last week we featured Ben Schmidt's MTA Map of the Actual New York, which stretches, squeezes and rotates the MTA Subway Map of New York so that it fits onto a Mercator map. Ben has now created another couple of maps, overlaying the transit maps of Boston and Washington DC onto Leaflet maps.

I especially like the DC Metro Map which really highlights the geographical liberties taken by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in their subway map. The DC subway map has to expand the area of central Washington DC to provide better legibility for the higher density of stations in the city center. In Ben's map central Washington DC appears to be a black hole in the process of swalllowing the whole of the subway network.