収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0 – 15 July 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.0.

The big update this release is making City of Seattle street labels legible when printed. This was a pretty big project, for several reasons, and involved patching many parts of the map by hand. This project is one of the reasons there are many small corrections in City of Seattle this release.

While yes, I can edit their PDF directly and change sizes that way, they use an $1850 typeface and I do not have that money, at least, not for this project. Also, their PDF is optimised… presumably for something… but whatever way in which it might be optimised, it’s in a way that makes it a nightmare to edit. So the hard way it is.

Additions and changes since 1.8:

• ADDED: The abovementioned font embiggening. I only enlarged street names which are directly or indirectly related to bike routes; others, I left small, if they were present at all. I also added a lot of street names left out in the original. If you would find other absent or small street names useful, please let me know and I will add and/or enlarge those, too (Seattle)
• ADDED: Bell Street improved bike facilities (Seattle)
• ADDED WARNING: Construction underway for new bike lanes and sidewalk improvements on 61st Ave/Place (Kenmore)
• RECONSTRUCTED: The north side of University Bridge in the U. District is a mess in real life, and I was asked to rework their map to at least try and make it more comprehensible. I tried. Feedback WILL be considered (Seattle)
• WARNING: The East Thomas to Elliott Bay Trail bridge over the railroad tracks is closing for construction THROUGH AUGUST. Estimate for re-opening is September 3rd (Seattle)
• WARNING: Cross-Kirkland Connector trail will be CLOSED due to construction at 85th Street until May of 2026. There will be signed detours (both ADA and not), but they’re out of your way (Kirkland)
• CORRECTION: A major maps error in Lake City still present in Seattle 2025 has finally been corrected here. This involved one bike route off a cliff and another down a multistorey stairwell. You’re welcome. (Seattle)
• Several other small Seattle 2023/2025 errors corrected – mislabelled streets, things like that (Seattle)

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Thank you! ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

So I’m redoing the text on the Seattle 2023 bike map, because I figured out that while in digital form on a phone or something it’s okay, printed, it’s REALLY not.

And since the printed poster is the biggest single part of the point of this whole exercise, if I want this actually usable on streets people don’t already know… I have to fix it.

And fixing it means new text everywhere important, and often that means having to block out existing text.

The problem with this is that this sometimes means covering up streets. Not important ones, but streets nonetheless, where the old labels crossed that road and still need to be removed.

Let’s take Mary NW here:

The original small label text for Mary NW crossed a road, probably… 95th street? Honestly not sure. It’s not labelled, so I’m not adding a label of my own.

To remove the old Mary Ave NW label, though, I had to block over it with the background colour. That removed part of a street line.

Now, sure, I could draw another line there and replace it. I’ve done that before and will do again if I have to. But that’s an extra step that I might be able to avoid, right? What if instead of labelling the road “Mary Ave NW,” I just labelled it “Mary NW” instead, and make sure the first vertical of the capital N lies where the street line should be?

There’s no Mary Street so there won’t be ambiguity, so why not?

N 90th Street lower and to the right is doing the same thing. So is NW 90th to the left, but it’s the leftmost diagonal bar of the W.

This isn’t a big flashy trick. If I do it right, nobody will ever notice that I did it. That’s the goal, really. It’s not something anyone should see.

But it is a good example of the delicate art of text placement. Particularly on a map.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.