Ontario expressways reimagined as a vintage TTC subway map

Just for fun, I made a map of Ontario's 400-series expressways, reimagined as a vintage Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) subway map.

Ontario highways, in the style of a TTC subway map

I started by drawing Highway 401, which cuts an east-west swatch across the province. I had to choose some obscure places to stretch it in some places, while omitting important waypoints to compress it elsewhere. The goal is to make it look like the Bloor-Danforth subway line that cuts across Toronto. Fun fact: Highway 401 is the busiest highway in the world and, at up to 18 lanes, in parts the widest.

Highways 402, 403, and 410 join together to make the yellow line. I took considerable liberties in the scale and selection of stations, in order to keep the shape of the line close to that of the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line.

Highways 416 and 417 in blue, serving Ottawa, resembles the Scarborough Rapid Transit (RT) line.

Highway 407 ETR, in purple, resembles the Sheppard subway line as it carves a path eastward only to end abruptly, well short of many travelers' destinations. (The Highway 407 East project will extend the toll road east to Highway 35/115 by 2020.)

I could have stopped at this point, but there were more 400-series highways to draw! The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) flows into Highway 404 via the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway. Highway 427 provides a north-south corridor along the Toronto-Mississauga boundary. And Highway 400 connects Toronto to northern Ontario. Each of these routes is represented by a subway line.

A monorail line connects Kitchener to Barrie via Owen Sound, because The Simpsons showed us that no urban plan is complete without a monorail. I originally had this line running south to Lake Erie, with Cambridge represented as Hespeler, Preston, and Galt, but eliminated this portion to reduce complexity. The "Kawartha Rocket" connecting Highway 401 to Peterborough is styled after the TTC 192 Airport Rocket.

I omitted some of the shorter highways, such as the 409 running to Toronto Pearson International Airport, and the 405, 406, and 420 serving Niagara Region. I also left out many significant destinations throughout the province, particularly around the eastern part of the province. These were all purely aesthetic decisions: the design goal was to create something resembling the TTC subway map, not to create a comprehensive layout of Ontario.

Please clear the doors. The doors are now closing!

Comments

Unknown said…
This is fantastic.

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