Hanto Railway Service Map

Description:

This is a parody/notional station and line service map for the Caltrain commuter rail line that runs between San Francisco and Gilroy, California. The map takes inspiration from Japanese rail systems like the Hankyu Railway and Tobu Railway, featuring differing train service levels and the respective stations they serve.

In this map, trains on the Hanto Mainline (Peninsula Mainline) operate at multiple service levels between Motokaneyama (San Francisco) and Ooyatsu (Gilroy), with service to Kakimori-shi (Hayward) on the Eidaiba Line (Dumbarton Line). Passengers can use this map to see what trains stop at which stations.

Process:

The idea for this piece came when I was riding the Hankyu Line around Osaka to visit friends. The service maps posted around the stations and on the trains caught my interest. As opposed to most transit system maps in North America, which focus on service area, many of these maps focus on service level instead. This means the maps focus on a specific line and what trains service which station along the line. This allows passengers to know which train they should take, and where they should transfer. These types of map seem indicative of heavy and rapid service and reflect their heavy use by passengers. I wanted to emulate this on my beloved hometown rail line.

However, rather than just recreating a service level map, I wanted to put more of a twist on it. This came in the form of emulating even more of the feeling of it being a Japanese transit map. To do this, I took the effort to try and transliterate the names of each station into their meaning-based equivalents in Japanese Kanji. I used to approaches for this. First was to find cities and locales that already had name that utilized Kanji/Chinese characters. This was easy for the station like San Francisco, South San Francisco, and California Avenue, which have name that have Chinese-language equivalents. For the others, I delved into the etymology of the city names, trying to find the roots and history of how the place came to be called what it is now. Once I found the root words, I was able to find their equivalent in Japanese. To follow more closely with Japanese naming norm, I researched a bit into the naming structures behind Japanese places. This informed how I used the Japanese Kanji, and their respective pronunciation. Afterwards, I had a couple friends look through the names to see if they made sense.

The name of the system Hanto Railway, was also borne from the same process. In the past, when Caltrain was a commuter service offered by the Southern Pacific Railroad, the line was often known as the Peninsula Commute. Hanto, Japanese for peninsula became the basis for the name.

Beyond the names, I also wanted make commentary on the future of what Caltrain could be. To add some more visual complexity and local political narrative to the map, I included the often discussed extensions into downtown San Francisco and the Dumbarton rail corridor. As a result, I hoped for this parody to also comment on what the San Francisco Bay Area could have and get out of the Caltrain line.