Best color for a line?

Growing up in Boston, I became jealous of DC dwellers; for their system had more colors than ours. (No Yellow Line on the MBTA. Yellow means buses in Boston.)

I do not acknowledge the so-called "Purple Line" or "Brown Line" or "Yellow Line" in Chicago, for those are in fact the Evanston line, the Ravenswood line, and the Skokie Swift. Those are the only names those lines have or shall ever need.

Los Angeles I think is unique in having a "Gold Line."

I do not think I have heard of a "Black Line," or "Grey Line," or "White Line," or "Pink Line." The list goes on.

Boston's Blue Line was so named 'cause it goes under the Harbor; the Red Line 'cause it serves the Harvard campus; the Orange Line 'cause it goes under Washington Street where there were once a lot of orange carts (mmm, yummy oranges). The Green Line goes by a lot of verdant parks.

Anyone else know of any cool stories on how other systems' lines got named?

What's your favorite colored line? What yet-unused colors would you like to see designating new lines?

Chicago has a Pink Line.

The Pink Line is definitely my favorite at the moment. I visited Chicago soon after it started, and came home with a CTA "Think Pink" button, and a brochure promoting it and other service changes, with text in English (Think Pink!), Spanish (¡Piense en La Rosada!) and Polish (Mysl na rózowo!).

What we need now is a Lavender Line.

As has been already said, Chicago has a Pink Line. The CTA Purple Line does serve a purpose because on weekdays during rush hours it runs express between Howard St and the Loop and in places shares tracks with the Red and Brown Lines. Other times it is a shuttle service between Linden in Wilmette and Howard St, just as the Yellow Line is a 2-station shuttle between Dempster in Skokie and Howard St. Chicago has proposed a Circle Line, sort of a "super loop" which I've seen referred to in some materials as the "Gold Line".

sjp123usa wrote: the Orange Line 'cause it goes under Washington Street where there were once a lot of orange carts (mmm, yummy oranges).

The Orange Line got it's name as Washington Street once was Orange Street.

It just occurred to me that the CTA's Purple Line might have an unintended connection to Northwestern University, where the school colors include purple and the L line runs near the school. Could be, I guess!

I would imagine most decisions are almost totally arbitrary 'by committee'.

Montreal's Metro had Lines 1, 2, 4 and 5 which are now Green, Orange, Yellow and Blue. No particular reason for any of them.

Philadelphia's colors parallel Boston's mostly geographically. I leave it to others to decide if it was coincidental, plagiaristic copycatting or my choice: efficient not reinventing the wheel.
Green-light rail from center city pretty much to the southwest, 5 branches. When they first started painting colors these lines were purple. David Gunn got hired as general manager from Boston, some folks claimed he ordered the change to gree. I heard him say it wasn't true, he was perfectly happy with purple.
Orange- north-south
Blue-from west of center city (Boston's Blue line starts one stop west of Government Center) to northeast. At one time I remember they painted a blue band on some cars, and redundantly put big letters "BLUE" in blue on the car ends.
Red- from a little bit on the west side of center city to the southeast

We also have 3 suburban light rail lines that connect to one end of the Blue line. If I remember correctly the 2 more traditionally light rail lines share the same color, the high level platform other line has its own color.
If I remember correctly we also have an overall silver color on maps for the regional rail lines, and line specific colored schedules, R1 Airport yellow schedule, R5 Paoli-Downigntown blue schedules, etc...

Best color? Orange and Maroon, naturally.

I think Red is a definitely a good color for a line, it's a strong, vibrant color which should be reserved for the busiest route of a particular system. CTA got it right when it assigned that color to the Howard/Dan Ryan line, serving Chicago's north and south sides via the State Street subway...

orangeline wrote: The CTA Purple Line does serve a purpose because on weekdays during rush hours it runs express between Howard St and the Loop and in places shares tracks with the Red and Brown Lines. Other times it is a shuttle service between Linden in Wilmette and Howard St...

Well I didn't say the line doesn't serve a purpose, I just said I don't acknowledge the fallacy that it's called the Purple Line. Before this condescending color-coding crappicus was foisted on us, it was called (and in my world still IS called) the Evanston line, when it travels between Howard and 4th & Linden; and it's called the Evanston Express when it serves the Loop.

Hey doepack, remember the Howard-Dan Ryan line was once the Howard-Englewood/Jackson Park line; that's the route it had when cta assigned it the color red on its maps.

(Ahem: it was, and in my world still IS called the Howard train, not the "Red Line")

(In my world, "hot dogs" are still called redhots!!!)

sjp123usa, So you relish name names for your CTA rail lines, but give color names to your food.
At least with colors you don't have to decide whether to name the line after its route(s) or its destination(s), Howard and Evanston are termini of their routes, but Lake-Dan Ryan were the street and highway that that route traversed.
In Philadelphia we have Market-Frankford Blue line. Blue doesn't convey any geographical info, Market St and Frankford Ave are the major streets the line runs on in its route from Upper Darby to the Philly neighborhood Frankford, which has the same name as its main thouroughfare.

And how about numbers or letters for a line? I'm not sure which came first, but the first numbered route in Philly was 2. I understand that 1 is for the Broad St subway Orange line, but that route 2 got designated decades before the Broad St line got built, and I've never heard anyone call it route 1, I've only heard, or maybe read, that that was its designation in some company records.

gardendance wrote:sjp123usa, So you relish name names for your CTA rail lines, but give color names to your food.
At least with colors you don't have to decide whether to name the line after its route(s) or its destination(s), Howard and Evanston are termini of their routes, but Lake-Dan Ryan were the street and highway that that route traversed.
In Philadelphia we have Market-Frankford Blue line. Blue doesn't convey any geographical info, Market St and Frankford Ave are the major streets the line runs on in its route from Upper Darby to the Philly neighborhood Frankford, which has the same name as its main thouroughfare.

And how about numbers or letters for a line? I'm not sure which came first, but the first numbered route in Philly was 2. I understand that 1 is for the Broad St subway Orange line, but that route 2 got designated decades before the Broad St line got built, and I've never heard anyone call it route 1, I've only heard, or maybe read, that that was its designation in some company records.

The number 1 was reserved for the Market St. subway-elevated but never used publicly -- I don't know whether it was used internally for record-keeping purposes.

sjp123usa wrote:Hey doepack, remember the Howard-Dan Ryan line was once the Howard-Englewood/Jackson Park line; that's the route it had when cta assigned it the color red on its maps.

(Ahem: it was, and in my world still IS called the Howard train, not the "Red Line")

(In my world, "hot dogs" are still called redhots!!!)

Yes, I remember the old Englewood/Jackson-Park & Howard lines, and the Lake-Dan Ryan before the realignment (hard to believe it's been 16 years already; wow!) The color coding of the routes bothered me at first, especially when CTA first came up with the Pink line; but you know, it's really not so bad. In the years before the rehab, the line was literally falling apart, and had perpetual 15mph slow zones for the entire route. Now it's much faster, and I've come to view the Pink line as a sign of the line's rebirth...

Before this condescending color-coding crappicus was foisted on us, it was called (and in my world still IS called) the Evanston line,

Ironically, naming rapid transit lines for colors is not new, but a return to the very old days.

The first so-called "rapid transit" lines were the cable cars and early electric cars. The individual lines were typically operated by separate, competing, companies. They differentiated themselves from one another by painting their cars different colors, and they refered to their routes by the color of their cars. So for example in Baltimore, there was a green line, and white line, and I think a brown line.

Of course all that ended when the the different companies were combined about the turn of the last century.