Milwaukee's Hand-Lettered Transit Passes: A Colorful History
When transit passes were designed by hand
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company produced weekly transit passes that were miniature works of art, featuring hand-drawn numbers, vibrant colors, and civic illustrations. The Letterform Archive now holds about 300 of these tickets, thanks to a donation from type designer Tobias Frere-Jones. The passes were crafted in-house until 1992, when desktop publishing replaced hand-drawn artwork. This article showcases examples from the archive and reflects on the potential for adding visual joy to modern digital transit passes.
After two years of plummeting ridership due to the pandemic, cities are looking for ways to make transit more appealing, and adding some visual joy could be part of that equation.
- rsynnott
> Milwaukee claims to be the inventor of the weekly transit pass
… so, really? In the 20th century? I’m _almost_ certain that the Dublin and Kingstown Railway (1834) did season tickets; remember seeing one once. Even if not that, surely some one did in the century between the invention of commuter rail and the Milwaukee one?
(The Dublin and Kingstown railway, allegedly the first commuter railway in the world, is interesting in that it was clearly designed before people had figured out what commuter rail was _for_; on launch it was every half hour on weekdays… and every 15 mins on Sunday. These days it’s every ten mins on weekdays and every 20 mins on Sunday… But in the very early days there was definitely an impression that using commuter rail was a leisure activity.
It was also extended with the world’s first atmospheric railway, which lasted about ten years before being replaced with something more sensible. Today, Dublin has about four commuter lines, which just goes to show that first mover advantage doesn’t count for much.)
- sharms
I would love to see more of this mindset - bring something new and unique in to the world, instead of mass produced, least price per unit mentality, like how car colors are trending towards black and white.
- jmward01
I remember using muni tokens in SF. It was great and I often had a stockpile of them so that when friends/family visited I could give them out to help them get around the city.
Carrying cash/something physical in general to pay for transit has basically gone away. I suspect this has helped ridership but there are a few losses too.
- ggm
Didn't early Victorian Train lines have shareholders tokens which functionally entitled the holder to free travel? I am sure this was an understood concept probably handed down from Turnpike and Canal days.
- dfxm12
Having something as mundane as a transit pass be designed so beautifully installs a sense of civic pride. Plus, it employs artists. Both of these things are important for a community.
Transit passes may have been phased out in a lot of places, but there are lots of opportunities for a city to design and display public art.