Traffic Jam Illustration

Here is an illustration for Seattle Magazine for an article about the downtown traffic congestion and the debate for budget money for light rail. At the time Seattle was still years away from any light rail at all, there was a heated debate on the budget for such an enormous project, and where the funding would come from. I shot pictures of the currency and of my own hand. The background  is an old gas station Seattle street map.

The monorail track is one of my own snapshots. It was built for the 1962 World’s Fair, and it is still in operation today. It’s all tourists now, but in 1962 it represented the future of mass transportation. The old monorail tracks were significant back then. For me they were symbolic of what light rail could be like.

Here is the source file for the traffic jam, it’s an early eighties Volvo ad that I got from the Seattle Public Library image file, an incredible resource for old book and magazine imagery. I hope it’s still there. And the street signs are also from a couple of my own photos.

Digital illustration for SEATTLE magazine