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Comment by ZoomStop | Hacker News Reader

Indicate the direction of North at street level subway exits

As someone who vacations in NYC every few years, this would be great. Sad that my map collection showing NYC changing over the years may have its last map already.

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On some of the subway platforms in downtown Chicago, they have signs on each wall of the station at the platform that tells you what street is at each end of the platform.

Then also on that sign they have a picture of the street there as well. So they have a Southwest view and a Southeast view, and ext one tells you which it is.

I grew up there though so not sure how useful it would actually be for tourists but seemed useful.

Chicago also puts the effective street numbers of the station, which is very useful.

You also get a compass rose embedded in the sidewalk outside of the station [1].

But of course when the sidewalk gets replaced due to other construction projects, it is never replaced.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/77aq9c/t...

this rose is so cool. I would love that here. I can never figure out where I should walk when coming out of an unfamiliar station in manhattan. It's always "a game"

The exits of stations in NYC have the name of the streets it dumps you on as well as the cardinal direction of the side of the street you'll be on (NE corner 44th St and 8th Ave for example).

Some local hipster stenciled compasses onto the ground at the exits a few years back, they were a huge hit.

Interestingly, the Stockholm metro system puts compass roses on the platforms (probably intended to provide some feeling of connection to the outside world), but not at the exits where they would actually be useful.

As a New Yorker....I just track the orientation vs. the train direction and the path I take in the station. Do people not practice spatial awareness?

Of course not, because awareness is haaaarrrdd. (And they would have to look up from their phones.)

Some people are just naturally better at it- it's one of those deeply ingrained abilities that some people are just much worse at than others.

Metro stations are designed like rat warrens, it's like they're meant to discombobulate. The man-hours required to just put up north markers vs requiring every single New Yorker learn how to maintain an inerrent sense of direction seems to significantly favor the former.

That kind of response suggests millions of customers should learn this rather than hundreds of stations posting a sign, and that's the fundamental backwardsness of the "blame the user" approach.

And it doesn't work reliably. Yes, if you've been riding for a while, you do pick that up, and it does work in some stations. But, especially in DC, many stations aren't neatly on some cardinal direction, and you are turned around several times, and often not in 90 degree increments, by the time you exit.

They're starting to do this at some stops, like mine. Presumably it will be rolled out to all of them in time.

This already exists. Most exists, at least when in the grid, are indicated with the cardinal direction.

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