NYC Subway Station Layouts
projectsubwaynyc.com
projectsubwaynyc.com
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R211_(New_York_City_Subway_car...
On a recent week long with lots of subway use trip to NYC, it was wild to me that this sort of extremely basic information was incredibly hard to impossible to find. At best, there was a single screen, but positioned in such a way to be invisible to at least half the carriage (on the side in one of the ends); at worst there was only the driver saying stations names over an intercom system that garbled everything. Same at stations, where with a few exceptions, it seemed the only information was on track-facing screens in very limited numbers. There was vastly more space dedicated to ads, including screens with ads, than to signage. Why? Why not replace 3 of the 100 ad signs with some information about the train, or a map? Being more used to Paris and London metros, it was quite hard to navigate and took lots of effort fishing for information which should be well presented.
It seems that usability is one of the last concerns of US transit planners. And NYC Subway is supposed to be one of the good ones!
That’s the old (but not very old) trainsets. The new ones have a digital display above every door. Be happy you weren’t on the very old ones; those don’t have displays at all, besides a paper map.
The answer to this isn’t about usability, but about the fact that the NYC subway runs old trainsets and isn’t given very much money (relative to its economic impact on the city) to upgrade them. But that’s slowly changing.
Similarly, all stations have digital signage indicating when the next train is coming and where it's going, starting from the ~70s.
My point about usability was that NYC Subway was pretty hard to use as a tourist. Station entrances had random variations of end destinations or broad directions (e.g. either the name of the lasts stops, or the location of the last stop like Coney Island, or the general direction of Uptown or Brooklyn). Understanding where express services are stopping was hard, because the one screen per station with that detail was inaccessible due to the amounts of people on waiting. And the noise.. NYC Subway needs lots of investment, but that investment needs to be spent better too.I passed through some works a few time, and the ratio of workers on their phone vs workers looking like they're working was 30:1 each time. The Grand Paris Express president talked about the mismanagement and absurd contracts MTA have, and he has said that if they had the same requirements GPE (100+ km of brand new fully automated metros) would never have been built.
You might have missed it. I absolutely guarantee you that every single car in the NYC subway has at least one system map and multiple line maps. On the older cars, the (paper) system map tends to be at the front of the car, and the (paper) line maps are generally in the middle of the car.
I don't particularly disagree about destination-designated services being confusing. However, that's the norm for subway systems AFAICT; Paris's metro directions were equally confusing for me as a visitor.
(You're also right about the noise although, again, I think Paris is a relative outlier among large metros in terms of low noise levels. To my understanding, this is a result of using rubber tires on some lines, continuously-welded rail on others, smaller trainsets overall, and - yes - better maintenance.)
(Ironically, the biggest reduction in noise along the J/Z line in recent years has been due to lead abatement: the temporary sheds they're using to cover the superstructure while they remove the lead paint makes the surrounding streets noticeably quieter.)
One per car is absurdly insufficient. Especially considering the amount of space dedicated to ads.
> I don't particularly disagree about destination-designated services being confusing. However, that's the norm for subway systems AFAICT; Paris's metro directions were equally confusing for me as a visitor.
Nope, Paris metro only uses the last stop for signs. You don't have some signs saying La Plaine, others St Denis, third ones Mairie de St Denis when they're talking about the Mairie de St Denis stop in the La Plaine neighbourhood of St Denis (random example). This is the same way that transit apps orient you (tell you to catch line X from stop A, direction ABC; having some stop entrances say some places on the way to ABC, that's confusing)
It’s a PDF, so not automated, but still gave me some good ideas.
My understanding was that there used to be more of these publicly available but agencies get cagey about publishing stuff like this for security reasons.
Felt like I somehow broke space and time getting there, and this Escher staircase in Canal Street station confirms it: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55ababf2e4b064...
At the cost of distorting elements with a vertical dimension, it means that all the wireframe layouts don't end up overlaying each other.
I have experimented with a few things over the years and this is my latest series: https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/complexes I think they look more reasonable - still legible but the stairs and escalators look more to scale. They also include elevators.
I was told this was not opened publicly because of terrorist concerns. But if you wanted to get MTA station layouts, it was certainly possible to get them from the city.
I guess we have flipped that page!
The New York bureaucracies favorite excuse for not doing work they are responsible for.
Stop pretending terrorists are stupid, quite often they're smarter than you, and seeing this as an excuse tells me that bar is not difficult to pass.
* https://theurbangeographer.ca/Subway-Exit-Map
* iOS app: https://efficientttc.weebly.com
* Android: https://recursivepizza.com/#TtcRider_more
Certainly there is a mechanism where if a phone can get a GNSS/GPS fix, it can then listen for other signals like Wifi and cell towers, and correlate the two: so if GPS isn't available other stuff can heard and used for location.
But if there's no GPS, but there are other signals, how can you map the signals to an actual location?
You'd have to have someone (Apple? Google?) go in with survey equipment and map the non-GNSS (beacon) signals to locations 'manually' and put them in a database.
And concidering cell signal is likely covered down there and the locations of cell towers are almost certainly mapped they could use some sort of triangulation to generate a pretty reasonable map even without having ever been there.
As I said, I doubt they would put the money into it... Would be a really fun project to build out if you had access to the data though... Maybe don't want to do it because it would make it more common knowledge about how easy it is to track device location even without GPS...
I don't think you would need physical beacons, cell towers or fixed wifi APs[1] will likely be good enough and using some statistics would make removing cases where an AP moved/get renamed / goes down temporarily.
1. Access Points
I'm saying it's likely not needed.
Why would that be needed? I visited NYC the first time as a high school student with not so perfect English as a foreign language skills in 1980 when the city was in a pretty rotten state. The last time in 2009 when the subway was at least free of graffiti and generally looked maintained better. In younger years I found huge subway stations and their connecting walkways fascinating so might have planned some trips with extra complicated changes :) I never had the feeling of getting lost although I definitely lost all sense of orientation. It was easy enough to just "blindly" follow the signs. Not sure why an app would be needed, I assume the signs have not disappeared.
(In 1980 some connections were still sign-posted as "connection to IMT", ... BRT, or ... IND lines although those had ceased to exist 40 years earlier and where not marked on the official subway map. But even that you could just guess from the "breaks" in the line numbering.)
It’s unusual to see someone try to make the case for the MTA not being complex, “I got lost in the subway” is like a lowest common denominator NYC experience.
If the only previous subway experience you have is Glasgow (a single circular route) then yeah, New York is potentially intimidating, but I don't expect a Londoner or Parisian would see it as disproportionately complicated. More stations, but not orders of magnitude more. Tokyo too, and New York only has (these days) a single integrated system so no weird ticketing or line change rules.
Not if all the trains are running normally. The problem is that they often (usually?) aren't.
The complexity isn't the map. It's the fact that trains shut down, swap tracks, switch lines, skip stations, end early, etc.
I've never seen any other city where you have to stay on top of the constant changes. During weekdays it's not so bad, but nights and weekends yikes.
Earlier the first thing in a new city was getting a paper map. No matter whether free or for purchase. Studying the map prepares you for following signs and announcements. Unfortunately in many cities you cannot get paper maps anymore. A phone screen is 1000 times worse ergonomics to understand a network. Often I print maps before going to a new place.
I recently travelled 2 weeks by train in foreign countries. I did not turn on GPS a single time. It's just a cause and symptom of helplessness if people need that. Yes, I used my phone to make hotel reservations. 20 years ago I did the same using tourist offices, phone books and payphones. But the difference is really marginal. Travelling was not a problem without smart phones.
Which there frequently (usually?) aren't. Because so many disruptions are unplanned.
Also it's a big waste of time to walk 10 min to the subway station and pay the fare only to discover the train you need isn't running and you needed to go to a different station on a different line.
These days, it's really easy with Google Maps. Just tell it where you want to go and follow the directions. It tells you the station entrance, which platform to stand on, which car to ride in, when the train is coming, if there's a delay, and which exit to use.
Navigating it for the first time is daunting.
Very different from most single-line stations.
Edit: that said, very cool.
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