I live in an area of Brooklyn rich in transit options. If I want to get into Manhattan, I could take the 2 or 3 from Flatbush Ave. or the B and Q also from Flatbush Ave. I could walk to 4th Ave. and grab the R (and then switch to the D or N one stop later) or I could head south to catch the F at 7th Ave. If I’m going to the Village or Midtown, none of these four rides are that much quicker than any other. How then do I know which ride is the best?
The answer to that question is an easy one for people familiar with the subway system and a complicated one for underground novices. From experience, I know that F and R are the worst options, that the B and Q dump me into Midtown quickly and that the 2 and 3 are usually the best bet. Perhaps someone not used to the system could eliminate the F and R based on the map, but the current subway map doesn’t hold the key to my decisions. That key is frequency.
The 2 and 3 are generally my trains of choice into and out of Brooklyn because of their frequencies. During peak hours, the trains each run every four-to-six minutes during the peak hours, and no train is ever that far behind. The B and Q, on the other hand, each run only every eight-to-ten minutes during peak hours, and thus, the wait is longer. Because it generally takes the same amount of to get to, say, 34th St., it makes sense for me to take the train that arrives more frequently, but only those with a close familiarity with the subway system will know that.
Last month, Jarrett Walker at Human Transit considered the frequency map. He is critical of the way maps do not differentiate between routes based on frequency. “A transit map,” he writes, “that makes all lines look equally important is like a road map that doesn’t show the difference between a freeway and a gravel road.” While my example in this post marks the difference of only a minute or two, Walker’s point applies more to service that runs less frequently than every 15 minutes, bus routes and the way subways and buses can interact. He writes:
I contend that transit agencies have an obligation to push back against that complexity, to make their systems look as simple as possible, to give their citizens (not just their riders) the clearest possible image of how their system works. We may not need this understanding to follow your website’s directions, but it will help us if our trip is disrupted and we have to improvise, and it’s essential if we ever want to feel free to use the transit system spontaneously, for our own purposes.
OK, but how to we decide which routes are “major”?
This question may sound like a recipe for decades of focus groups, but in my experience, the answer may not be so complicated if we just consider the basics: frequency, span of service, speed, reliability and ease of access.
The rest of Walker’s post explores the theory in detail and applies it to the Minneapolis-St. Paul transit system. A few weeks ago, Cap’n Transit offered up his frequency map of Queens’ bus routes. It is a very simple idea that brings clarity to what can be a very confusing aspect of the transit system. Have you ever tried to make heads or tails of the Brooklyn bus map? It’s nearly incomprehensible.
For subway maps — and, in particular, for New York City subway maps, a frequency map could strike at the heart of the current version’s biggest shortfall: It provides a schematic of only peak-hour and midday service. It’s true that the map admits as much in the upper corner, but Transit doesn’t make available a map of weekend or overnight service. The changes — from shuttered lines and shortened routes to express trains making local stops — are significant enough to warrant one. A frequency map would be a great step in the right direction as the subway map would become even more user-friendly.
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