Improving the way we find the way

An example of NYCDOT's proposed neighborhood map. (NYC Department of Transportation)

Few New Yorkers would ever admit it, but now and then, a map comes in handy. Sure, most neighborhoods throughout large stretches of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and, of course, Manhattan are laid out on a grid, but maps can be useful. Perhaps one is bound for a new neighborhood; perhaps one doesn’t know where they are at the top of an unfamiliar subway staircase; perhaps one finds oneself in Chinatown and just can’t figure out where Pell St. is anyway.

And then of course, there are the tourists who get lost trying to figure out which way’s 8th Ave. and which way is 6th Ave. when they’re standing on 7th Ave. Forget trying to guide them through neighborhoods where the streets have no numbers. That’s hopeless.

Other cities have solved this problem through an innovation called a map. In Philadelphia, for instance, the city has taken the initiative to encourage walking by posting signs directing pedestrians to nearby attractions (PDF) while hanging up neighborhood maps that guide the way. These maps show an entire neighborhood with distance-based circles showing how far away the walker may be from his or her destination. Talk about convenience.

Now, New York wants to get in on the game. On Monday, NYC’s Department of Transportation has issued an Request for Proposals for surface-based maps. The initial contract for five years would cover four neighborhoods with an additional option on the deal for another five years and another five neighborhoods. It seems like a slow process for something that could help with city life, but that’s New York’s bureaucracy for you.

“New Yorkers seem to know it all, except how to get around town sometimes,” Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said. “We’ve got great signage for cars, but we don’t have great directional signage for pedestrians.”

For now, DOT would like to test out signs in the following neighborhoods: Long Island City, Queens; Prospect Heights/Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and Chinatown and parts of Midtown in Manhattan. The Times reports that this initiative will cost $1.5 million with federal and business dollars accounting for $1.2 million of that total. The Wall Street Journal noted that the city is willing to spend up to $9.5 million on the project.

The impetus for the project, NYC DOT says, came from a recent intercept survey conducted citywide. Five hundred pedestrians were stopped and peppered with questions, and the findings were not too comforting. Nine percent of city residents and 27 percent of visitors said they had been lost within the past seven days while 13 percent of New Yorkers were unfamiliar with the area they were in. A whopping 27 percent of visitors couldn’t even name the borough in which they were surveyed, and 33 percent of city residents couldn’t point north. It’s seemingly a wonder anyone gets around.

As The Journal noted, this effort is part of a larger initiative to better unify city neighborhoods and help New Yorkers navigate. For instance, the area between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in Manhattan has suffered through an identity crisis. “In different spaces, according to the Department of Transportation,” The Journal said, “that space has been labeled as Chinatown, Two Bridges, Knickerbocker Village and the Seaport Historic District.” And of course, there’s Queens with its various Roads, Streets, Drives and Avenues all with the same numbers.

It might, as The Times says, be a badge of pride to know the way around, but getting lost too seems to be a hallmark of a New Yorker. Why not solve that problem too?