Second Ave. Sagas

Map of the Day: The Gotham City Subway

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

In fictional universes, subway systems do not have to make much sense. (Photo via Brian Donohue of The Star-Ledger. Click to enlarge.)

Via The Star-Ledger comes this glimpse at an alternate-universe subway map. Posted outside of the Newark Subway stop at Military Park late last week, this map shows how the subways run throughout Bruce Wayne’s Gotham City. Frankly, the whole thing is a bit of a mess with subways criss-crossing each other and the city at odd angles. Routes feature steep curves, some unnecessarily close stops and some zany transfer options. On the bright side, Gotham City planners have certainly managed to provide for some better inter-borough subway connections than we have in New York, and their subway system runs to Batman’s equivalent of Staten Island.

Comments

21 responses to “Map of the Day: The Gotham City Subway”

  1. Alex C

    I like how some lines just straight up randomly go off the map into the unknown.

    Reply
  2. Brian

    cute they even have their purple line going their equivalent of New Jersey

    Reply
  3. John-2

    The Gotham City Vignelli subway map was a lot more stylish.

    Reply
  4. Name

    Jesus, the insane fantasy subway maps are better than this…

    Reply
  5. Michael Plasmeier (ThePlaz)

    I wonder if the guy or girl at some prop shop somewhere who made this is actually a subway/transit enthusiast…. These things are often put together with little internal consistency. Six Flags Great Adventure’s Batman ride is themed as the GTA (its a wild mouse). I believe their map is very different. These things are all made by different people who try to pick out the memorable highlights of each world – not cohesively think out every detail.

    Reply
  6. Clarke

    Their Airtrain seems to run like its own rail system! Look at all the interchanges! If only it were that easy to get to the airports.

    Reply
  7. pea-jay

    They must not have a funding issue over at GTA because that #2 line looks very expensive to build and more or less duplicates services found close by…

    Reply
  8. Tom

    Interesting. Looks like two Subway systems, based on the line numbers/letters: 1-4, A, G, J, R, Z. There’s also an Airtrain at the top of the map, and references to GTA Rail and bus connections. There are also grey dashed lines that I thought were a ferry service, but since the lines cross land and water that rules that out.

    I guess Downtown Gotham is around the large park on the right side of the bottom large island, as most of the lines pass near it.

    As pointed out before, Gotham had lots of money to spend on tunnels under the river, especially lines 2 & 4. But there are some obvious gaps in the system. The Gotham J line goes around the downtown, but has no transfers to any line going into the downtown. They stopped the south end of the Z line one stop short

    Reply
    1. pea-jay

      The more I look at this, the more the 2 looks like an abomination. It duplicates too many routing options while completely skipping what might have been a good connection to the 1 line where it meets with the G.

      And what’s with the black dots and white circle dots? Is that express and local service?

      Reply
    2. Walter

      Could those dashed lines be the monorail system built by Thomas Wayne?

      Reply
      1. Jeffrey

        I can’t tell whether or not Thomas Wayne’s monorail system appears on this map. Are they represented by the dashed lines? Or are these subway lines actually monorail lines? When Christopher Nolan went out of his way to show how Thomas Wayne was such a great financier/philanthropist Gothamite, it seems like the prop person would make more of an effort to include the monorail into this map.

        Reply
  9. Kevin

    I wonder if I could somehow get my hands on that prop. It would be a great piece of memorabilia.

    Reply
    1. Bytowner

      It would be a fun thing to have on the wall, wouldn’t it?

      Reply
  10. Tsuyoshi

    This evidently did not utilize cut-and-cover…

    Reply
  11. Christopher

    Its not that the trains take sharp turns, the map just isn’t geographically accurate to the actual shape of Gotham City.

    Reply
  12. The Gotham City subway map looks…familiar — The Funky Apple

    […] currently filming in the New York area), debuted yesterday in Newark, New Jersey. [Star Ledger via Second Ave Sagas] AKPC_IDS += […]

    Reply
  13. Alon Levy

    I thought that the Nolan movies established that Gotham’s rapid transit is elevated and centered around the Wayne Industries building, but does not go over the bridges (or if it does, it’s at-grade so the island is cut off if the bridges are raised).

    Reply
  14. Manu

    How about this map?
    http://www.gothamcityrail.com/map.htm

    Reply
  15. Maryanne Wildeman

    Can you please send me the War file without the jars?

    Reply
  16. There Were Some Elections Yesterday | Wednesday Links | New York Journal

    […] Horrible urban planning in Gotham City. […]

    Reply
  17. Someone

    I like how the diamond services and local and express stations are placed at random. There is one question: Why do some of the lines go off the map? And in the upper right hand corner, note that the green line goes into their equivalent of the Bronx, with a long stretch of station-less track.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts