Subway Maps

Over the last few days, we’ve spent a lot of time discussion the MTA’s new subway map. On Friday, we explored how the MTA is using the service cuts to refresh and declutter the map. Yesterday, we examined the battle between form vs. purpose and design vs. geographic in subway map design. Today, I’ve got the goods.

Via NBC New York comes a full preview of the new subway map. I’ve embedded the a low-res version of the full map after the jump, and by clicking on it, you can download a 2.8 MB PDF file.

As you’ll see, the map looks pretty good up close and in full. The MTA has certainly started clearing up the clutter, and while the drop-shadow gray lines can be slightly awkward, I think they work to highlight the routes. Above, I’ve posted the map’s mid-day service disclaimer, and I have to wonder if the MTA should consider a return to the two-sided map with the back that shows overnight service. The authority last employed such a device in the mid-1990s when Manhattan Bridge service led to massive service changes based on the time of day. As it stands now, the new map won’t be too useful come 11 p.m.

Anyway, enjoy the finer details of the new map, and kudos to those who can spot the one mistake I’ve found so far. As a hint, it’s in Queens.

After the jump, the new map in full. Click the image for a very high-res PDF.

The current subway map iteration of Manhattan is shown here on top of the new version.

With the MTA set to introduce a new version of its subway map over the next few weeks, New Yorkers who follow these sorts of changes have been debating the purpose of a subway map. On Friday, I noted how the MTA has struggled to balance the design of the subway map with its geographical purpose. During the Vignelli years, geography took a backseat to design while in the post-1979 world, geography has been the driving force behind The Map.

In today’s Times, Design columnist Steve Heller explores the evolution of the subway map and the MTA’s attempts at getting this iconic image just right. I’ll excerpt the good parts:

Although Mr. Vignelli’s stylized, diagrammatic map earned its place in the pantheon of postwar design — the collection of the Museum of Modern Art — it has fostered considerable debate about its heretical abstractions and is cited by design historians as one of Modernism’s most fabulous failures. While failing to cater to the public’s needs, its colored linear motif nonetheless clearly and rationally conveyed the fundamental distinction of which subway line is which. By simplifying the geographical details, the map may have looked less like a conventional map and more like an electrical schematic, but it forced the eye to see only the essentials. Maybe it was ahead of its time. Or maybe it was right on time — but the public failed to recognize it.

Its replacement in 1979, a more traditional topographical version, reintroduced all the basic map conventions (including blue water) and, most important, the New York City street grid. Yet the circulatory look of the map not only lacked the aesthetic flair of the Vignelli classic, it also junked up the graphical way-finding composition by reintroducing thinner and more serpentine route lines and a mass of smaller landmark details. Making Manhattan and the boroughs more representational probably helped users recognize their locales and destinations, but it also injected a labored look to the entire document.

The revision in 1998 added even more information, including free transfer points and alternate bus service, but once again reduced the size of the colored lines and route numbers. Users adapt to almost anything over time, and adjusting to the more cluttered composition was no exception. But that should not be the determinant of good design. While the Vignelli map may not have been the most versatile or adjustable given changes in the subway system, the ’79 and ’98 maps did not solve any of the aesthetic woes.

The new map, says Heller, “does indeed reduce the level of visual noise to a more tolerable level.” It is not, however, “as great a design achievement as it might be. Less isn’t always more, but as long as the Transit Authority is married to including all the details, it will take more than plumping up Manhattan to make a beautiful and functional map.”

The problem remains the battle over function. Should a subway map attempt to show accurate geographical representations of subway lines as New York’s attempts to do or should it show schematic route maps that give passengers a sense of direction slightly removed from geography as London’s and Paris’ does? Until the MTA and its map designers have a better answer for that question, the map will remain a bit cluttered, and it will feel perhaps comfortable in the clutter even if its geographical reliability isn’t 100 percent.

I have a secret love affair with New York City subway maps. I currently have an extensive collection of historical maps that date back to the mid-1940s and possess more than my fair share of the rare Vignelli maps. Throughout the decades, as I’ve written in the past, the New York City Transit Authority and later the MTA have struggled to balance the purpose and design of the subway map with geography first taking a back seat to design and, more recently, design falling behind geography as the driving force behind The Map.

With the MTA set to eliminate the V and W and change the M’s Manhattan trunk line from the BMT Nassau route to the IND Sixth Ave. line, the authority has decided that now is as good a time as any to redesign its familiar map. While the authority hasn’t gone so far as to adopt Eddie Jabbour’s Kick Map or re-embrace Massimo Vingelli’s masterpiece, the MTA has refreshed the map. It now features more Manhattan, less Staten Island and the return of City Island.

The new map, according to Michael Grynbaum of The Times, is supposed to help unclutter something that has become overgrown with unnecessary information. The confusing spreadsheet of service times will be removed from the bottom of the map, potentially creating confusion as subway routes shift with the hours and days of the route. The call-out boxes that provide mostly useless bus connection information will be drastically reduced. Instead, map-readers will be urged to check out the MTA’s website for up-to-date service information. Considering that cell service underground is nearly non-existent, the map’s goals and its instructions seem to be at odds with each other.

Grynbaum has more on the MTA’s in-car efforts to improve the map:

A separate, stripped-down map will also be produced, to be displayed only inside subway cars. Neighborhood names, parks, ferries and bus connections will not appear on this version, making for a less cluttered composition that may be easier to read over a fellow rider’s shoulders. The authority says its goal is improved clarity — but the redesigned map also marks the latest salvo in a long debate over how to best represent a complex system that can bedevil tourists and natives alike…

[In 1979], the authority wanted geographical accuracy so that passengers would not be confused upon ascending back to the street. Hence, subway lines that wiggle and curve, reflecting the exact route of the train, and a simple street grid that highlights popular attractions and neighborhoods. Over time, however, the map acquired new elements like ferry routes and obtrusive balloons showing bus connections.

The authority now concedes that the map became overcrowded. “In its desire to be complete and provide a great deal of information, it took away from some of the clarity you would have with a simpler map,” said Jay H. Walder, the authority’s chairman, who encouraged his marketing staff to make changes.

For the latest iteration, Mr. Walder decided that the service guide, which purports to show a weekend schedule, was theoretical at best. The guide was removed, along with a growing list of handicapped-accessible stations that had begun to dominate the bottom right corner. Small wheelchair symbols will continue to denote those stops.

In addition to these changes in the way the map will be used, the authority opted to refresh the design as well. The subway lines themselves now have a grey shadow to highlight the routes. The water’s blue is a darker shade while parks are denoted in an olive green. Various other geographical features that have appeared and disappeared from the maps — smaller parks, islands unreachable by the subway — will show up as well.

But enough about words. What good is a subway map post without images? The Times has put together a great comparative graphic of the new map as it stacks up against the pre-Vignelli, Vignelli, 1979 Hertz version and the latest iteration of The Map. A few comparative shots are below.

Queens

In the old map, the Queens routes are a bit convoluted. The G train’s supposed trek to Forest Hills is demarcated by a dotted green line. The bus routes to LaGuardia make the area tough to decipher, but those dotted blue lines aren’t going away in the new version.

Now, we see the G terminate in Long Island City, and Rikers Island makes an appearance just to the northwest of LaGuardia Airport. The M has turned orange.

Brooklyn

Gone is the M from 4th Ave.

Manhattan

Although the Chrystie St. Cut connects Essex St. to Broadway/Lafayette via the local tracks, the map shows the M meeting up with the B/D just north of Grand St. It is a subtle way of showing a new service pattern. The W is gone from this map, and NoHo makes its first appearance as the MTA-sanctioned neighborhood name. Additionally, the new iteration of the subway map features a Manhattan far wider than it actually is. The island has grown 31 percent and is now 83 percent wider than it is in real life.

For those of us who are obsessed with LOST, Tuesday night’s Season 6 premiere has been a long time coming. And so in a week dominated here by discussions of subway maps, I present to you the LOST subway map. Called the Dharma Rapid Transit system by creator John Cabrera, the map is a great representation of that all has happened on the island over the previous five seasons. John explains the origins of the map here on his site. Click the image above to enlarge; you’ll have to see the full-sized image for all of the detail. For the Losties among us, this one’s a keeper.

Baseball fans who go to enough games grow family with the old concessionaire’s adage. You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, the saying goes. Similarly, a subway rider generally can’t navigate the the subway system without a map. Someone going from Point A to Point B needs to know the best way to get there, but how?

Yesterday afternoon, in a discussion on the recent history of New York City’s subway, a discussion broke out on the best way to present a subway system. Should the map be purely schematic and assume that people know the above-ground geometry? Should the map integrate the subway system on a near-accurate geographical representation of the city it services? As New Yorkers used to the geographically integrated subway system, we view those schematic maps suspiciously.

Up above is a thumbnail of our familiar New York City map. Click it to enlarge. As it stands right now, this map has a lot of information on it, and most of it is unnecessary. Boxes about bus connections — with no further information — ring the map, and lines emerge from major subway stops. Staten Island has been moved to abut Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the box in the lower right corner attempts to explain which trains run when. Rush hour, weekdays, evenings, weekends, late nights: read the key and then find your line. It’s almost a game.

Meanwhile, this map also incorporates almost the geography of New York City. Some major through streets are marked, and some — but not all — parks show up on it. As The Local noted a few months ago, Fort Greene Park is nowhere to be found, but the smaller Washington Square Park is front and center near the W 4th St. stop. For those not familiar with New York City, our subway map simply doesn’t help above ground even as it tries to. It makes distances look shorter than they are and omits some landmarks while including others. It’s an approximation of the city at best.

Moving out of the city, we arrive in London to find an entirely different concept of the subway map. The current Tube map, an evolution of a design by Harry Beck, is a diagrammatic map of the Underground. It bears little resemblance to the actual geography of the city and instead presents the system as a series of zones with subway lines running in straight lines or at 45-degree angles. Sparse and simple, it has become a widely recognized symbol of London.

This map helps those who know where they’re going and few others. It gives no indication about distances between stations or about what might be around each station. It’s sometimes better to get off at an early station to reach a destination with a name similar to the next stop, but only those in the know would actually know that. It might look good; it might lend itself to easy imitation; and it might make navigating the subway system itself simple. But it provides no integration into the city.

Since Beck’s design arrived in London, derivatives have become the norm. Take, for example, a look at D.C.’s Metro map or Paris’ schematic. Angles, zones and sparse geographical markers rule the day while New York stands alone as a beacon of graphics design slowly, evolutionarily gone wrong.

So what’s the best map? Maybe New York’s old map — the one that used to show just the subways with a nod toward geography but an understanding that it wasn’t perfect — was the way to go. Vignelli’s map almost fits the bill, but navigating the subway system with it can be a Herculean task. Maybe we’re still just waiting for the right subway map, one that incorporates geography and complicated and convoluted subway systems into an easy-to-use map. Consider it the Holy Grail of subway mapmaking.

Have you seen the latest sunglasses in Ray-Ban’s Wayfarer line? The latest rare edition of Ray-Ban’s top-selling frame features an iconic image on the inside. We’ve seen dresses with the Vignelli map, and now sunglasses with our familiar schematic of the New York City subway system are available as well. Between the boxers for sale by the Transit Museum, the dress and these stylin’ glasses, a savvy New Yorker could don the subway map as an outfit.

The rare “NYC Subway” edition of these popular frames retail for just under $145, and they’re going fast. Bloomingdale’s has them for sale in blue, but most places are already sold out. Act quickly before they’re all gone. After the jump, another view.