I wouldn't replace the current one because I think the cut and cover subway aligns more with surface-level features, and that's just how people think about it (I didn't come up with this argument, but I'm afraid I don't remember where I read it).
That said, I think think both maps side by side would be great. They complement each other for being good for different things.
* the current faux-geographic one is also distorted geographically though, simply because the real life geography of Manhattan would put those lines far too close together to also have room for readable text. If you think walking across Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson will take the same amount of time as walking the north-south distance of Central Park, you're in for a bad time.
* the modern Vignelli (thankfully) fixes some of the 1972's version issues with things taken from the current map; namely, most of the glaring geographic issues have been fixed (50th/8th is not in the wrong place in the grid compared to 50th/7th, Broadway is now a diagonal line instead of a stair-stepping line at 90 degree angles); and the new map uses the same common-trunk coloring scheme that uses 9 colors as opposed to 1972's one color per distinct service (for something like 25+ colors).
Using Central Park's geographic center as the common intersection point, the north-south distance between the park bounds isn't actually much longer than the east-west distance between the island bounds. (North-south and east-west according to the street grid alignment, that is.)
After reading the article I realized the photo is actually a depiction of two new maps being tested side-by-side and not a comparison of a new map to an old map (as I would have expected from the headline).
Yep. Actually there can be up to three "maps" displayed side by side.
The new metro "diagram" that tries to to clearly show information about how the routes work, without being geographically accurate.
The new map that is geographically accurate, but less detailed with respect to the routes, but also shows selected bus stations.
Optionally, in lower Manhattan, a third geographic map that for lower Manhattan blown up to the be the same size as the others (and allowing more detail). A smaller blown-up version is included in in the main geographical map as an inset, with greater detail, but perhaps not as much as the fully sized version? Unclear.
In Milano they have both on display, both are useful in their own complementary ways, I can't fathom having either one with a competition between the two. It's not like metro station lack wall space.
Every map lies. Every surficial map especially lies when preserving shape, area, or distance. You can’t get them all.
I especially love the problem space of transit maps. Transit feels like a purely topological endeavour. What nodes connect, how, and what are the edge lengths? But the moment you want to act outside the transit system, you then care about Cartesian accuracy as well. You want to know how far something is from two different transit stops. These kinds of maps can really trick you big time.
When it comes to static maps, you’ve gotta make a compromise. But when it comes to dynamic maps, we could do a ton more. Imagine a map that can trivially toggle and animate between being transit system legible, and surface-level legible. Where in one mode all the lines are nicely laid out to see how they link and their trip times. And another mode every node animates to a new position where they represent the Cartesian coordinates on the surface (another lie of course.)
The Cartesian coordinates can also be misleading, since even on foot you can't go in a straight line between any two points. There could be a fence in the middle.
There's also a difference of height. It might take 10 minutes just to get from an underground station to the street level right above it, and you can't go in a straight line there either.
> Every surficial map especially lies when preserving shape, area, or distance. You can’t get them all.
That's really throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For a map of a city, you can get all three just fine. The curvature of the paper will be within margin of error.
When it comes to static maps, you’ve gotta make a compromise
It sounds like the current MTA map is a compromise which enlarges and shrinks parts of the city, but still presented in a way that looks a lot like it's geographically accurate. This could mislead users trying to use the map to estimate real-world distances.
In the article, the MTA talks about displaying the new topological map alongside an accurate geographic map, so that subway users will have both sets of information readily available and clearly distinguished from each other.
I think the new version is beautiful it shows the flow and connections of the lines and stations to easily count stops and make transfers while on the move at a glance.
The MTA spent wads of cash adding screens and displays all over platforms throughout the city -- ones which show ads for 30 seconds+ at a time instead of showing actual useful things like when the next train is coming, or whether there are service disruptions. Instead you get to stand there waiting for what feels like hours while trying to make decisions.
Fixing that and catching up to public transit throughout the world is more important than redesigning the way the map looks.
I think the bigger offense with the displays isn't the ads (the subway is already plastered with them, and the new screens will pay for themselves in that manner) but how remarkably crappy the panels are.
I have corrective lenses that give me normal vision, and I have to really squint to make out station names and bullets on the digitized system maps that the panels display. I feel terrible for anyone whose vision is even slightly worse than mine, much less tourists who have enough trouble with the printed maps.
I have fine vision and the maps are still terrible for me. If I get close I can see that the text labels for the stations are barely legible because the panel resolution is so poor.
If only it were feasible to install high DPI eink panels instead. But then those ads wouldn’t be anywhere near as attention grabbing, would they?
There was a post I can't find at the minute by someone whose core point was "digital displays aren't always better than paper maps MTA, the displays are really hard to read and much lower resolution". It was a good design article to my recollection, but yeah I can't find it unfortunately.
But:
> I think the bigger offense with the displays isn't the ads (the subway is already plastered with them, and the new screens will pay for themselves in that manner)
In my experience, they literally do not function that way, they don't give information in a timely manner such that you can decide whether to wait or not without standing there waiting till it finally shifts to the screen with service info, which can take minutes.
But maybe we can agree both are big issues :) -- the map thing is certainly something I sympathize with -- all in all, I think the displays are a failure other than for making ad revenue, so we the transiters have lost again.
In London farebox income in 2019 was £4.9b, and advertising was £158m.
If there were no adverts (and thus the resulting theft of brain power - especially on moving ones on screens), a tube fare would have to increase from £2.40 to £2.47, a 3% increase.
It's like this with many services that you buy - Sky TV's total subscription income was £11b, advertising £1.4b. A £30/month package coming with 20 minutes of adverts an hour would cost £34 with no adverts at all.
(In reality I don't pay for sky, because it has adverts, so I guess adverts mean the cost goes from £30 to £0)
To be fair, I don't really mind the adverts on the tube. They're fairly often for things that are actually useful and that I wouldn't otherwise have heard of like plays / albums or taxi services. And most of them are paper posters rather than screens which makes them a lot less intrusive.
Personally, I do mind them. It's hard to relax with so many aggressive ads in my face trying to sell me things all the time.
London is already really good with restricting obstructive adverts in the city to buses and cabs; it's a pity that the underground is stuffed to the brim with them.
Batteries run out and connectivity isn't guaranteed.
I dont know if you've ever been to another country with unsupported connectivity, but it kinda sucks when you are low on battery and need to figure out where to go.
The new "geographically accurate" one still has to shrink Staten Island and relegate it to a corner, since in reality it's more than twice the size of Manhattan.
That's not a particularly huge deal given that Staten Island only has one subway line anyways, but I find it funny.
There are a lot of details like that. On the map, 7th Ave and 8th Ave are twice the distance apart as 8th Ave and 10th Ave. It's never been all that geographically accurate.
(I could also nitpick how this hurts the map. It's a long walk to change from the 2/3 to the 4/5 at Fulton St., but it's a shorter distance on the map than the 1/2/3 to the F/M/L at 14th St. Though by no means is that a short walk either. You can't really use the current map to plan transfers. Who knows how many stairs you'll have to go up and down, or how many avenues you'll have to walk.)
What is the point of including Staten Island on maps displayed on the Manhattan, Long Island and mainland parts of New York, given that you can never catch a train there? Conversely, what is the point of displaying maps showing the rest of New York on Staten Island? Especially given that there is only one public transport connection between the two!
It’s a difficult tradeoff but the new tube map seems like a huge improvement: one thing I remember from when I touristed through london is the missing sense of distance you’d get from the maps, so if you didn’t have a physical map you’d completely miss that you could easily get to your destination on foot in 5mn from one station, and instead would loop around for 10 more minutes and a change or two. Likewise Paris.
Tokyo has a somewhat similar issue, except more so due to the presence of multiple networks and the cost from swapping networks on your journey (which you don’t notice until a few days in when you realise you’ve drained your suica surprisingly quickly).
These aren’t new maps for the Tube. They’re just a artists interpretation of a possible tube map design.
The London tube maps remains geographically inaccurate, and instead focuses on clarity around how the different lines interact with each other. Making it very easy to plan routes on the tube, but not necessarily understand where the stations are physically located.
It’s interesting, as a Londoner I really don’t care about the location of the station. When talking about how to get places, people use tube stations as the landmarks. So you don’t need to know where they are, only how you get to them via the tube network. If needed their physical location, you would use a street map, not the tube map. As such I think making the tube map geographically accurate, at the cost of making it harder to plan routes, would be a net negative.
Somewhat cynically I think the zone system ties London to the current tube map layout. If you look at a geographical map, especially a recent one, you'll see how illogical the zoning is now. Recent developments such as the Battersea branch of the Northern line or the zone 1 enclave at Canary Wharf just make it worse.
Also you're right about landmarks. In NY, you use the grid system to navigate. Therefore it makes sense to tie transport links to the grid. London has no logical road system and the landmarks are more spread out.
New York has multiple grids, though. The one in Manhattan north of 14th street is the one most people are aware of. But Queens and Brooklyn are mostly a patchwork of separate grids, and even Manhattan gets messy south of 14th street. (West 4th Street and West 12th Street intersect; the financial district preserves the Colonial street layout and is as messy as anything in, say, Boston.)
The zoning thing is interesting. Although I think the idea the zones should be strictly geographic is out dated.
The zones exist to increase pricing for travelling though congested parts of the network, and provide cheaper fares for people that avoid them. Historically the busiest part of London was just the centre. But the cites evolved quite a bit, and now has multiple busy spots like Canary Wharf, Shoreditch and soon Battersea. So it makes sense to put them in zone 1 from a traffic density perspective.
This feels like designers trying to make their mark, instead of judging the map by it's usefulness.
Sure, traveling between any two points inside the subway is slightly easier, but what happens when you want to decide which station is closest to a landmark, or which would make for a nicer walk. You need to be able to see the geography to make travel decisions in real cases.
I wonder if that happened in the 70s, but this time most people will just give up and use Google Maps.
That advice could work in European cities, but NYC station names are often just the street number, and there might be multiple one with the same name (like 96th Street), but that are 1-2 km from each other.
NYC’s subway system was originally two separate private companies and, later, an additional third public agency. As a result, there were competing lines on different avenues — you could (and still can) take the 7th and 8th Avenue lines from many of the same street numbers.
It’s not actually that confusing in practice in Manhattan, since the entire borough is a grid. Google Maps locates the correct station just fine (you can search by bullet), but it’s very easy to just follow the avenues to get to whatever station you want.
The London Underground was once 4 or 5 different private entities which all ended up slowing consolidating and eventually made public.
But that hasn’t prevented TfL from giving stations unique and useful names. Hell, I think most stations in london have been renamed at some point, several of them have been renamed multiple times.
Some subway systems display two maps for that reason: one is a schematic map of the network, clear and legible. The other one is street map of the city including the actual station entrances. You can use that to figure out which station to use.
> but what happens when you want to decide which station is closest to a landmark, or which would make for a nicer walk.
Use a proper street map? That what we do in London. Find out destination on a street map, then decide which tube station to use. Then the tube map is only used to make routing decisions within the network, not broader navigation around the city.
The gist is they’re trying to communicate maintenance shutdowns more effectively.
> [T]he current subway map combines multiple lines into one where they run together, while the new version shows as many as four tracks running parallel to each other, like on the 4, 5 and 6 lines.
> [Sarah] Meyer, chief customer officer of the MTA, has been thinking about ways to better communicate how the subway really works, delays and all, since she took the customer chief role in 2018.
> Faced with years of planned maintenance work, the MTA last year introduced a live subway map that customers can access on their electronic devices [1]. It lets passengers check exactly where trains are in the system, and which lines might be closed or diverted, offering a visual alternative to the paper maintenance notices pinned up around stations.
> Ms. Meyer’s team wanted to better convey some of the same information through static maps in stations, for example making it instantly clear which lines aren’t operating on the weekend.
> But the design of the current map—which combines multiple lines into one wherever they run parallel and separates out trains that in reality sometimes run on the same tracks—makes that “redrawing” harder, Ms. Meyer said.
61 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadThat said, I think think both maps side by side would be great. They complement each other for being good for different things.
* the modern Vignelli (thankfully) fixes some of the 1972's version issues with things taken from the current map; namely, most of the glaring geographic issues have been fixed (50th/8th is not in the wrong place in the grid compared to 50th/7th, Broadway is now a diagonal line instead of a stair-stepping line at 90 degree angles); and the new map uses the same common-trunk coloring scheme that uses 9 colors as opposed to 1972's one color per distinct service (for something like 25+ colors).
The new metro "diagram" that tries to to clearly show information about how the routes work, without being geographically accurate.
The new map that is geographically accurate, but less detailed with respect to the routes, but also shows selected bus stations.
Optionally, in lower Manhattan, a third geographic map that for lower Manhattan blown up to the be the same size as the others (and allowing more detail). A smaller blown-up version is included in in the main geographical map as an inset, with greater detail, but perhaps not as much as the fully sized version? Unclear.
I especially love the problem space of transit maps. Transit feels like a purely topological endeavour. What nodes connect, how, and what are the edge lengths? But the moment you want to act outside the transit system, you then care about Cartesian accuracy as well. You want to know how far something is from two different transit stops. These kinds of maps can really trick you big time.
When it comes to static maps, you’ve gotta make a compromise. But when it comes to dynamic maps, we could do a ton more. Imagine a map that can trivially toggle and animate between being transit system legible, and surface-level legible. Where in one mode all the lines are nicely laid out to see how they link and their trip times. And another mode every node animates to a new position where they represent the Cartesian coordinates on the surface (another lie of course.)
And what measure do the edge lengths represent: time, distance, map typography?
There's also a difference of height. It might take 10 minutes just to get from an underground station to the street level right above it, and you can't go in a straight line there either.
That's really throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For a map of a city, you can get all three just fine. The curvature of the paper will be within margin of error.
In the article, the MTA talks about displaying the new topological map alongside an accurate geographic map, so that subway users will have both sets of information readily available and clearly distinguished from each other.
Fixing that and catching up to public transit throughout the world is more important than redesigning the way the map looks.
I have corrective lenses that give me normal vision, and I have to really squint to make out station names and bullets on the digitized system maps that the panels display. I feel terrible for anyone whose vision is even slightly worse than mine, much less tourists who have enough trouble with the printed maps.
If only it were feasible to install high DPI eink panels instead. But then those ads wouldn’t be anywhere near as attention grabbing, would they?
But:
> I think the bigger offense with the displays isn't the ads (the subway is already plastered with them, and the new screens will pay for themselves in that manner)
Of course seeing ads isn't new -- the point is the displays were put in at least partially to serve as station info. c.f. https://new.mta.info/accessibility/stationlab/CICs
In my experience, they literally do not function that way, they don't give information in a timely manner such that you can decide whether to wait or not without standing there waiting till it finally shifts to the screen with service info, which can take minutes.
But maybe we can agree both are big issues :) -- the map thing is certainly something I sympathize with -- all in all, I think the displays are a failure other than for making ad revenue, so we the transiters have lost again.
The model (which is pretty common in major cities) is that an ad agency paid to put those things there.
In London farebox income in 2019 was £4.9b, and advertising was £158m.
If there were no adverts (and thus the resulting theft of brain power - especially on moving ones on screens), a tube fare would have to increase from £2.40 to £2.47, a 3% increase.
It's like this with many services that you buy - Sky TV's total subscription income was £11b, advertising £1.4b. A £30/month package coming with 20 minutes of adverts an hour would cost £34 with no adverts at all.
(In reality I don't pay for sky, because it has adverts, so I guess adverts mean the cost goes from £30 to £0)
Advertising is a cancer on the world.
London is already really good with restricting obstructive adverts in the city to buses and cabs; it's a pity that the underground is stuffed to the brim with them.
Is that how you get to the love boat?
I dont know if you've ever been to another country with unsupported connectivity, but it kinda sucks when you are low on battery and need to figure out where to go.
look up and use the public, free ad-funded network
or look down and use your private, paid-for ad-free terminal
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200115/23550443741/why-i...
https://dinopoloclub.com/games/mini-metro/
That's not a particularly huge deal given that Staten Island only has one subway line anyways, but I find it funny.
(I could also nitpick how this hurts the map. It's a long walk to change from the 2/3 to the 4/5 at Fulton St., but it's a shorter distance on the map than the 1/2/3 to the F/M/L at 14th St. Though by no means is that a short walk either. You can't really use the current map to plan transfers. Who knows how many stairs you'll have to go up and down, or how many avenues you'll have to walk.)
What is the point of including Staten Island on maps displayed on the Manhattan, Long Island and mainland parts of New York, given that you can never catch a train there? Conversely, what is the point of displaying maps showing the rest of New York on Staten Island? Especially given that there is only one public transport connection between the two!
https://imgur.com/a/bI9WuGQ
Very cool
https://www.dezeen.com/2011/08/08/london-tube-map-by-mark-no...
Tokyo has a somewhat similar issue, except more so due to the presence of multiple networks and the cost from swapping networks on your journey (which you don’t notice until a few days in when you realise you’ve drained your suica surprisingly quickly).
The London tube maps remains geographically inaccurate, and instead focuses on clarity around how the different lines interact with each other. Making it very easy to plan routes on the tube, but not necessarily understand where the stations are physically located.
It’s interesting, as a Londoner I really don’t care about the location of the station. When talking about how to get places, people use tube stations as the landmarks. So you don’t need to know where they are, only how you get to them via the tube network. If needed their physical location, you would use a street map, not the tube map. As such I think making the tube map geographically accurate, at the cost of making it harder to plan routes, would be a net negative.
Also you're right about landmarks. In NY, you use the grid system to navigate. Therefore it makes sense to tie transport links to the grid. London has no logical road system and the landmarks are more spread out.
The zones exist to increase pricing for travelling though congested parts of the network, and provide cheaper fares for people that avoid them. Historically the busiest part of London was just the centre. But the cites evolved quite a bit, and now has multiple busy spots like Canary Wharf, Shoreditch and soon Battersea. So it makes sense to put them in zone 1 from a traffic density perspective.
Sure, traveling between any two points inside the subway is slightly easier, but what happens when you want to decide which station is closest to a landmark, or which would make for a nicer walk. You need to be able to see the geography to make travel decisions in real cases.
I wonder if that happened in the 70s, but this time most people will just give up and use Google Maps.
They're tremendously useful and I prefer them to the geographically accurate maps.
Also if you want the station closest to a landmark, simply travel to the station named after that landmark...
How is Google Maps doing when you want to go to one of those stations?
It’s not actually that confusing in practice in Manhattan, since the entire borough is a grid. Google Maps locates the correct station just fine (you can search by bullet), but it’s very easy to just follow the avenues to get to whatever station you want.
But that hasn’t prevented TfL from giving stations unique and useful names. Hell, I think most stations in london have been renamed at some point, several of them have been renamed multiple times.
Use a proper street map? That what we do in London. Find out destination on a street map, then decide which tube station to use. Then the tube map is only used to make routing decisions within the network, not broader navigation around the city.
The printed map is primarily for people with nothing else, where their battery died for instance.
It just feels like this project was designed in a clean room, and nobody spent much time in the shoes of the people using this.
> [T]he current subway map combines multiple lines into one where they run together, while the new version shows as many as four tracks running parallel to each other, like on the 4, 5 and 6 lines.
> [Sarah] Meyer, chief customer officer of the MTA, has been thinking about ways to better communicate how the subway really works, delays and all, since she took the customer chief role in 2018.
> Faced with years of planned maintenance work, the MTA last year introduced a live subway map that customers can access on their electronic devices [1]. It lets passengers check exactly where trains are in the system, and which lines might be closed or diverted, offering a visual alternative to the paper maintenance notices pinned up around stations.
> Ms. Meyer’s team wanted to better convey some of the same information through static maps in stations, for example making it instantly clear which lines aren’t operating on the weekend.
> But the design of the current map—which combines multiple lines into one wherever they run parallel and separates out trains that in reality sometimes run on the same tracks—makes that “redrawing” harder, Ms. Meyer said.
[1] https://map.mta.info/