For those interested in these for other subways around the world, http://stations.albertguillaumes.cat/ has done a lovely job rendering them. It's impressive how many systems are covered.
"Somewhat inherent" isn't meaningful or correct. The fact is that there is a history API and you can use it to implement history for SPAs. Therefore, lack of history is not inherent to SPAs by definition. Intentionality has nothing to do with it.
I find it bizarre how such a site ended up an SPA. Nothing about it suggests SPA. This could just be a website and would be supported by any web browser, but instead they've implemented a crap custom browser and web in JavaScript.
The map kind of does. It's really nice to just click on different dots and see different cities with no latency or page load. I think the right way to implement this is as an SPA with `history.push` for shareable URLs.
Not without latency. Unless you make sure everything's on the edge? But that is way more complicated anyways — now you have two systems to maintain, instead of just a single client-only JS app.
Even zooming on desktop (firefox on macos) is broken. I want to zoom in to see the street names and investigate the images, but the site makes it impossible. I can download the images to my desktop, but they are low resolution. What a cool project to be soured by such awful technology that didn't need to exist in the first place.
Doesn’t work on iOS, I think they have overridden that user action - which makes this site pretty much useless for any of the to
Es I might ever actually want to use it.
There was an app called Exit Strategy that showed you where to stand on the train to maximize your routes, depending on what transfers you were taking.
The new R211 trainsets[1] have digital displays that show this information as well -- they show the upcoming station ahead of time, along with which exit is relative to which car in the train.
On a recent week long with lots of subway use trip to NYC, it was wild to me that this sort of extremely basic information was incredibly hard to impossible to find. At best, there was a single screen, but positioned in such a way to be invisible to at least half the carriage (on the side in one of the ends); at worst there was only the driver saying stations names over an intercom system that garbled everything. Same at stations, where with a few exceptions, it seemed the only information was on track-facing screens in very limited numbers. There was vastly more space dedicated to ads, including screens with ads, than to signage. Why? Why not replace 3 of the 100 ad signs with some information about the train, or a map? Being more used to Paris and London metros, it was quite hard to navigate and took lots of effort fishing for information which should be well presented.
It seems that usability is one of the last concerns of US transit planners. And NYC Subway is supposed to be one of the good ones!
> At best, there was a single screen, but positioned in such a way to be invisible to at least half the carriage (on the side in one of the ends); at worst there was only the driver saying stations names over an intercom system that garbled everything.
That’s the old (but not very old) trainsets. The new ones have a digital display above every door. Be happy you weren’t on the very old ones; those don’t have displays at all, besides a paper map.
The answer to this isn’t about usability, but about the fact that the NYC subway runs old trainsets and isn’t given very much money (relative to its economic impact on the city) to upgrade them. But that’s slowly changing.
Even the oldest trainsets in Paris and London (as old as from the 50s) have at least a static map of the line; none in NYC out of those I was one had even that.
Similarly, all stations have digital signage indicating when the next train is coming and where it's going, starting from the ~70s.
My point about usability was that NYC Subway was pretty hard to use as a tourist. Station entrances had random variations of end destinations or broad directions (e.g. either the name of the lasts stops, or the location of the last stop like Coney Island, or the general direction of Uptown or Brooklyn). Understanding where express services are stopping was hard, because the one screen per station with that detail was inaccessible due to the amounts of people on waiting. And the noise.. NYC Subway needs lots of investment, but that investment needs to be spent better too.I passed through some works a few time, and the ratio of workers on their phone vs workers looking like they're working was 30:1 each time. The Grand Paris Express president talked about the mismanagement and absurd contracts MTA have, and he has said that if they had the same requirements GPE (100+ km of brand new fully automated metros) would never have been built.
> Even the oldest trainsets in Paris and London (as old as from the 50s) have at least a static map of the line; none in NYC out of those I was one had even that.
You might have missed it. I absolutely guarantee you that every single car in the NYC subway has at least one system map and multiple line maps. On the older cars, the (paper) system map tends to be at the front of the car, and the (paper) line maps are generally in the middle of the car.
I don't particularly disagree about destination-designated services being confusing. However, that's the norm for subway systems AFAICT; Paris's metro directions were equally confusing for me as a visitor.
(You're also right about the noise although, again, I think Paris is a relative outlier among large metros in terms of low noise levels. To my understanding, this is a result of using rubber tires on some lines, continuously-welded rail on others, smaller trainsets overall, and - yes - better maintenance.)
> You might have missed it. I absolutely guarantee you that every single car in the NYC subway has at least one system map and multiple line maps. On the older cars, the (paper) system map tends to be at the front of the car, and the (paper) line maps are generally in the middle of the car.
One per car is absurdly insufficient. Especially considering the amount of space dedicated to ads.
> I don't particularly disagree about destination-designated services being confusing. However, that's the norm for subway systems AFAICT; Paris's metro directions were equally confusing for me as a visitor.
Nope, Paris metro only uses the last stop for signs. You don't have some signs saying La Plaine, others St Denis, third ones Mairie de St Denis when they're talking about the Mairie de St Denis stop in the La Plaine neighbourhood of St Denis (random example). This is the same way that transit apps orient you (tell you to catch line X from stop A, direction ABC; having some stop entrances say some places on the way to ABC, that's confusing)
Not on the elevated lines (with the exception of some stretches that are being replaced now), to my knowledge. The elevated lines are some of the loudest in the city.
(Ironically, the biggest reduction in noise along the J/Z line in recent years has been due to lead abatement: the temporary sheds they're using to cover the superstructure while they remove the lead paint makes the surrounding streets noticeably quieter.)
My understanding was that there used to be more of these publicly available but agencies get cagey about publishing stuff like this for security reasons.
Not all of these are correct. For instance, the one for Fulton St Station shows the two J/Z platforms as being on the same level, when in fact they're on two different levels.
This is the closest possible approximation of the Fulton St Station hypercube understandable by humans. Some compromises have to be made to represent non-Euclidean spaces in ways that residents of lower dimensions can understand.
Hi I'm the creator. Thanks for the note - you are not the first one to point that out and it's been sitting on my "to fix" list for years... One day I will get to it!
Hi there, I am the creator. As other commenters pointed out, the vertical distances were exaggerated roughly 4x so things don't overlap each other.
I have experimented with a few things over the years and this is my latest series: https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/complexes
I think they look more reasonable - still legible but the stairs and escalators look more to scale. They also include elevators.
I don't know about this instance in particular, but the vertical scale in similar maps is often exaggerated to make it easier to differentiate the different floors.
At the cost of distorting elements with a vertical dimension, it means that all the wireframe layouts don't end up overlaying each other.
I asked a while back to a NYC city planner the reason they didn't publish station MTA station layouts / exits on gmaps , like you see for example for toyko in gmaps
I was told this was not opened publicly because of terrorist concerns. But if you wanted to get MTA station layouts, it was certainly possible to get them from the city.
Hi I am the creator.
My cousin kindly asked his friend who works for the MTA for me, if my project is a problem for them... and the answer was something like "as long as the drawings don't show columns and/or any structural elements they are fine." My drawings are all meant to be diagrams and only show publicly accessible areas anyway. It's not like the terrorists can't go walk around and figure the stations out themselves if they want...
Not sure why this is downvoted? Do people not remember how for ~20yr "terrorism" was habitually used as a justification for "because we don't want to" by every government organization from the MTA to small town parks departments.
Truly ridiculous to think that a terrorism group is filled with incapable individuals so as to not be able to map out a well traveled and popular location.
Stop pretending terrorists are stupid, quite often they're smarter than you, and seeing this as an excuse tells me that bar is not difficult to pass.
The truly hilarious thing is that the Tokyo subway system actually suffered a terrorist attack in 95, and still they publish the locations of all 200+ exits from Shinjuku station.
A somewhat related idea that's been done for Toronto TTC subway stations is mapping out where the exit/stairs are for your destination station, that way when the doors open they're right there and you don't have to walk down the platform:
Awesome. I wonder if there’s a way to turn these into actual geographic data. I’d love an app to that will navigate me between platforms at the Fulton St megaplex.
> I’d love an app to that will navigate me between platforms
Why would that be needed? I visited NYC the first time as a high school student with not so perfect English as a foreign language skills in 1980 when the city was in a pretty rotten state. The last time in 2009 when the subway was at least free of graffiti and generally looked maintained better. In younger years I found huge subway stations and their connecting walkways fascinating so might have planned some trips with extra complicated changes :) I never had the feeling of getting lost although I definitely lost all sense of orientation. It was easy enough to just "blindly" follow the signs. Not sure why an app would be needed, I assume the signs have not disappeared.
(In 1980 some connections were still sign-posted as "connection to IMT", ... BRT, or ... IND lines although those had ceased to exist 40 years earlier and where not marked on the official subway map. But even that you could just guess from the "breaks" in the line numbering.)
Oh, that’s just the Brooklyn bound train. Where’s the uptown one? Wait, the F is running on the 4? Where is that? This staircase is out of order? Where even is another staircase? This is saying I need to go to Metropolitan. I’m at Lorimer, apparently - wait, is that the same station? Is there an underground path from Grand Central or do I need to exit? What’s the best exit?
It’s unusual to see someone try to make the case for the MTA not being complex, “I got lost in the subway” is like a lowest common denominator NYC experience.
I wouldn't expect it to seem complicated if you're used to other large subway systems.
If the only previous subway experience you have is Glasgow (a single circular route) then yeah, New York is potentially intimidating, but I don't expect a Londoner or Parisian would see it as disproportionately complicated. More stations, but not orders of magnitude more. Tokyo too, and New York only has (these days) a single integrated system so no weird ticketing or line change rules.
Yep: in Tokyo, the stations and the system are complex because of the sheer size of it. Hundreds of stations, so many exits at many of the stations, multiple different companies running the various lines, etc. However, the operation is simple: everything works like clockwork, except when there's a "human incident" (someone jumping in front of a train), which thankfully is fairly rare but does happen unfortunately. Except for exceptional circumstances like that, you can count on things working reliably all the time: trains coming exactly when they're supposed to, on the track you expect, not skipping your station, etc.
These days, it's really easy with Google Maps. Just tell it where you want to go and follow the directions. It tells you the station entrance, which platform to stand on, which car to ride in, when the train is coming, if there's a delay, and which exit to use.
Maybe that's easier for a visitor. You make no assumptions how things are supposed to work because you don't know. You just follow the signs and announcements. Of course in case of disruptions/changes that requires that there are temporary signs and announcements. And that announcements are understandable.
Earlier the first thing in a new city was getting a paper map. No matter whether free or for purchase. Studying the map prepares you for following signs and announcements. Unfortunately in many cities you cannot get paper maps anymore. A phone screen is 1000 times worse ergonomics to understand a network. Often I print maps before going to a new place.
Nah, a phone is pretty indispensable. If you’re waiting for the train at 3am, the only person on the platform, your phone might be the only way for you to know that that countdown clock is lying, and that the subway is down. I would not recommend trying to tackle the MTA with a paper map alone. I wish signage and announcements were as good as you’re hoping
My 5 visits to NYC all happened before smart phones were ubiquitous and I never got lost. Of course the 3 am case might be an exception. I don't think the system has become worse, but the average user has just become more helpless.
I recently travelled 2 weeks by train in foreign countries. I did not turn on GPS a single time. It's just a cause and symptom of helplessness if people need that. Yes, I used my phone to make hotel reservations. 20 years ago I did the same using tourist offices, phone books and payphones. But the difference is really marginal. Travelling was not a problem without smart phones.
You say "might be" like I'm not describing a thing I've experienced :) You're going to have a tough time convincing anyone that having real time updates on train status is a net neutral. I am excited you have not yet had an issue, though. I had train trouble yesterday, the Q only ran to Times Square.
> Of course in case of disruptions/changes that requires that there are temporary signs and announcements.
Which there frequently (usually?) aren't. Because so many disruptions are unplanned.
Also it's a big waste of time to walk 10 min to the subway station and pay the fare only to discover the train you need isn't running and you needed to go to a different station on a different line.
I think there have been attempts to do this with physical beacons that can orient phones nearby, but I would imagine it can be hard to maintain in the harsh operating environment of the subway.
What I'd be more curious about is being able to trust the beacons.
Certainly there is a mechanism where if a phone can get a GNSS/GPS fix, it can then listen for other signals like Wifi and cell towers, and correlate the two: so if GPS isn't available other stuff can heard and used for location.
But if there's no GPS, but there are other signals, how can you map the signals to an actual location?
You'd have to have someone (Apple? Google?) go in with survey equipment and map the non-GNSS (beacon) signals to locations 'manually' and put them in a database.
Probably not economically feasible but I don't think technically impossible given analytics from devices.
And concidering cell signal is likely covered down there and the locations of cell towers are almost certainly mapped they could use some sort of triangulation to generate a pretty reasonable map even without having ever been there.
As I said, I doubt they would put the money into it... Would be a really fun project to build out if you had access to the data though... Maybe don't want to do it because it would make it more common knowledge about how easy it is to track device location even without GPS...
I don't think you would need physical beacons, cell towers or fixed wifi APs[1] will likely be good enough and using some statistics would make removing cases where an AP moved/get renamed / goes down temporarily.
Generally speaking, agencies already have to put things like signs, tactile indicators, etc. next to landmarks like stairs and exits in public spaces; so making the accessible thing also a beacon wouldn’t be that much more complicated.
I believe it’s possible to just have the landowner/transit agency install them and publish their locations according to some standards. I believe shopping malls and airports are already mapped this way sometimes.
This would be a phenomenal accessibility tool if it included elevators! I've had to carry my rollator up SO MANY STAIRS because times square station is nonsense.
Why are the stations not labeled? I'm sure this is fine for people who live there and use the subway on a regular basis, but it would be of little help to someone visiting or who just relocated. Even someone visiting a friend in an area they aren't familiar with would be at a disadvantage figuring out which layout to use.
Hi, I'm the creator. I appreciate the feedback. If you click on an image and then hover your cursor over it, the station name will show up. Not super friendly I agree, but it was mostly developed in 2015.
Here is the latest series, with elevators and more labels:
https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/complexes
It's just for fun. There are apps which help you figure out which car to board (where to stand on the platform) based off your transfers & destinations
