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NYC Subway is replacing printed maps with low-resolution digital maps
- pixelmonkey 7y agoWhat's sad is that the printed maps are extremely accessible, are never "out-of-order", and cheap to print. The MTA is probably worried about re-printing & updating the maps when routes change, but that happens pretty rarely and I doubt the cost of reprinting/reposting exceeds the cost of digitization.
- ummwhat 7y agoConsidering how often some ad hoc fix is going on like "A is running the F on this part of the route" or "only uptown service between here and there this weekend" or "express is local for now", having maps that can instant update and aren't misleading would be an improvement. Not once in the last few years has every train been running on the tracks it's supposed to run on in the way the map says they run. /rant
- pixelmonkey 7y agoMyMTA (beta) app is actually pretty good for knowing about these, I find. And, of course, it'll be way easier to push service changes to mobile apps than to digitized screens.
- notimetorelax 7y agoThis was my thought as well. NY metro can be so confusing, last week they announced changes by printing an A4 page and putting it up on a wall. Interactive screen would be a huge improvement.
- delfinom 7y agoSeveral stations do put up extremely large notices on screens. Not all stations have the functionality yet.
- kevindong 7y agoCan confirm that the daily/weekly service changes are deeply confusing. A lot of information is implied through the MTA's frequently terse announcements of service changes. For instance, I was waiting for a R train in the Canal St. station last weekend wanting to go to the Dekalb Ave. station. But then a N train started to come into the station on a platform it's not supposed to be on. A glance at the paper announcing this change said that the N would run on the R track between Canal St. and Dekalb Ave. Does that mean the N would stop at Dekalb Ave (a stop it ordinarily would not make)? I didn't know and the MTA app's arrival ETAs for the Dekalb Ave station indicated that it would not. The "Next Stops" board inside the N train indicated that yes, the N train would stop at Dekalb Ave. If I boarded the N and it turned out it wouldn't stop at Dekalb Ave., it would take me ~15 minutes to backtrack. So I decided to wait for the next R instead.
- AlphaWeaver 7y agoWhile I was in France, I saw an interesting solution to this on their Metro system. Maps were physical and line maps were even built into the train itself, with an indicator light showing where the train was on the line. When a stop was closed for maintenance or closed early or something, a vinyl sticker was placed over the stop with updated information. It was seamless and blended in with the style of the existing map. A solution like this would be adequate in most areas I think.
- VWWHFSfQ 7y agoAll the new trains on the main red, green, and blue lines have that for at least the last 10 years.
- coredog64 7y agoExcept it’s in the middle of the car. Good luck if it’s rush hour and you’re on an unfamiliar train. The red LED time/next stop displays are similarly useless when the train gets crowded.
- mcot2 7y agoRoutes may rarely change overall but there is a ton of daily maintenance, closures and re-routing that happens on the NYC subway system. A paper map is probably good for generally learning the system, but not very useful in the station when you want to know the exact current state of affairs.
- jessriedel 7y agoThat would be fine if the screen only ever showed the map (and could do so at a high resolution). But dollars to donuts the maps will be periodically swapped with ads, terrorists warning, and maintenance notifications that don't concern me.
- ZoomStop 7y agoIndicate the direction of North at street level subway exits As someone who vacations in NYC every few years, this would be great. Sad that my map collection showing NYC changing over the years may have its last map already.
- Pinus 7y agoInterestingly, the Stockholm metro system puts compass roses on the platforms (probably intended to provide some feeling of connection to the outside world), but not at the exits where they would actually be useful.
- nkrisc 7y agoOn some of the subway platforms in downtown Chicago, they have signs on each wall of the station at the platform that tells you what street is at each end of the platform. Then also on that sign they have a picture of the street there as well. So they have a Southwest view and a Southeast view, and ext one tells you which it is. I grew up there though so not sure how useful it would actually be for tourists but seemed useful.
- smelendez 7y agoChicago also puts the effective street numbers of the station, which is very useful.
- OldHand2018 7y agoYou also get a compass rose embedded in the sidewalk outside of the station [1]. But of course when the sidewalk gets replaced due to other construction projects, it is never replaced. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/77aq9c/the_compass_rose_in_the_sidewalk_when_you_exit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/77aq9c/t...
- amoitnga 7y agothis rose is so cool. I would love that here. I can never figure out where I should walk when coming out of an unfamiliar station in manhattan. It's always "a game"
- spodek 7y agoIf the screens can't change at all, I agree, but non-interactive doesn't necessarily mean not changeable. If they can be changed, this situation is a tough call. I can see the benefit to screens if NYCT can - Replace the images with emergency messages fast - Change the maps without the cost of sending crews - Save money and energy with screens (not sure which has less environmental or financial impact, printing and replacing many maps or powering a disposable screen) High resolution would still beat low, though under magnification still seems readable to me. Glad to see NYCT at least appear open to input and a citizen so giving. They should hire him!
- CogitoCogito 7y ago> Save money and energy with screens (not sure which has less environmental or financial impact, printing and replacing many maps or powering a disposable screen) We’re talking about replacing a paper map with a screen right? A map that’s replaced how often? Yearly? I would personally be blown away if the screens over their lifetime were not orders of magnitude worse environmentally.
- Atheros 7y agoThe map is already updated several times daily (at least twice daily) as the system switches to late night service.
- CogitoCogito 7y agoCouldn't they solve that by putting up two maps next to each other? If I'm correct in my (baseless) assumption that the screens are orders of magnitude worse environmentally, then having two posters wouldn't really matter.
- sho 7y agoI feel the tone of this tweet is needlessly hysterical. The NYC Subway is experimenting with digital maps, OK. The first version isn't perfect, OK. And they responded almost immediately indicating they're making improvements and listening to feedback. Isn't that what we want? Give them a second maybe? It's rarely a good thing when a tweet tells you more about the personality of the tweeter than the ostensible subject at hand. Calm down, jesus.
- rolltiide 7y agoOr like SVG with tappable nodes via D3??? This is a design decision that was neglected, plain and simple
- hbosch 7y agoYou can tell from the photo that the low res is from the screens physical pixel density, not a poor optimized taster graphic. SVG wouldn’t help here. Also, interactive maps aren’t as simple as “make it from D3.js”. You’ll have a screen that thousands of people interact with every day, likely. The UX needs to be thoroughly considered so that it’s non fuck-uppable or breakable. That’s actually the #1 problem with digital maps, they break.
- rolltiide 7y agoElaborate on how a D3 map would break?
- roywiggins 7y agoYou'd have to replace these screens, which are not touchscreens.
- rolltiide 7y agoare they interactive in some capacity?
- Eric_WVGG 7y ago
- flarg 7y agoThe London Tube maps seem ideal in comparison. They are minimalist, non geographic, and they are scaled depending on your location in the Tube platform system. Also, they are paper.
- addicted 7y agoThe NY subway tried the non geographic maps in the past. There was an article that was linked on HN about it. It failed miserably. The NY Subway map being geographical has a lot of excellent features that made it extremely popular.
- nolok 7y agoParis does both for reference, and it feels like both have a different purpose, geographical maps are great when you know the place you need to go on the city but nothing about the stations. The non geographical are great when you know the station to get off to, but not how to reach it
- addicted 7y agoI believe when the NYC subway tried that they did have both. I think what this misses, at least as far as Manhattan is concerned, is the grid system that already exists. Once you understand the grid, and the relationship between the subway system and the grid, then knowing the subway map is as good as knowing the geographic map and vice versa. The first time I visited NYC was in 2004 before our handheld map systems. It took me all of 15 minutes to know exactly where I needed to go and how to get there without ever looking at a map, because my friend explained the system to me. A map that divorces the geographic and subway systems simply leads to the necessity of learning 2 different things that are very intrinsically related, and in the case of Manhattan can actually substitute for each other.
- prepend 7y agoI suspect that these were changed because paper is missing a very important feature desired by NYC, ads. It seems like then most likely reason they would roll out such expensive maps is so they can display ads and “recoup” their costs. This would infuriate me greatly if I was rushing through the subway, trying to figure out my stops and it switched over to an ad for a few seconds. However, displaying in different languages would be nice. It frustrates me when orgs, especially ngo and gov, will incur some needless or not very necessary cost, then layer on some new burden like ads to try to pay for the expensive new thing. Thinking critically about cost and benefit helps in planning and avoiding these types of situations.
- mcot2 7y agoHighly cynical response. It pretty clearly states in their reply that one of the main motivations is to eventually display more real-time information like outages and maintenance. Not easy to do with static paper maps. In fact when I was living there, they had a bulletin board in every station that had to be updated by a human posting a flyer when their were outages.
- jessriedel 7y agoReal-time information on real-time displays, static information on static displays. Maps are extremely cheap, change rarely, and should be everywhere. Don't remove the map from in front of my eye while I'm using it in order to warn me about maintenance that doesn't concern me, or give me a terrorist warning I've heard a thousand times.
- VWWHFSfQ 7y ago> when I was living there, they had a bulletin board in every station that had to be updated by a human posting a flyer when their were outages. They still have that and it's a perfectly good way to get a quick look at what changes are being made to your train for the weekend or a coming holiday. Cheap, analog notices like that aren't bad just because it's not displayed on a futuristic interactive touch screen.
- elondaits 7y ago
- mensetmanusman 7y agoCases of misused technology can be quite frustrating. Our campus van drivers help people move between noncontiguous buildings and they used to use a dispatcher and a radio to do real time traveling-sales-man routing to move people around campus nodes. A year or so ago, one of their managers had the great idea to use RideCell to ‘help’ the drivers plan their routes more effectively. Ridecell uses high-latency GPS coordinates from on-board iPads and assumes that nearest nodes also have short edges. The App has no idea that some coordinates that seem close happen to have very long traffic patterns (edges) that makes going from one to the other a very long and inefficient route to suggest (but it does anyway). Also, the drivers are not allowed to use the radio as often anymore because the managers want data on how effective they are, and the RideCell app has a horrible alert UX for new rides, placing them at the bottom of a long scroll list. The high-latency GPS coordinates are also interesting as you can imagine the system telling you to pick up someone right ‘next’ to you when you are already across campus...
- zxcvbn4038 7y agoI’ve always thought MTA ought to change their slogan to “We’re walking here!” to capitalize of regional humor and make light of all the problems they have. They will usually reply to criticism that it’s because the subway is very large and very old and mere mortals don’t get how complicated it is - but funny thing was they once invited experts from other cities with very old and large subways (London, Paris, Moscow) and they were just as perplexed why NYC MTA has so many operational problems and why so many infrastructure repairs had multi-decade timelines. There are not plenty of places to still get NYC Subway maps including ones made of plastic that are far more durable, and credit card sized maps that are far more easy to manage and reference on a crowded train. There are thousands of the electronic map terminals, they are all hard wired for power and communications, and bolted or embedded in place. It’s not like an app where you have “maps beta” and progressively improve it. Its taken years to install those terminals (still ongoing) and it will take years more to retrofit and upgrade them, with huge labor and materials costs, all going to the lowest bidder and often broken apart in bizarre ways to appease the various union interests (ladder placing needs dedicated workers apparently). They really need to nail the functionality and usability before deploying in the field, it’s more of an afterthought in MTAs case. You see the same issues in the myriad of incompatible and overlapping apps they publish, each with their own aesthetics.
- segfaultbuserr 7y agoWhat resources/budgets do NYT need to fix the subway system? Is it because the public transport is always underfunded and/or because the bureaucracy is very ineffective in the U.S.? Is there any decent coverage on the issues, like City Lab's? Have any politicians pledged to solve the problems?
- magoon 7y agoNYC’s Subway maps are a hallmark of great design. I hope this isn’t prelude to the end of an era in usability.
- magoon 7y agoMTA’s printed NYC Subway maps are a hallmark of great design. I hope this isn’t prelude to the end of an era in usability.
- Tokkemon 7y agoEh... they're getting very dated at this point, almost 30 years old since the last redesign.
- CogitoCogito 7y agoI’m kind of confused. You don’t seem to disagree with the previous poster’s claim that the design was great so does that mean that you you think the design is bad only because it’s old? What has changed in the past 30 years to make the design bad?
- polynomial 7y agoGiven how many of these they seem to be adding to each platform, the main issue for me is the removal of the old paper map display as opposed to supplemental, digital kiosks. It's not like they're going to stop printing paper maps (or are they) so having one on display and available on the platform is useful, and far less annoying than the lo-rez rubbish displays they've installed. Also, the problem of digital light pollution is very real.
- nerdponx 7y agoYep, the maps on the wall would be the biggest loss. And I wish they would dim the screens at night, especially the new and very-bright ones at outdoor stations.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- polynomial 7y ago"We are the MTA. You will be illuminated."
- jacques_chester 7y agoI am dreading the day when the overhead ads in subway cars are replaced with screens with video ads. Absolutely dreading it. Right now I can read on the subway. I get a huge amount of reading done commuting to and from work. But soon the colours on my page will change constantly, there will be flickers, smash cuts, flaring and fuck me it will be ruined. Give me the dipshit with the bluetooth speaker forever, I can wear earplugs, but I can't wear eyeplugs.
- reaperducer 7y agoI am dreading the day when the overhead ads in subway cars are replaced with screens with video ads. Sounds like Tokyo, the imagined HN utopia. Some Asian city I was in had video screens in the buses, too. I think it was Singapore, but I might be wrong.
- odessacubbage 7y ago>eyeplugs maybe augmented reality adblock will be what finally makes google glass-style accessories commercially attractive.
- someexgamedev 7y agoNot sure how they are going to solve the pixel density issue without going to interactive displays, which would be a mistake. Malls trialed interactive maps sometime in the last decade and it was a worse experience. One print map can service a lot of people crowded around it. Make the interface interactive and suddenly it's only usable by one person at a time despite being just as large as the old print map. The right solution, if you want interactivity, is perhaps a handful of interactive map kiosks that are much smaller and meant for one user at a time. You could fit at least 4 of them in the space of any existing giant print map.
- booleandilemma 7y agoAnd why do we value this guy’s opinions exactly?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bootloop 7y agoI am wondering if digital maps on screens can reach the same availability levels as a printed paper map. For such a system, is it more beneficial to the user to have up to date information most of the time but be at risk to have no information in rare situations. Or might it be better to be able to guarantee that some level of information is available to the user at all times.
- jancsika 7y agoOoh, this tweet and the comments here on HN highlight some of the problems with low-friction digital publishing. Here's the tweet: > Seriously? The MTA replaced printed subway maps on this platform with super low-rez, non-interactive digital maps? * Notice my italics-- the tweet is refreshingly careful to claim that a specific platform at an unspecified time replaced the printed map on the platform with a low quality digital map. We'll get back to that later. * look how bright the low-res map looks in the zoomed out shot on the left compared to the zoomed in shot on the right. I remember reading these maps in NYC earlier this summer and though the resolution looks familiar they didn't appear anywhere as dim when I got close and read them. Something weird is going on with the camera but only in the zoomed in shot. * that particular map is indeed non-interactive. Yet when I visited NYC I remember locals touching screens like these and then quickly moving on upon realizing they weren't interactive. Odd, right? I mean, why would residents be continually tricked by these screens? Oh, right, NYC also has interactive screens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv9FOqgltHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv9FOqgltHs Notice the familiar panning/zooming gestures plus the menu buttons at the bottom for realtime updates for transit times. Can't be sure but the resolution appears to be higher than what's shown in the Tweet above. I can also confirm that these interactive digital maps are indeed on some of the more popular subway platforms. But I have no idea of the ratio of interactive to non-interactive screens. Does anyone here have that information? * While I assume the non-interactive maps are older than the interactive ones, I don't know that. Does anyone here have a source for when each kiosk was introduced? * most of the comments here seem quite satisfied to have assumed that this single sample represents the current state of the art on all NYC platforms. Is there some evidence I'm missing to justify all these assumptions made in the other comments? Edit: I just tried a Google search to try to find the dates these kiosks were released, and guess what result appeared on the first page of results? You guessed it-- the tweet quote above! Just to clarify-- I see a tweet about kiosk quality that appears ignorant of kiosk state of the art, do a search on Google to find out more about the state of the art, and get back a prominent link to the tweet which lacks the information I was after. Lucky for me I knew a priori that interactive kiosks exist...