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NYC Subway Station Layouts
- afavour 2y agoAwesome. 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.
- lelandfe 2y agoI believe precise subterranean location like that is hard.
- bobthepanda 2y agoI 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.
- throw0101d 2y agoWhat 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.
- jpc0 2y agoProbably 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. 1. Access Points
- bobthepanda 2y agoGenerally 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.
- jpc0 2y agoOh I don't disagree that it isn't easy to do that. It really is. I'm saying it's likely not needed.
- bobthepanda 2y agoI 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.
- rangestransform 2y agoThere are BLE beacons for positioning in the big dig tunnels in Boston
- usr1106 2y ago> 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.)
- lelandfe 2y agoOh, 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.
- tialaramex 2y agoI 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.
- crazygringo 2y ago
- frankdenbow 2y agoThere 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.
- nicwolff 2y agoIt's still in the iOS App Store!
- popcalc 2y agoEquivalent for the Budapest metro: https://metro.skornel02.hu/ https://metro.skornel02.hu/
- chgs 2y agoGeoff Marshall made “Station Master” for the London Underground
- gnovel 2y agoThe Citymapper transit app shows this information for most cities it supports
- Niksko 2y agoGoogle maps has this natively in Japan which was great for travelling there
- woodruffw 2y agoThe 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. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R211_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R211_(New_York_City_Subway_car...
- sofixa 2y ago> they show the upcoming station 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!
- pimlottc 2y agoI would love to have diagrams like this for Chicago’s CTA but I haven’t found any.
- cryptozeus 2y agoGreat but if owner is looking at this, please make the images zoomable on mobile
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- elegantelefant 2y agoHi there, it's me. This page was made in 2015/2016. The later series have more zoomable interfaces, although none is perfect. Check them out! https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/x-ray-area-maps https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/x-ray-area-maps https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/x-ray-station-clusters https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/x-ray-station-clusters https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/complexes https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/complexes
- cryptozeus 2y agoEtsy prints are beautiful ! Just one more issue, for some reason Avast is giving me error for your zoom plugin. This is the error on your page. Whew! We’ve just saved you from an infected website Infected URL: https://community.zoomable.ca/zoomable/viewer.php https://community.zoomable.ca/zoomable/viewer.php Threat: URL:Phishing
- usr1106 2y agoSlightly (un)related: For detailed subway track maps e.g. in Paris https://cartometro.com/en/ https://cartometro.com/en/ is a nice resource. The US is not covered well, though.
- bobthepanda 2y agoNYC subway, including provisions for extensions that never happened: https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/docs/NYC_full_trackmap.pdf https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/docs/NYC_full_track... 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.
- azaslavsky 2y agoFor those interested in these for other subways around the world, http://stations.albertguillaumes.cat/ http://stations.albertguillaumes.cat/ has done a lovely job rendering them. It's impressive how many systems are covered.
- Anduia 2y agoThe drawings are nice, but like other SPAs, it is useless as a resource because it does not use bookmarkable URLs
- xenic 2y agoThis isn’t something inherent to SPAs, though sadly many (most?) do omit the history api and don’t provide usable URLs nor back/forward navigation.
- pimlottc 2y agoIt's somewhat inherent, as the URL will not change by default and it generally takes an intentional to implement sharable URLs.
- throw10920 2y ago"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.
- globular-toast 2y agoI 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.
- n2d4 2y ago
- mmooss 2y agoThe photography is the best part (of a wonderful website). Kudos to the creator.
- alsetmusic 2y agoWhy 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. Edit: that said, very cool.
- Tokkemon 2y agoIt's an art project, not a practical tool.
- kshahkshah 2y agoIt'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
- elegantelefant 2y agoHi, 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 https://www.projectsubwaynyc.com/complexes
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amelius 2y agoCan this be integrated into the various navigation apps?
- neilv 2y agoIn the renderings, why are most of the (what look like) stairs/escalators so steep?
- abstractbeliefs 2y agoI 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.
- Tokkemon 2y agoThey are schematic drawings to make them clearer, not to scale.
- elegantelefant 2y agoHi 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 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.
- throw7 2y agoPeople should do/include Secaucus Junction.
- nuvious 2y agoThis is a fun visualization. I may end up in NYC if my job interviews went well enough to land an offer. Just wrapped up 2nd round yesterday.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y agoI 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. I guess we have flipped that page!
- akira2501 2y ago> because of terrorist concerns. The New York bureaucracies favorite excuse for not doing work they are responsible for.
- potato3732842 2y agoNot 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.
- ryandrake 2y agoI was going to say! "Because Terrorism" has been the catch-all vague excuse for limiting access to everything, for decades.
- elegantelefant 2y agoHi 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...
- rangestransform 2y agoJust like the excuses for banning photos in PATH
- waiwai933 2y agoLondon's are available at: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-ab-14630/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underg...
- mrb 2y agoSimilarly, this site has subway station layouts for many cities: http://stations.albertguillaumes.cat/ http://stations.albertguillaumes.cat/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jareklupinski 2y agoOne time I got onto the Q platform from Centre Street by habit before realizing I was supposed to take the 6. Felt like I somehow broke space and time getting there, and this Escher staircase in Canal Street station confirms it: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55ababf2e4b064e8b6004ad2/1489619624197-GJSCLWBY7VNNWBPASYJS/07+Canal+Street+Image.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55ababf2e4b064...
- samuelg123 2y agoMake sure to check out the 3D models tab. That’s definitely the most interesting part of the site!
- Sniffnoy 2y agoNot 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.
- noident 2y agoThis 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.
- airstrike 2y agoLook at this guy! He can't even moonwalk on the J axis
- elegantelefant 2y agoHi 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!
- throw0101d 2y agoA 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: * https://theurbangeographer.ca/Subway-Exit-Map https://theurbangeographer.ca/Subway-Exit-Map * iOS app: https://efficientttc.weebly.com https://efficientttc.weebly.com * Android: https://recursivepizza.com/#TtcRider_more https://recursivepizza.com/#TtcRider_more
- EE84M3i 2y agoGoogle maps does automatically this for most stations in Tokyo.
- suneater921 2y agoThe Hong Kong MTR has these as standard.
- punnerud 2y agoPlease don’t hijack my possibility to zoom in pictures on mobile (iOS)
- Hnrobert42 2y agoCame here to say this. What reason could there be for limiting this behavior? I had to screenshot to zoom. (facepalm)
- dr_pardee 2y agoHold on the image, “Open in New Tab”, zoom in
- aardvark179 2y agoDoesn’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.
- ryukoposting 2y agoYeah, I can't even press and hold to open the image in a new tab (Android, Firefox).
- ryanianian 2y agoEven 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.
- graypegg 2y agoIn defence of the author, this appears to be the default lightbox widget provided by Sqaurespace. A page for each image would help a ton.
- helsinki 2y agoTo the person drawing the stairs, the stairs are not that steep - not even close.
- ColinWright 2y agoI refer you to the reply made by the author on exactly this point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42098298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42098298
- Viccro 2y agoThis 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.