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How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?
- amelius 2y agoThere seems to be a bug: Click on Howard beach (JFK Airport), then on Broad Channel. The times are not updated.
- cyberax 2y agoYeah. Isochrones are great, because they clearly show the inferiority of ANY type of public transit to cars.
- KrustyTheDev 2y ago[flagged]
- chirau 2y agoIs the migrant crime the only crime you are trying to get away from? Are you ok with local crime? One would hope you just want to escape crime, unless you are insinuating that all crime is migrant crime or most crime is migrant crime. Neither of which is true.
- TomK32 2y agoBe a Luigi, take a bicycle.
- xhkkffbf 2y agoDoes it take into account the way that some subway lines run much less frequently than others?
- amanda99 2y agoNo, it seems to assume changing trains is instantaneous and trains are waiting for you.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoWhich is why people prefer personal cars whenever possible. Mass transit has to operate at 5 minute intervals (so that you are waiting at most 10 to 15 minutes in the event of a missed connection). If it isn’t that frequent, then I am going to opt for a personal car every chance I can. Using only the subway in Manhattan/some parts of Brooklyn is convenient, but as you stray further, it starts getting tedious.
- chimeracoder 2y ago> Mass transit has to operate at 5 minute intervals (so that you are waiting at most 10 to 15 minutes in the event of a missed connection). Which is not only possible, but quite feasible. Upgrading to provide six-minute service 24/7 would only require a one-time investment of $300M, because it is projected to raise enough revenue to pay for itself in the long term. Unfortunately the current governor is trying to cut transit funding again with her most recent budget proposal, so that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
- marcinzm 2y agoI'm not convinced it'd pay for itself since maintenance still needs to be done so it's not really 6 minutes 24/7. The 7 train in theory runs on weekends and in theory runs fairly often. In practice it's down every other weekend for I think 5+ years now. The MTA does not have a good track record of timely maintenance and also seems to not care much about long term downtime (ie: like their original proposal for a 15 month closure of the L line).
- baq 2y agoTechnical term is isochrone map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map
- larodi 2y ago[flagged]
- kittikitti 2y agoThank you so much for this, I have trouble communicating time from maps even though its often so interconnected and this concept opens it up.
- pella 2y ago"Full code for the isochrone workflow is available on" https://github.com/chriswhong/nyc-subway-isochrones https://github.com/chriswhong/nyc-subway-isochrones
- davidw 2y agoMapbox also provides an isochrone API: https://docs.mapbox.com/playground/isochrone/ https://docs.mapbox.com/playground/isochrone/
- intexpress 2y agoJackson Heights is the winner here
- acjohnson55 2y agoThe loser is 241st in the Bronx. Can't even get out of the Borough. Unless we're also considering Staten Island, which few do :)
- mgce 2y agoAlso the Rockaways, which are famous for being remote and poorly transit-served.
- saltcod 2y agoVery cool project
- Tade0 2y agoI'm of the opinion that every 500k+ city should have a subway line. I grew up in a city with one (just one for the majority of my 20 years there) and if there's one thing I miss from that place it's the ability to move at an average speed of 35km/h at any time the trains were operating, especially at 2am on a Friday night after a couple of beers with the guys. The other thing I noticed when I was visiting my family there during the recent holidays is that there are so few cars in places close to the subway lines - roughly half the usual concentration. The incentive to have one is just not strong enough.
- xvedejas 2y agoI'm of the opinion that it depends on density. You could build a subway line in some US cities of 1M and nobody would ride it; you could build a subway line in a city of 50k and everyone would ride it. It depends on whether there is density to support walking directly to many things (businesses, residences, and other transit lines) or not.
- HPsquared 2y agoThe subway is the big expensive investment. In theory, businesses and housing etc would develop around the stations. Like how suburbs develop around train stations.
- ghaff 2y agoIn theory. The commuter rail I sometimes take follows an old rail right of way. Some of the stations are in fairly developed areas. But some of those, like Concord, presumably predate even the original rail. And a lot of the towns are pretty spread out. You can't walk to much until you get to the last two stops in the city proper.
- jonahrd 2y agoThis is because the T is not a "real" transit system in the way that it's simply not designed to move enough people fast enough to compete with cars.
- bdunks 2y agoI love this. I agree with the "about" that it's visually compelling, and I'm mesmerized. This doesn't detract from my enjoyment the site, but for trip planning I'm a little skeptical of the results around the edges, especially when I'm assuming multiple transfers would be required (e.g., Local -> Express -> Express -> Local). With a caveat this was over 10 years ago (~2012-2013), and train frequencies may have changed: I used to live pretty far up on the upper west side, and took the 1 train from the 103rd street station daily. My weekday route was 1 -> 2/3 -> 7 into midtown. The 20 minute radius is accurate at peak times, when it only takes 2-3 minutes to catch a transfer. However, the website "about" makes an assumption this is for noon on a weekday. I don't think I ever made it to Brooklyn in under 40 minutes.
- amelius 2y agoDoes it also work at 3am?
- jpalawaga 2y agoIt does. New York's system is one of only a handful in the world that operates all (or nearly all) lines 24/7.
- acjohnson55 2y agoThe level of redundancy in the NYC subway is marvelous. In most of the densest areas, you have 4-track lines and often other lines within a mile. It makes it possible to do maintenance while still offering 24/7 service.
- throwaway473825 2y agoIf you have a 2-track line, you can close one of the tracks for maintenance on weekday nights when frequency doesn't need to be very high. That's how Copenhagen does it.
- amelius 2y agoI don't see any violations of locality here.
- rst 2y agoThere are a few -- select the 79th street station on the #1 line (farthest west in Manhattan) and look at Brooklyn, due pretty much directly south. The 36th Street station on the D/N/R lines is reachable in 40 minutes because it gets express service, but the stations to the north and south are local stops, and for that reason, take longer to get to.
- _kb 2y agoThere a pretty neat free tool - http://pedestriancatch.com http://pedestriancatch.com - that will also let you run walkability simulation anywhere with OpenStreetMap data. Great for when you’re moving or exploring somewhere new.
- dzonga 2y agonice too. but been a while since I lived in NY. what these things don't tell ya is how frequent the trains break down. my morning commute would be 30 mins on a packed train, but the evening train would be 2x-3x that time due to trains / track issues.
- londons_explore 2y agoTravel times would be much improved by a high speed line. Ie. a route with 4 stops and a travel speed of 100 mph. The finances of railways actually get better with faster trains - because the sooner you can get the person to their destination, the quicker you can get that train serving another passenger.
- marcinzm 2y agoYou do realize that Manhattan is only 14 miles long? With a stop every 3 miles even a Shinkansen wouldn't reach 100mph before it had to start slowing down again.
- bob_theslob646 2y agoAccording to chatgpt, the max speed is higher than what you stated and is 155mph before needing to slow down.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoMTA runs express trains. They don't get up to 100mph, but they skip many local stops along the way. Raising their speed to 100mph would likely not meaningfully increase transit time - you'd maybe shave off a few minutes.
- bob_theslob646 2y agoI wonder if there was a way to calculate how many more passengers they could serve if they had faster trains?
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoYou just have to look at the peak ridership figures from 1949. They're running well under the capacity the system could handle 75 years ago. Faster trains aren't necessary.
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- matv 2y agoVery cool!
- jimmySixDOF 2y agoNice effort and just shows you how far the art/science of dataviz has come with the ability of websites to work like realtime game engines. This is the same information visually expressed in a grid chart from 1983 by Edward Tufte (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information). While the method can't scale the same way it feels like a more creative approach : https://www.edwardtufte.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VDQI-Spread-Detail-1.jpg https://www.edwardtufte.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VDQI-...
- seabass-labrax 2y agoI wouldn't say that Maray's chart as cited by Tufte is directly comparable: it displays the timings of trains along a one-dimensional railway, therefore displaying two dimensions of continuous data for each train (the second dimension being time). The online map displays a two-dimensional area, with an extra (quantized, not continuous) dimension of time with the colour-coding. It's a tradeoff between displaying more precision for fewer train timings or less precision for many train timings.
- piinbinary 2y agoWhy don't any of the trains go into New Jersey? That seems like a big wasted opportunity for adding more space that can easily commute into the city.
- marcinzm 2y agoTrains do go into New Jersey from NYC. Just not MTA trains.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoBecause it's the New York City subway. There are trains that go to New Jersey - the PATH trains, as well as NJtransit commuter trains that leave from Penn Station.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ryanhecht 2y agoExcellent information if you're playing Jet Lag: The Game's[1] home game[2] 1: https://www.youtube.com/c/jetlagthegame https://www.youtube.com/c/jetlagthegame 2: https://store.nebula.tv/products/hideandseek https://store.nebula.tv/products/hideandseek
- CSMastermind 2y agoI've been meaning to try it out in NYC because it seems like that's one of few geos they playtested. It's super fun in other cities but you have to modify the rules and cards a bunch to make it work.
- ryanhecht 2y agoI'm a huge theme park nut that lives in Orlando - I'm trying to design a version that can work across Walt Disney World (or maybe even ALL of Orlando's theme park campuses). Photos pose a huge challenge because my friends (fellow theme park nuts) can pick out the smallest details in every park -- even the color of pavement and themed lighting fixtures! I'm having fun thinking of what adaptations to make. Agreed that this product would be better as a game design framework rather than a ready-to-play game in any geo (and tbh, would be a better fit for what Jet Lag is all about: people designing games for themselves to play!)
- CSMastermind 2y agoSo I actually live in Orlando and bought the game with the intent of doing exactly that... I'm not a theme park nut but that seemed like a fun way to play the game (actually I was thinking Universal might work better but I wasn't sure). Definitely share if come up with something good.
- jklein11 2y agoSuper cool! Its kinda crazy how out of the loop JFK airport is
- ghthor 2y agoI made the mistake of trying to use subway to get to JFK. That day I learned the way was to take the LIRR from grand central station.
- notjustanymike 2y agoShockingly easy to get to though. LIRR to Jamaica, then AirTrain. Usually faster than a car, and more predictable than taking the A (which you have to be careful to choose the right one).
- fldskfjdslkfj 2y agoIt's crazy how dysfunctional the state structure can be - in any functioning country the subway would extend to NJ.
- marcinzm 2y agoThe PATH train does exactly that.
- fldskfjdslkfj 2y agothe PATH train is a lousy a replacement. Just look at the connectivity and coverage of NJ vs Queens & Brooklyn: https://stewartmader.com/wp-content/uploads/Subway-NY-NJ-scaled.jpg https://stewartmader.com/wp-content/uploads/Subway-NY-NJ-sca...
- acjohnson55 2y agoThe Jersey side is so sad, for one of the country's most densely populated areas.
- marcinzm 2y agoThat's a separate issue versus trains going to/from NYC. They do.
- gumperbumper 2y agoThe NJ side is definitely sad, but your map is missing NJ transit.
- acjohnson55 2y agoIt would make much more sense for it to be unified with the MTA subway, with more connectivity. My dream would be a single seat ride from Newark Airport to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, via Newark Penn Station and World Trade Center. There was also once a proposal to have the 7 train go out to Seacaucus Junction, which would be huge for accessing the East Side for NJers.
- jpalawaga 2y agoSomething here is not quite right. For example, if you look at the 7th ave line (red line/1,2,3) 18th street and 14th street have similar radii. But anyone knows that 14th street is much more convenient because it's triply serviced by the 1,2,3 with 2,3 being express trains. 18th street is serviced by one train the runs locally. This ignores that you could easily switch to the L, A/C/E, F/M with a short walk. Still, a cool visualization to show the power of mass transit, and even compare relatively between lines.
- mannykannot 2y agoI see what you mean. According to this map, you can get from the 18th. street station to the 1st ave. stop on the L in ten minutes, but not from 14th. street.
- acomjean 2y agoDoes it include the express trains? (those trains that skip a bunch of stops on certain lines, so they can go faster like the 2) I couldn't figure that out. I remember when I was in NY those trains really moved. https://mta.info/map/5346 https://mta.info/map/5346
- wgerard 2y agoI think it includes transfers and express lines. I noticed if I click on a local stop that meets an express line somewhere, the express line stops are still quite a bit darker than other stops. That's likely why 18th and 14th street are so similar: It only takes a minute or two to get from 18th st -> 14th st.
- asah 2y agoTime of day / day or week ? I got screwed yesterday waiting 23 minutes for an F when normally I'd 5 mins or less.
- anyonecancode 2y agoCool! Though the data must be a bit noisy as you get some oddities. For instance, if you select Astoria/Ditmars (last top, NW Queens) the Flushing/Main Street stop (last stop of purple -- go directly west on map from Astoria) is out of range. Click Flushing/Mains Street, though, and Astoria/Ditmars is in the 40 minute range.
- 65 2y agoI live in NYC and I can tell you... these times seem optimistic.
- rst 2y agoThey're assuming very quick transfers (rush hour service). But then again, a lot of transit planning seems to assume rush hour commutes are the only reason why it's there.
- karaterobot 2y ago> Isochrones are manually calculated using turf.js assuming 1.2m/s walking speed after the subway trip. This is super cool, and I don't want the following statement to be taken as a criticism, because it's an unrealistic expectation: I do not rely on estimates like this until they are ground-truthed.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI wonder if they factored in the time to walk to and from the surface and platform here. Also intersection signal patterns on the surface.
- binary132 2y agoI’ve always wanted a feature like this in Zillow for filtering the results by commute time to a given destination, but this is even cooler!
- bowsamic 2y agoMuch slower than I would have guessed
- ahstilde 2y agoThis is great. It doesn't paint a full picture, however. It's certainly possible to go farther leveraging the other rail lines in the area: PATH, LIRR, Metro North, NJ Transit Light Rail
- kjkjadksj 2y agoDepends what your transfer process looks like. Some of those trains are not very frequent at all outside the 9-5 commute pattern.
- bob_theslob646 2y agoWell it depends because they added the Grand Central line so that you can get from the middle of Manhattan to Queens fairly quickly as Grand Central stop at Jamaica station on the Long Island railroad which is a hack to getting to JFK without having to use the Subway.
- AbstractH24 2y agoI love it, but as someone who lives in Queens I think it’s underestimating by maybe 20% or 30%, particularly when a transfer or significant walking is involved (and I walk quite fast)
- cooljacob204 2y agoYeah, I wish I could get from Astoria to Forest Hills in only 40 minutes.
- dave333 2y agoBut how long does it take to get to Mornington Crescent?
- dave333 2y agoAssuming multi-modal travel is allowed of course.
- jeffbee 2y agoApparently you can walk to North Brother Island in 20 minutes from 138th St.
- ourmandave 2y agoThis feels like a question you would ask if you were a level designer for a zombie video game.
- standardUser 2y agoI'm curious how the creator chose 40 minutes as the cutoff because I use the same cutoff. Less than 40 minutes is normal, ordinary, wouldn't think twice about it. More than 40 minutes is an outrage, preposterous, is this place even still in NY?
- TZubiri 2y agoLogistically, space is not euclidean.
- vanilla_nut 2y agoThis is absolutely wonderful. As a former resident of Astoria and soon-to-be Brooklyn resident, I noticed something that becomes pretty obvious quickly to NYC residents: literally all of Queens (except perhaps LIC) is over 40 minutes from the vast majority of Brooklyn by subway. When I lived in Astoria, it was literally faster to _walk_ than to try to take the subway (with weekend delays and redirections and schedules) to most of Brooklyn. We really need the Interborough Express (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Express) 50 years ago.
- jimt1234 2y agoHmmm. I've made it from Jamaica Station (coming from Long Island) to Yankee Stadium in under 40 minutes many times.
- yownie 2y agoanyone remember this from the 2000's when it was called triptropnyc ? https://www.triptropnyc.com/ https://www.triptropnyc.com/
- shmuppet 2y agoAn interesting offshoot of this type of question is: how long does it take to hit every stop on a given transit system? BART has quite a few people making attempts; the official BART website even maintains a little article [1]! A couple have made videos of attempts and theory [2, 3], but the king of these things is tomo tawa linja, who I believe is the current record holder at 5:30:26 [4]. [1] https://www.bart.gov/news/fun/speedrun https://www.bart.gov/news/fun/speedrun [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o9JGsamQF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o9JGsamQF0 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFWp_LH3X5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFWp_LH3X5k [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmQTnSlL4C4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmQTnSlL4C4
- yackback 2y agoThe NYC version has a wikipedia page[0]. The record is Kate Jones, in 22 hours, 14 minutes, 10 seconds. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_Challenge
- compsciphd 2y agoThe data doesn't make sense to me, at least if it doesn't take into consideration transfers (which are very erratic from my experience). Ex: The A in general goes express from 125th to 59th st without any stops. Therefore, one would think those stations should be sort of disconnected from each other (sort of islands in the the graph), but the data as presented shows them with a simple gradual extension of time. makes me wonder about its accuracy in general.
- dtgriscom 2y agoI loved the domain name, once I figured out it was a reference to "watersheds".
- danvk 2y agoWe built a visualization along these lines at Sidewalk Labs back in 2017. It's open source if you're interested in playing around with it: https://github.com/sidewalklabs/router https://github.com/sidewalklabs/router I particularly liked the multimodal comparison feature. It lets you answer questions like "where does the bus help me get to faster than the subway?" (Answer: basically nowhere.)
- kazinator 2y agoUnsurprisingly, next to nothing is reachable in 40 minutes that is not tightly packed next to the subway system. From any subway station, you can reach, in forty minutes, a large swath of the subway system and its small vicinity.
- drusepth 2y agoWhat is the search bar for (that populates with other cities)? I tried both SF and Seattle and both just move the map ~50 miles away from NYC. Does this only visualize NYC, or does it also work elsewhere?
- snapplebobapple 2y agothis is cool but it would pe super interesting to see this adjusted for the ilterva\ timing betweenarrivals assumild i got to station rightafter each train left: all of the area difference is the questionable territory risky to ride from each station unless you have flexibility