CenSin

Draft 3 has arrived. There is still no Staten Island service but each and every station has finally been labelled. Despite the painstaking work of bringing the map to near completion, the software used to create the map began to fail under the massive size of the map. With thousands of little objects scattered throughout the map, none of the programs in the Microsoft Office suite could properly export the drawing to an image with readable text. PowerPoint did let me export, but only a piece at a time and I stitched the pieces together afterwards. I thought OpenOffice.org would be a sufficient replacement, but its export capabilities also failed me.

The problem is stitching all of that together. I'm not thrilled about pressing [Print Screen] a hundred times and then putting those 100 tiles together. Also, it only helps with showing the elevated lines accurately (by virtue of being able to see them). The bus maps are still more accurate (probably).

I suggested stitching together all of the bus maps for each borough and subtracting all the bus lines and minor streets on straphangers.org since it's probably the easiest approach. But I think working from scratch produces cleaner results and can be done in less than a month.

The IND Second System would have had this and more. And the lines are not as far-reaching as they appear to be. The geography on the MTA Subway map is distorted—very distorted, so you can't trust your intuition when judging scales. You'd actually have to look up the streets and find a real map to pinpoint them with any accuracy, which explains why some of the new stations on my map are so close together or so far apart. The in my map, for example, terminates at Francis Lewis Boulevard and Long Island Expressway which is only three miles from Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue—the distance between 82 Street–Jackson Heights and Main Street on the Flushing line, yet the terminal is shown twice as far away. Instead, it should be where the is. I'm thinking about redoing the entire map by starting with a more accurate geographical representation.

Any ideas for Staten Island? That's one lonely place since I don't know anyone from there nor have I set foot in it. All I know is that the garbage is (or used to be) dumped there.

Here's draft 2: The 2 Avenue line is extended to the Bronx via 3 Avenue with a track connection to the Grand Concourse line. The Grand Concourse line is extended east with a track connection to the 3 Avenue line. The and are reversed again. trains running the entire length of the White Plains Road line are express between 3 Avenue and Gun Hill Road. trains between 3 Avenue and Dyre Avenue run local. A new line connecting Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn is added. The Flushing line is extended with two branches. The Astoria line is extended with 4 tracks from Ditmars Boulevard to Parsons Boulevard. There is no local Broadway service on the Queens Boulevard line. The runs on the Queens Boulevard superexpress during rush hours. The (X) skips 3 stops along the portion shared with the . A line runs from Broadway–Union Avenue to Avenue U via Stuyvesant Avenue and Utica Avenue.

Thanks guys. It'll probably take another few days to get it done as drawing these lines accurately takes a lot of effort. One problem with the official map is its general inaccuracy. The Archer extension for example, should actually appear much shorter going south, but the white line that represents Linden Boulevard is way down there so I had to stretch it out. All of the lines were drawn from scratch with the official map (minus most of the foreground elements) as a base. Some of them were traced, but others were realigned to make room for adjacent lines or to more accurately reflect the station (e.g., the Canal Street complex). (Hint: Take Adobe Illustrator and crack open one of the PDF versions of the maps; delete whatever you don't want and draw over it. In my case, I deleted the lines as well.) Anyway, future additions: Astoria line extension (already planned) Flushing line extension and spurs (already planned) Will connect the Crosstown line to a new Fort Hamilton Parkway line with a spur to Staten Island. ("Fan Railer") TriboroRX will be done, but I will probably only determine the route and not all of the stations in the near future. ("R32 3348") If the goes back to being a full-time Wihte Plains Road local, then the switches will be reworked to enable the Dyre Avenue line to connect directly to the express tracks. I really value efficiency over anything else. ("NX Express") The Second Avenue line will be extended vie 3 Avenue in Bronx. The Broadway line in Brooklyn running from Huston Street to Union Avenue will be extended south to meet up with the Utica Avenue stations on the Fulton Street and Eastern Parkway lines. That combined with the 2 Avenue subway in Manhattan and its 3 Avenue extension should reduce the importance of the Lexington Avenue line and cutting it short won't be necessary. The Utica Avenue line will absorb riders directly east of the Nostrand Avenue line, providing relief to the and . It will run directly to the 2 Avenue line, so it can be a drop-in replacement for those who would have otherwise taken a Lexginton Avenue express to midtown and/or Bronx. I might decide to simply replace the Myrtle Avenue line with a subway connecting to the Broadway subway in Brooklyn and Rockaway line in Queens. Comments: The N runs express in the Coney Island-bound direction only and only during PM rush. Crowding doesn't seem to be much of a problem during AM rush, but a few PM runs can be crush-loaded, so the express redistributes Coney Island-bound riders. The express run from Broadway Junction to Cypress Hills is already on a flyover track that bypasses the slow curves. Accurate representation of the physical structures of each line has been eschewed for brevity. The Crosstown line's Bedford–Nostrand Avenues station has provisions for a northeast spur. I'm not sure if it would be useful to connect another line to it or what it could possibly connect to.

Here's draft 1 of my fantasy subway map. It was inspired by the grandiose plans for the second system. I have not gotten to adding route labels, some stations, nor any station names yet, but you could probably tell by the colors. The and the have switched roles, but the 5 will remain express and between Gun Hill Road and Third Avenue. The is shown on this map. The Second Avenue line is added. It has connections to the 63 Street, Huston Street, 6 Avenue, and Fulton Street lines. The Flushing line is extended westward. The 63 Street line connects to a new super express line that runs from 21 Street–Queens Bridge to Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike. The super express line has only one track. It also has a connection to the Rockaway line; where they run side-by-side the tunnel has three tracks with track connections right before two of the tracks veer off to the LIRR Rockaway branch. The Rockaway line runs using the old LIRR right-of-way with stations at 63 Drive, Metropolitan Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, Jamaica Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, 101 Avenue, Aqueduct, and beyond. The Hillside Avenue line is extended with extensions of the local services as well (which use the 4 relay tracks north of 179 Street). The Archer Avenue line is extended. The two levels still have no connection to each other. The Libery Avenue line is extended to Springfield Boulevard. Stations have yet to be determined. An express track is added between Broadway Junction and Cypress Hills on the Jamaica line. The Huston Street line branching off the 6 Avenue line is connected through the river to the Broadway station on the Crosstown line. The Myrtle Avenue line no longer connects to the Jamaica line at grade. The tracks fly over. The Fulton Street line branches off into another line running under North Conduit Avenue to 114 Street. The line is also connected to the Rockaway line. The Nostrand Avenue line is extended to Avenue S. Stations have yet to be determined. The Culver express makes its return. Locals terminate at Kings Highway. The Sea Beach express makes its return. There are only 4 runs per day, however. Please list suggestions! I am not entirely sure what direction to take this map.