New York’s subway is so hellish, I’m homesick for London’s underground

[Tokkemon]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/23/new-york-subway-homesick-london-underground-mta-map

 

Please, just release your foamer hell on her. Immediately. She deserves it.

 

Her twitter is here: https://twitter.com/bimadew

[P3F]

Even tourists can figure out the map. If they can't, they ask for directions from random people or a Station Agent. The opinion about looking at the front of the train is untrue, every single passenger car has the destination and route on the side signs.

 

This woman sounds like she's a scared little child afraid of the big bad subway. Maybe she should take a taxi and pay a lot more.

[GojiMet86]

The service patterns here are much easier to understand than those in London. They have a gazillion branches and services.

[NYtransit]

The service patterns here are much easier to understand than those in London. They have a gazillion branches and services.

Icon=Godzilla

GAZillion= LOL

 

anyways, were used to this. I think anyone who actually READS would understand how to operate the subway.

[Quill Depot]

London has tons of branches. If there's anything that's more simple it's our map…

[biGC323232]

Even tourists can figure out the map. If they can't, they ask for directions from random people or a Station Agent. The opinion about looking at the front of the train is untrue, every single passenger car has the destination and route on the side signs.

 

This woman sounds like she's a scared little child afraid of the big bad subway. Maybe she should take a taxi and pay a lot more.

 

lol

[ttcsubwayfan]

How is the fact that the trunk line routes are all the same colors confusing? I never found it the slightest bit puzzling.

[Tomtoon]

I'm from the UK and personally I think having one colour per line is easier to read, we may have more branches, however NYC has multiple lines on one colour. I think this is slightly confusing but that's just me

[realizm]

I had friends visit me from other states before. One person said he felt stressed out the whole time he was in New York to visit lol.

[MTA Dude]

Those who know how to read well should know our map. I learned how not to get lost just by reading the map when I was 3 or 4.

 

My parents decide to kick me out and throw me at a random place in the subway, I will find my way around in a snap and go live with my neighbors.

[T to Dyre Avenue]

London has tons of branches. If there's anything that's more simple it's our map…

It is. Don't forget, our lines can also be seen as branches too. For example, the ,  and  trains are all branches of the main 8th Ave Line. If you're a tourist spending most of your time in Manhattan, it may help to look at our lines that way. London also has branches, but none of them have letters or numbers on the map to show you what train route is going to take which branch. Whereas in London, you won't know which Northern Line train is headed for High Barnet and which Northern Line train is going to Edgware until you are actually on the platform and you either look at their "next train" signs or see the train coming in.

Even tourists can figure out the map. If they can't, they ask for directions from random people or a Station Agent. The opinion about looking at the front of the train is untrue, every single passenger car has the destination and route on the side signs.

 

This woman sounds like she's a scared little child afraid of the big bad subway. Maybe she should take a taxi and pay a lot more.

Which is weird, because London's Underground system is one of the world's largest too. And there's also the extensive Overground system (think LIRR or Metro-North trains on transit frequencies) plus the Docklands Light Railway and Croydon Tramlink. And she thinks our system's confusing?

[bobtehpanda]

And she thinks our system's confusing?

 

A big part of her issues are the map and wayfinding though. Wayfinding in certain areas can be pretty crap (arbitrarily shortened signs, signs blocked by pipes or countdown clocks, etc.), and the New York map is basically in a category of its own among transit maps in that it's not a diagram that uses only 45-90 degree angles (or 30-60-90).

 

Generally, most transit maps don't have accurate geographic information, and just use simple diagrams and straight lines to represent everything, leaving out information like major roads and neighborhood names so that the system information can be represented more clearly. The NYC map is psuedo-geographically accurate, but is also set in a smaller font, much bigger than most subway maps, and particularly in Downtown Manhattan, LIC, Downtown Brooklyn, is very cluttered and can be hard to read. There's also a good amount of geographic distortion in the map anyways since Manhattan has to be blown up so that people can read the station names, so some people in the graphic design community really don't think there's a point.

 

This is an example of what a subway diagram for New York could look like.

 

 

The obvious advantage of it is that it's less cluttered than the map, and this isn't noticeable, but it's also a 25% reduction in size over the current map in the same font size, which means that blowing it up to fit the current maps would change the fonts from 12 pt to 16 pt, making it easier to read from a distance.

[itmaybeokay]

"mess of fonts and colors" on the signs she says. There's one font. For everything. I can't even. 

 

And she suggests a map with every line a different color would be easier? 

 

Behold, idiot: http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1972.jpg

 

All I get from this is "waaaah, the subway ruined my sabbatical" 

 

In this city, we relegate that sort of priveleged whining to the L train. 

[Quill Depot]

I think if the color coded map had seperate lines in each trunk it would be a lot easier to distinguish.

[West End]

I usually have my friends visiting from another city download an app like KickMap, a modern take on Massimo Vignelli's classic.  It's definitely tourist-friendly and easy to use.  Sure, it's not very geographically correct, but then again, the current NYCT Subway map isn't either...

[T to Dyre Avenue]

Vignelli himself did an update of his map a few years ago (2007, I think). It had every line in its trunk color, but shown as a separate line. I found it to be much easier to use than his original 1972 version, even though it still had the same geographical quirks as the original.