Okay. I used to live in the city, but I was all about Queens and Manhattan. Sometimes Brooklyn, but rarely. Tomorrow I wanna dump my car on the UWS and take the Express 2 or 3 into Brooklyn to a hospital.
Being the Internet wag I am, I went to find a map of our dearly beloved NYC Subway System.
We pay like $ 2.00 per ride and THIS IS THE BEST THEY CAN DO??? A scanned image using a scanner built from a kit in 1989 ? God almighty. I’m viewing it on a gargantuan monitor and I have 20/15 vision, so I know it ain’t me or my hardware.
These guys need to update their website. They need to show each line with a list of all stops- because frankly, looking at some of the major nexus stops is an exercise in futility. The resolution is so piss-poor, and ( as has always been the case ) the listing of all trains stopping at a nexus stop is a tiny line of letters and numbers under the stop’s name.
Fortunately, I found another site and figured out what stop to use. But please. What would it cost them to render the NYC Subway Map very very clearly ???
There. A lame but heartfelt rant. Were I to make it a broader stroke, I’d say that I defy any Doper to show me a municipal transit system whose website truly is excellent, up-to-date and clear and easy to negotiate.
I’m not from NYC, I can count the times I’ve ridden on a subway on one hand, and I have 12/20 vision (or however that’s written)-- that map is clear to me. I can read everything just fine.
Even as a tourist, I’ve never had a problem navigating with that map. I do sometimes wish there were somewhere to order a map similar to the ones at certain stations – an accurate, to-scale street map with the train stations and track routes overlaid. Sometimes it’s hard to judge how far apart two stops actually are without being familiar with the neighborhood, and it’d be nice.
You can sure tell where you’re going, which makes it frustrating when you can’t actually get there.
I noticed CityRail stopped apologising for any inconvenience caused, though. And to be fair, they are getting just a little closer to being on time. Just a little.
But yeah, the map is sweet! (And it was great for me when I first moved here, trying to figure out where I needed to go.)
In Cityrail’s defence, I can tell you with some certainty that the reason they stopped apologising was because people complained about the insicerity of it, so they dropped it. For mine, I don’t like being apologised to (or maybe at) by a machine, or even by a Station Assistant who would most likely rather be anywhere else himself. What I do like - and it’s an area in which they’re improving - is being given actual information instead, so instead of the old “The… six… thirty… seven… train… to… Bankstown… is… delayed… by… approximately… twelve… minutes” and nothing else, you often get a human being saying, “The six thirty-seven Bankstown train is running about twelve minutes late because of a broken-down freight train at Flemington. Your train is currently at Lidcombe, and we will keep you informed of its progress”. Some of the staff are really good like that. Not that it gets you to your destination any quicker, but it eases the frustration somehow.
They are improving, but with a way to go. 2004 was the low point.
/me is also confused. As far as I can tell, that’s an easily viewable and discernable raster map with a link to a PDF, and is also clickable for individual station information and whole-line strip maps containing service advisories for that line.
It can’t be easy to provide web information for a metro network the size and complexity of the NYC subway.
Cartooniverse:
Instead of the Transit map, try this Google Hack: onnyturf.com
I like having the actual paper Subway map myself. The PDF version is not great. The Google Hack is great.
I’ve always thought the NYC subway map is by several orders of magnitude the easiest to read of any significantly complicated rail system.
I appreciate the link to the PDF version (I missed that) because the low-res version, while adequate for where the subway lines go, leaves a lot to be desired re: showing what other than the subway lines exists where. A greater profusion of landmarks, more side streets marked, etc, is useful when you’re trying to decide which of two lines comes closest to your destination.
Compared to Paris (alt version), we’re doing pretty good in NYC.
The area between 14th St and 42nd St in Manhattan is the “key” — each line as it exists in the “key” has a color, and each color only one line. (The J/M/Z brown line and the pale green G line, which don’t actually go through the “key” at all, are implemented as closest approximations). Those colored lines may diverge elsewhere, but by knowing which route a train line is on when it gets to the “key” you have an intuitive sense of its likely route when you’re looking at trains in the Bronx or Brooklyn or upper Manhattan or wherever, without having to trace it end to end first.
I find the bus maps to be the most comprehensive. You get street names, major landmarks, Subway stations, general neighborhoods (Upper East Side, Greenwich Village, etc.), etc.
It’s a pretty good map, but if it’s giving you problems, may I suggest using Hopstop. It works like MapQuest, except it just tells you what subway to take and how to walk the rest of the way.
Damned right. I have lived here since 1981, so I am guessing I can count as a real NY’er in this context. I got to Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights just fine. My complaint was not about how well the NYC subway map was laid out, but the actual resolution and clarity. Which DOES suck on my machine. Very odd. Yes, it is brilliant in fact that if you click on a station you find out the trains stopping through it. I didn’t examine the PDF, because I figured out which stop I needed to use by…
… ( this is VERY Internet-not-friendly )…
calling the hospital and asking. That’s cause on the 2 or 3, I couldn’t discern if Clark St. or Borough Hall was smarter. Borough Hall was smarter.
And to be fair, they are getting just a little closer to being on time. Just a little.
