Although I’ve never lived in New York City, I love being there, have family who are lifetime New Yorkers, and visit regularly. One of the things I love about the city is that I can walk to most places I want to go. Of course, I mostly stay in Manhattan when I’m there and that means I seldom need to take the subway and don’t know the system the way a New Yorker does.
The MTA system is large and complicated and can confuse even residents. One of the problems is the system map. There have been several iterations of the subway maps using different layout philosophies but none of them seemed to work very well.
Recently, New York in conjunction with the digital agency Work & Co have produced a new digital, real time map that has different layouts as you zoom in, shows up-to-date schedule changes, and even shows the locations of the trains. The map is online so you can see it from anywhere in the world by going to https://map.mta.info.
The map and its creation is beautifully described in a 10 minute movie by Gary Hustwit. Unless you do this type of thing for a living you’ll probably be surprised at how difficult the project was. After all, what could be so hard about producing a map of a subway system. Watch the video and find out. It’s very illuminating.