The Sunday New York Times ran a fantastic article by Alex Mindlin, Win, Lose, Draw: The Great Subway Map Wars that details a battle that has brewed, off and on, for the past 30 years.
There are, it seems, at least two distinct systems of belief about what constitutes the proper set of assumptions for the New York City subway map. The core tension between the camps is a debate about the goals of a map this ubiquitous, one so frequently used by millions of people. Should the Metropolitan Transit Authority strive for an idealized conceptual diagram that helps people understand the system at the expense of literal accuracy? Or should the map reflect the true environment that the subway system lives in, providing necessary context even at the expense of superficial clarity?
The right answer, of course, is that we all want both. But the pendulum swings back and forth over decades, based on design trends or the arbitrary caprices that inform the workings of any large, old public institution. The good news is that all this back-and-forth leaves us with a lot of beautiful maps to ponder.
The map used in the 1930s, excerpted above, was fairly uncontroversial. As the Times story notes, the classic London Tube map was an influence on the entire genre. But the heart of the Times story is the debate over the 1972 map, which was the first NYC Subway map I ever collected, and is excerpted here, showing roughly the same area as the 1930s-era map above.
The elegance of this map is even more delightful when you know about the sheer contrariness of its creator, Massimo Vignelli. He's quoted in the Time story defending the liberties taken in the 1972 map:
Of course I know Central Park is rectangular and not square. Of course I know the park is green, and not gray. Who cares? You want to go from Point A to Point B, period. The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.
For those interested in more spaghetti, as well as more plate, more cheese, and more tortured metaphors, here's some more NYC Subway map links:
- Visual Complexity's survey of transportation networks includes a look at the 1972 Vignelli map.
- The best independent NYC Subway site is nycsubway.org, where you'll find a
comprehensive list of maps, including some fantasy maps created by subway fans. - Also on nycsubway.org is a comprehensive list of links to other subway fansites.
- And finally, the Abandoned Stations site, which I've linked to before but never get tired of exploring.
I recall rarely using the NYC subway map merely to find the route from point A to point B. As important or more was getting a sense of how long the trip might take, how close stops were to my destination, if there are different stops that serve the same area, etc. So I would violently disagree with Vignelli.
Big collection of city transit maps to peruse here.
http://www.reed.edu/~reyn/transport.html#maps
Somewhat related, check out these GPS MLB Caps.
I just wrote about this also, and I see Vignelli's map as a purposeful rejection of urbanity (set in the era of the decline of NYC) and the replacement of everything urbanity holds dear - the messiness of the street, randomness, people of different classes living on top of one another - with the soullessness of late-Modernism.
Obviously I'm not a fan of the Vignelli map.
I love this. I have always been fascinated by maps, but didn't relly know why. Now I see: they are art! I have began a small small collection of maps (city and subway) of the cities I have visited.
I also started keeping on purpose the maps for the only line in my country. There's a pathetic train called the "Urban Train" in Puerto Rico that makes stops in several strategic points of the Metropolitan Area (part of San Juan and other municipalities surrounding San Juan) and it only takes 30 minutes from first to last stop. Anyway, the stations have huge parking lots and they are promoting the use of the train whenever there's a major event, like a ball game or some festival. You leave the car at the parking lot and take the train to places in which it's difficult to find parking space. Every time there's an event, they print a map with an allusive cover.
I don't have much, but I think I will start collecting them more seriously. Thanks to your post.