[HN Gopher] NYC's new digital subway map
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NYC's new digital subway map
Author : nbaksalyar
Score : 83 points
Date : 2020-10-20 20:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.curbed.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.curbed.com)
| neatze wrote:
| To me, this map is less readable then the old one (you can't see
| all the stations), it's like it was made to look nice, but not
| usable.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I remember the huge article a few years ago on why train
| counters/timers were not possible in the NYC subway because of
| the lack of ATC/PTC, and the entire system was still pretty much
| mechanical switched and zoned occupancy. [1]
|
| Has something changed? Do trains now have transponders or
| something?
|
| [1]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-d...
| carterklein13 wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear what someone who is just visiting NYC
| would think of something like this. From my experience, once
| tourists enter a subway station, all bets are off in terms of
| orienting yourself. I feel like the little LED indicators in most
| stations at least in Manhattan with the line and time-to-arrival
| is really all you need.
|
| Or, instead of investing in a virtual map, invest in better
| speakers in the actual trains themselves so that people can
| actually hear "now arriving at 14th St Union Square next stop
| Astor" instead of "now arcshcshcshcsh Uniocshcsh next cshop
| cshcshcsh"
| bogomipz wrote:
| Indeed. Or they could simply use all of those LED displays that
| they installed above the subway entrances to show real time
| information about service changes and train arrivals instead of
| using them to show advertising.[1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.mediabakery.com/AFS3899660
|
| [2] https://freetoursbyfoot.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/09/Red-a...
| cwhiz wrote:
| They need to just add the digital information screens to all
| the train lines. It's significantly better than relying on
| speakers.
|
| As for helping people orient themselves in the station... I
| have no idea. Using an app is the only way for tourists to
| figure out which direction to go. You have to know the terminal
| station to know which direction a train is going. The apps will
| (usually) tell you that. Having digital information inside the
| train would at least make people more immediately aware that
| they are on the wrong train.
| thelazydogsback wrote:
| Yeah, I grew up in NYC and never had any idea what they were
| saying in the station or on the train. Over-driven mics,
| underpowered amps and tiny speakers == total harmonic
| distortion exceeding intelligibility thresholds...
| swiley wrote:
| It's been a long time since I was in NYC but here in DC they
| have huge signs visible from the platform and maps everywhere
| along with lists of stops for each colored train that stops
| at the platform. I'm not sure how you can improve on that.
| rickyc091 wrote:
| The weekend service changes are my favorite thing to
| decipher.
|
| https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F-
| LyTrM0YP0/TKM7nvWWJGI/AAAAAAAAH...
| cwhiz wrote:
| Those are supposedly going away with this update. They
| sometimes hide MASSIVE service changes in that sea of
| bullshit.
| asdff wrote:
| On a packed train you won't be able to see the one screen in
| the car. You might not even be able to turn your body to
| orient to one right behind your head. Speakers are a must.
| RoutinePlayer wrote:
| couldn't agree with you more
| ape4 wrote:
| "My aunt's constipation" https://getyarn.io/yarn-
| clip/e84ddfa0-e06c-4026-b281-1ca4c95...
| nicoburns wrote:
| There's a station in London called "Cockfosters". I was once
| on a train with a malfunctioning announcement system that
| proudly announced "This is a Piccadilly line train to Cock"
| at every stop.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Or the LED signs that tend to installed behind other equipment
| that obscures their viewing - which I am convinced is someone's
| scheme to get paid twice by having to move it again later. I'm
| not convinced that the signs have real time data, it often
| seems more like if the schedule was running perfectly there
| will be a train here in N minutes. I see things show up early
| all the time, occasionally the train don't show up at all but
| get dropped off sign.
|
| It is interesting that somehow the conductors manage to get the
| marbles out of their mouth only for screaming at people for
| holding the doors open. I stick my foot in the door every time
| they do that - negative reinforcement. ;)
| carterklein13 wrote:
| I thought it was just me that can never get the right god
| damn angle to see those signs! I swear the ones at Union
| Square I feel like a gymnast trying to just see how far away
| the next train is. Knowing the MTA, I'd guess your conspiracy
| is definitely at least partially true.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This map doesn't bring anything new except for knowing _when_ the
| next train will arrive. It does a poor job at that... the user
| has to _guess_ when the train will arrive.
|
| This is _completely_ missing the point. No one cares where the
| train is. They care when it will arrive. Whether it is in a bend,
| it is waiting or whatever is totally irrelevant.
|
| You need 2 things:
|
| 1) A map, whether digital or printed.
|
| 2) ETA time.
|
| Why are they spending all this time and energy for something that
| is useless and unnecessary?
| morley wrote:
| Are we looking at the same map? When I click on a station, I
| see a list of trains with their ETA, in minutes, next to them.
| OJFord wrote:
| Maybe I'm just biased by what I'm used to, (London) but the true-
| to-geography topography seems to me to make this way harder to
| read.
|
| Compare: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/large-print-tube-map.pdf
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| How? Topographical maps let me know exactly where to start
| looking for a stop without having to read anything versus
| having a mind map of the tube and needing to scan names
| OJFord wrote:
| Maybe the stop density is different, but I just don't find
| that an issue, you'd have to be outside of zones 1-3 to have
| to walk more than say 5-10min in any direction to hit a tube
| station. (That'd be interesting actually: heat map of how far
| away nearest station is from any given point.)
|
| Flip side is my knowledge of London geography is pretty
| appalling. (Relative to say where I grew up, not necessarily
| to other people. The range of local geographical knowledge is
| probably worse here than in NYC.)
| ghaff wrote:
| Much of Manhattan is a grid so just a little bit of
| knowledge about what the non-numeric avenues are, the
| streets that bound Central Park, etc. are pretty much all
| the knowledge you need between about the Village and
| Harlem.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Maybe I'm just biased
|
| As a life long NYer: yes, you are. NYC subway map has looked
| like this for pretty much its entire existence. They tried
| flattening it recently to "modernize" it and it was universally
| panned.
| mr-ron wrote:
| Heres a great article about this exact topic.
|
| In short, because NYC is denser than London with more happening
| above ground, it was more helpful to see exactly where the
| stops were going to let you out, vs being easier to read.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/arts/design/the-subway-ma...
| quicklime wrote:
| I feel like the geographical features of New York matter more
| here than they do in London. At least when I've visited London,
| I've gotten by with just thinking of it as a big piece of land
| with a (thin) river running through it.
|
| But the water in New York City separates the boroughs a lot
| more than the Thames does to London. You can't easily walk
| across the Hudson or East River, even if you're near a bridge.
| Central Park matters too. So it's not something than should
| just be abstracted away.
| cwhiz wrote:
| I find this type of map to be completely unusable until you
| know precisely which stations you are going to enter and exit.
| If I am a tourist in London and I'm somewhere near Hyde Park, I
| would find this mapper to be an utter waste. Without Google
| Maps I would be completely lost.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| The tube map is a map of the tube system, not a general map
| of London.
|
| Traditionally tourists all had that London A-Z, but nowadays
| I guess people just rely on their phones.
| shmerl wrote:
| Trains are hard to notice because they blend with the color of
| the line too much. But the idea of the dynamic map is neat.
| richardhawthorn wrote:
| The MTA have been behind other rapid transit networks when it
| comes to making their data available. You can get arrival
| prediction information on all stops/lines now through their API,
| but that wasn't the case until recently. They are still behind
| the Boston MBTA, where you can get vehicle locations in addition
| to arrival predictions, and TFL (London Underground) where they
| have a very well thought out API.
|
| We use all these APIs to power our Traintrackr boards[0],
| processing the predicted arrival data (or departure data if they
| only provide that) to show trains moving through the network.
|
| However, these three APIs are all better than the BART API, which
| seems to change occasionally.
|
| [0] https://www.traintrackr.io
| c54 wrote:
| Would love to see the public APIs backing this site so that
| someone could reimplement the map more performantly
| justinc8687 wrote:
| As a native Staten Islander, I love that this map is actually
| drawn to scale. While I understand the arguments for the previous
| iterations focusing on train density, it is nice to see, for the
| first time in my life, that you can actually see that SI is over
| 3x the size of Manhattan by land area.
| aimor wrote:
| Some other live subway maps:
|
| New York City: https://map.mta.info/
|
| Washington DC: https://gis.wmata.com/metrotrain/index.html
|
| Chicago: https://www.transitchicago.com/traintrackermap/
|
| Boston: https://www.mbta.com/schedules/Blue/line
|
| I'd like to see more, but that's about all I could find from
| cities themselves.
| kuanbutts wrote:
| fwiw I find the others (DC, Chi, BOS) easier to
| view/pan/explore
| lqet wrote:
| There is https://tracker.geops.de/, which integrates most of
| them (though not always with realtime data).
| blintz wrote:
| https://map.mta.info/ if you want to actually see the new map.
| SahAssar wrote:
| It makes fetch requests to https://example.com :D
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Dunno if it's just me, but that website is more sluggish than
| flightradar24, which has _hundreds_ of moving data-points on
| its map. What gives
| jrockway wrote:
| It's slow for me, on a 32 core Threadripper with a Titan RTX
| ;)
|
| I usually don't notice slow websites, but it's noticeably
| blurry as I pan it around because it can't update at the
| 165Hz refresh rate of my monitor. Reminds me of gaming in
| 60Hz again.
| [deleted]
| nostromo wrote:
| Or why it's attempting to make a bunch of post requests to
| example.com...
|
| Seems like this isn't ready for primetime.
| monkpit wrote:
| Probably has something to do with the fact that every
| movement is pushed to the browser history.
|
| Try pushing back button after you have moved the map a
| little.
| untog wrote:
| I doubt it has anything to do with that at all, that's not
| a performance intensive operation at all. Rendering a map,
| however, can be very performance intensive when done the
| wrong way, as I suspect it is being here.
| monkpit wrote:
| I meant "something to do" as in it's symptomatic of some
| repeated operation - not the direct cause.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Since each pushState also creates a object reference that
| cannot be garbage collected as normal (every pushState
| includes a object to be passed to a popstate event) I
| don't think it's too wild to suspect slowdowns to be
| caused by them using pushState instead of replaceState.
|
| It could of course be thousands of other things too (and
| in combination), but it's not a bad place to start.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| Literally caused music playback to stutter on my iPhone. On
| desktop it was okay. Defiantly needs optimization for phones.
| bontaq wrote:
| Almost unusably slow in firefox on a decent macbook pro, it
| looks nice though.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| That flooded my browser's back button history...
| ape4 wrote:
| I saw a few instances of trains on top of each other! I guess
| its simplified not to show each track.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| demands i enable js...
|
| when i do, it is abysmally slow.
|
| seems about right.
|
| i,ll go back to using my saved image, tyvm
| kuanbutts wrote:
| I was looking at the sourcemap and it appears that they wrote
| their own tiling library (see Tiles.ts and related files under
| js/). Is this right? Why not just Leaflet since they're rendering
| PNG tiles? Or Mapbox?
|
| The whole thing feels a bit over-engineered to me at first
| glance.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Slow beyond belief, sparse, and difficult for me to navigate
| changes. :-( A lot of work still needs to be done on this.
| aj7 wrote:
| Pans,resizes slower than s___.
| ebg13 wrote:
| Map performance is nightmarishly bad on my 2017 15" MBP. Dragging
| the map ranges from completely unusable in Safari 14 to janky as
| shit in Firefox 82 to mediocre but at least functional in Chrome
| 86.
|
| The log is filled with CORS violations and requests to
| example.com.
|
| This is not good.
| lhball wrote:
| Pretty, but performance is abysmal.
|
| Also looks like it changes the browser history on every
| interaction, ie any drag and drop, which seems, to me, to
| indicate some behind the scenes UUID tracking.
| gibolt wrote:
| Probably updates center and zoom, to make it shareable.
| untog wrote:
| > seems, to me, to indicate some behind the scenes UUID
| tracking.
|
| I don't know why. It's updating the URL so that if you copy and
| paste it'll show the receiver the same view you have as the
| sender. They just need to be using history.replaceState to do
| that, rather than history.pushState.
| tobr wrote:
| There's a pretty awkward moment in the expensive-looking
| documentary video (ie uncritical puff piece) by Gary
| Hustwit[1], where a developer on the project says "we can't
| have it be like chunky 10 frames per second, you know?", in the
| exact moment we see an FPS counter on his computer slow down to
| 14 FPS as he pans around.
|
| 1: https://vimeo.com/469980256#t=368s
| kuanbutts wrote:
| Was the whole point of this site to make the cars more
| visible on the map? B/c they're super hard to see! Would've
| been so much easier to just use a regular Leaflet slippy map
| or something and just drop an icon for each car... Could've
| done that in a day. Sigh.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It's also not very good when you're zoomed out; everything is
| way too skinny.
|
| And what is the sloppiness with the lines at DeKalb? Why is the
| out-of-service shading for the DNR under 4th Avenue this
| weekend so halfhearted? It's particularly hard to tell when the
| lines are skinny. I guess they were thinking of how good it was
| for Manhattan?
|
| So tell me: when I click on tonight's map, what am I supposed
| to make of a one-way train service on the W, between Whitehall
| (where it usually stops) and 86th (which is not part of its
| usual route)? Is that actually a real thing? I am especially
| confused given that the more-information click takes me to a
| "look up service changes by line" page that doesn't show
| anything when I ask for service changes on the W.
|
| And if the D train tonight is running northbound on 6th Avenue
| and southbound on 8th Avenue, why is the only unusual color
| displayed on 8th Avenue, given that people who catch the D
| expect it on its usual route under 6th Avenue?
|
| I guess there's no hope for the F-diamond train but that
| probably doesn't matter much; I'm not sure it's even running
| post-pandemic...
|
| This gets worse the more you look at it. A project manager
| wanted shininess, and they have it, but geez, can't anyone
| actually try to use the thing before showering it with praise?
| antihero wrote:
| It is almost unusably slow on Safari on an 2019 i7 MacBook Pro.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I don't know if its just me but this loads abysmally slow in
| Firefox 81 on Linux Mint. I do not have chrome installed so I
| cant test on that browser.
| stevepike wrote:
| Extremely slow for me as well (with a fast machine) on Arch
| linux in both firefox and chrome.
|
| Getting about a million "Access to fetch at
| 'https://example.com/' from origin 'https://map.mta.info' has
| been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request
| doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-
| Origin' header is present on the requested resource. If an
| opaque response serves your needs, set the request's mode to
| 'no-cors' to fetch the resource with CORS disabled."
| ape4 wrote:
| Embarrassing.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The map feels like wading through molasses in Chrome for me.
| It's usable but just barely.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Don't see why this is any better than the existing solutions...
| chrismeller wrote:
| Well if you read the article you would know. It's because NYC
| has infamously never had anything like this.
|
| Technical reasons, logistical reasons, integration (it's
| actually like 4 systems combined) reasons... It's not
| revolutionary in and of itself, just that New York now has one.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| I live in NYC...you can see the exact same info on both the
| MyMTA app as well as in the Subway Time app. This is nothing
| new...
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| The new thing is that when the F is running down Broadway
| instead of 6th Ave, it shows an orange line down Broadway
| instead of down 6th Ave. This is good for some of the
| extreme service change weekends, the kind where they move
| the F to the Q and then turn it into a D in Brooklyn so
| they can run the D on the F in Brooklyn and the A in
| Manhattan so nobody's running anything at all on Sixth
| Avenue and they can do all the work they need there. Or
| when the southbound 5 turns around at Bowling Green and
| runs northbound on the 1 and 2 so that they can work on a
| specific switch in the old South Ferry Loop.
|
| But even when it shows this to be the case, it does a very
| poor job of exposing the specific form of the deviance from
| normal.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| That's actually a really bad change. Color indicates the
| stops a train will be making. If a train will be going
| down Broadway then it should be colored the Broadway line
| color. No one actually cares about the label of a given
| train; what matters is which stops it will be making,
| which is dictated by which track it's traveling on.
| interestica wrote:
| Don't forget copyright reasons
|
| https://nypost.com/2020/01/09/mta-goes-after-amateur-
| mapmake...
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's three systems but more like two. The IRT and the BMT
| were the original systems and operated on different loading
| gauges. The city then built the IND system before acquiring
| the IRT and BMT and consolidating them into one system. The
| IND system itself is built to the same loading gauge as the
| BMT, so that the BMT and IND are interchangeable for
| operational purposes, but the IRT is not interchangeable. The
| remnants of this is seen in the line names: the numbers are
| the IRT lines, and the letters are BMT or IND lines.
|
| Note that while the loading gauges are different, other
| operational aspects (such as signalling and traction power)
| are the same. So the delay in getting this information up is
| less a factor of "there's multiple systems" and more "the MTA
| can't/won't modernize its systems to get this information."
| dantheman wrote:
| I like it but the trains are too small. It's be b better if they
| where an arrow showing direction and wwre buffet than the line.
| chrismeller wrote:
| I think it's much more clear which direction they were headed
| if you've ever used the MTA. The primary directions are uptown
| and downtown. Up on the right, down on the left (like you would
| drive a car).
| interestica wrote:
| I didn't realize the trains were actually on the map until your
| comment. Definitely need something distinct highlight them.
| degenerate wrote:
| When zoomed out, they should be dots. Zooming in, they should
| be rectangle but take up more space than the rail so they are
| more obvious.
| yogurtbuddy wrote:
| Article on why it sucks:
| https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2020/10/worst-map-e...
|
| > What is the purpose of having a geographic map base when the
| subway diagram isn't going to adhere to it? It's obvious the
| coders started with station GIS data and tried to have a computer
| draw the connecting lines. Google used to do this and things just
| looked wrong with lines traveling to places they never actually
| went. Eventually they aligned their lines to their proper course.
| colmvp wrote:
| > Many online are praising the map and I totally understand
| that there are people out there who have no idea what my
| problem with it is. It's ok, I'm overly educated.
|
| Wow, he's so modest.
| dang wrote:
| Another good article is
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90566212/nycs-new-subway-tool-se...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847963)
| Whitespace wrote:
| I am surprised to see POST requests to https://example.com/ in
| uMatrix and the Network Inspector.
|
| Can anyone share why this is happening?
| OJFord wrote:
| I noticed that too, probably just something like a copy-pasted
| 'how to make a request with this framework' left in
| accidentally.
| ebg13 wrote:
| Given how unusable the site is in Safari and Firefox on macOS,
| probably because it was written by someone who should not have
| been tasked with writing it. :\
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It looks like they have code waiting for a different endpoint
| for fetching service status, but instead of just disabling it
| when not using it, they changed the queried endpoint to
| example.com and still execute it.
|
| loadFutureServiceStatus.ts
|
| export const FUTURE_SERVICE_STATUS_ENDPOINT =
| 'https://example.com';
|
| ....later on...
|
| const serviceStatusFuture: SoapServiceStatus = await fetch(
| FUTURE_SERVICE_STATUS_ENDPOINT,...
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(page generated 2020-10-21 23:00 UTC)