Why New Yorkers Insisted On a 'Worse' Subway Map - Cheddar Explains

Simplified metro system maps have been adopted by cities around the world, but when New York City tried to follow suit the public pushback forced a reversal. We dive into why New Yorkers insisted on using a "worse" subway map instead of the one that was widely considered to be "perfectly" designed.

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[cheddar]

Vignelli’s map design was considered by design professionals to be “perfect”, but it did not meet the needs of the commuting masses. What are some other examples of things that have been heralded as “perfect” that were actually not as good as the “worse” thing they were replacing?

[jonahrandomrandomshenaniga]

2:11 "the water wasnt even blue" ... well was the water in new york ever actually blue?

[fortissimolaud]

The Beck diagram doesn't work for NYC because in most other cities you walk to the nearest stop and take the train to the stop nearest to your destination; in NYC you think about which train/line to take because transfers are often hard to impossible because they were built by competing companies.
In most cities subway traffic is funnelled through hubs where you switch trains; in NYC you have to choose which train to take before you even decide which station to go to. It's often better to walk an extra few blocks to take the train which gets you closer to your destination.
This means that the surface geography/grid is totally relevant to your decision on which transit option to take.

[paulsullivan]

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) solved this by having two maps - a diagramatic one for quickly finding your way, and a geographic map so you know where you are outside the system....

[SupaEMT]

That was the most abrupt ending to a video that I've *_ever_* seen

[muniersalem]

Living in New York for a decade now, i've thought a lot about this. It's all about the street grid. New York's famous grid is the spacetime ether in which Manhattan exists. Locations are known by their avenue and their street. "8th ave and 14th street" is a 2-dimensional address that any New Yorker and most visitors can immediately find on a map. The problem for a subway map designer is this street grid is very unforgiving to distortions in the diagram. It really, really matters that stops along 7th avenue appear west of stops along 5th avenue. They're considered more or less different neighborhoods in such a tight, dense city. London doesn't have this issue because it's a medieval city with a cacophony of crooked streets. But in New York, any diagram that doesn't play nice with the street grid (and offer labels for the streets) is bound to fail.

[plox]

Montreal:
Ohh thats nice simple
Moscow:
Oh cool very nicely done aswell
Tokio:
Dfq is this

[Ryamix]

No mention of today's map and it's initial reactions? Tsk, tsk. Still informative but definitely lacking the expected conclusion

[GameWorks]

I really feel like this was like 2 lines of actual information and the rest just fluff and nothing

[wmgthilgen]

Though they can look very similar; There's a difference between a "DIAGRAM" and a "MAP".

[feralcatgirl]

"and staten island? just gone. completely."
lmao don't we all wish

[wolfenstien]

I remember the Tube in London. I don't know how, but never once did I get lost or boarded the wrong train. They have a good layout.

[kevinhoward]

2:17 in all fairness the water in the Hudson is more brown the blue anyway so lol.

[nannyg]

I certainly haven't read all the comments, but I've read many and am surprised that no one mentions the fact that NYC is a numbered grid in Manhattan and mostly a grid elsewhere, whereas European cities are a drunken spiders web of streets. With a numbered grid, you know that 59th street is south of 65th. And if your cartoon subway diagram suggests it isn't, THAT's an inherent problem. I have been in a dozen subways in Europe and many times in NYC and I have no problem figuring out either system of maps/diagrams. But I found the NYC diagram experiment absolutely hideous. I would say that it's a map designed just for tourists except that apparently it confused tourists, too. So it was a failure. Another problem with the diagram's lack of connection to geographical reality is that there is no easy way to know if two subway stops are within easy walking distance of one another. Londoners love to laugh at tourists who spend 45 minutes underground and make two transfers in order to get between two stations that would have been a 10-minute walk apart above ground. Well, there is a reason why people make this mistake; because the precious tube map makes it look like a good choice. That is a map-making mistake Londoners have learned to avoid by knowing each neighborhood in relation to its tube stop. But New Yorkers think in relation to their city as a whole, and its easy to navigate, numbered grid of streets. Any diagram that suggested 110th street wasn't far from 65th would be a poor diagram.

[leefrenchfry]

I'm from NYC and I loved the map they use. I find it very clear and helpful for me to find actual locations. For example, if I know the address of a particular store, I can see how far it is in actuality from the nearest subway stations.

[geoffk]

I'm very familiar with the Boston map, and when I moved there in Grad School, I had no problems navigating with it. But when I started actually walking around the city, I was shocked by how close to each other many stations on the map actually were. A geographical map would have actually saved me time by taking me to a close station and avoiding unnecessary transfers.

[InternetLaser]

"Geographically accurate or diagramatic?"
Chicago: porque no los dos?

[mizuhonova]

As someone from New York who has been using the "complicated" map design my whole life, it's difficult to see why anyone would ever prefer the simplified version. It's rarely the case that the train takes you exactly where you want to go. Trains often have delays or skip stops and you need to be aware of the actual above ground location of the different stops on the different lines to be able to quickly adjust your route to get where you want to go. Even without delays, there's walking distance involved for the final steps and so using a simplified map gives you no information on which stop is actually closer to your final destination once you add in the walk.

[cactusgaming]

"It's simple, clean and aesthetically pleasing"

*Laughs in Helsinki*

[sacha]

Almost surprised CGP Grey hasn't made a video on this, living in New York and all.