The New York Subway Diagram

News:

A portion of the Subway Diagram features in Mark Ovenden’s book Transit Maps of the World, published by Penguin, October 30, 2007. If you are here looking at my diagram, you’ll probably want to be looking at his book too. (It’s a revised edition of Metro Maps of the World, 2006, which was not published in the USA and did not include my diagram.)

Update, March 21, 2009: No sooner had I written the next item below than I realized the new South Ferry station was about to open, requiring some rejiggering of things, because it has a free transfer to Whitehall St station, and because the connection between the Lexington and Seventh Ave lines needed to be shown as not passing through the station. So, I have done that. Here is a phone photo of me sitting on the floor in front of a chair upon which rests my old "Flower Power" Imac, temporarily powered up for the occasion and running OS 9, the round ball-operated mouse borrowed from an even older iMac in hand, running a 1994 copy of Claris Works that was OEM on a long-gone Performa. I know, some will say I should not show how the magic is done.

Update, March 2009: The diagram has now had by far its longest period between revisions, and it's because nothing has changed in almost three years. Services have been stable and no stations opened or closed. I could be showing two sections under construction: the Flushing line extended west in Manhattan, and the Second Avenue line from 63rd St to 125th St. Both could be squeezed in as additions to this diagram, but I should really move some things around to make it work well. I feel like waiting till the Second Ave project is a little closer to reality. We've been burned before on that one. Or maybe I'm just not ready to face redrawing yet.

The Subway Diagram announced its retirement back in May 2005, but after a year off it came crawling back. That is, I found a way to crank up Claris Works on OS 9 and make it run again, and just as surprisingly I found myself wanting to do so. The Diagram thanks Yuri Popov once again for stepping in and providing a version 4.27 for an eager public during the hiatus. However now in 2007 my acquisition of an Intel iMac once again poses a challenge to updating the subway map: no more OS 9 for me. Chances are the version 5.0 series will look a bit different.

Please direct comments to brennan@columbia.edu. Thanks for viewing!