Notes from underground

December 12, 2005 10:26 AM

Google Map NYC Subway Hack! Like most New Yorkers, I do most of my intra-city travel via subway. Back when Google Maps debuted, I sent in a request to have subway info added to the NYC maps. The MTA's subway map focuses on the train lines, with very little street info. But you need a map that shows both subway and street data to figure out which train(s) to take to a given destination... and while you can buy printed maps of this kind, I've never found one online -- until now. Something called Google Transit is in the works, but it only seems to cover Portland, OR at the moment. Thankfully, OnNYTurf has stepped into the breach with a beautiful, practical Google Maps hack. Cool!
posted by Artifice_Eternity (43 comments total)

Sweet! There are a few other sites that attempt to give door-to-door subway directions, but they leave a lot to be desired in terms of interface, uptime, and accuracy. I'll be interested to see how this works out.
posted by jonmc at 10:34 AM on December 12, 2005

The captions at the edges of the map are fun too.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:34 AM on December 12, 2005

NYPIRG's Straphangers Campaign has long offered this service. But hey, with Google Maps-quality maps, it's even better!
posted by rxrfrx at 10:36 AM on December 12, 2005

*snarky comment about googlefilter, NYCfilter and localfilter*
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:36 AM on December 12, 2005

rxrfrx: Didn't know about the Straphangers map... it's non-anamorphic, which is nice, but looks kinda skimpy on street info.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:40 AM on December 12, 2005

www.hopstop.com is a current favourite.
posted by Captaintripps at 10:41 AM on December 12, 2005

1) Where is the other half of New York City?
2) hopstop
3) (slightly related) nyc.gov GIS portal
posted by swift at 10:54 AM on December 12, 2005

1) Where is the other half of New York City? Where are the arrow buttons?
posted by swift at 11:00 AM on December 12, 2005

I would LOVE to have this map downloaded to my phone (especially since I will be in NYC this weekend). I repeatedly enjoy having Google Maps on there, and this would be very useful.
posted by Rattmouth at 11:06 AM on December 12, 2005

Hey thats pretty cool. ( By which I mean: How long until the MTA attempts to crush it over some imagined copyright/turf/letter-in-a-circle-trademark issue? )
posted by R. Mutt at 11:08 AM on December 12, 2005

Wow, this is really well done. I love the mouseover info, plus the labels off the edges of the map... next stop, Canada!
posted by purple_frogs at 11:10 AM on December 12, 2005

"Warning: LA This Way" -- Classic
posted by geoff. at 11:22 AM on December 12, 2005

I was surprised that "Warning: LA This Way" didn't read "Danger: New Jersey" or something. Very cool Google Maps hack, though.
posted by Godbert at 11:43 AM on December 12, 2005

You know, the standard of living in New Jersey is probably a lot higher then in most of the US, but because it's looked down uppon by New Yorkers, it has a horrible reputation due to NYC's cultural influance.
posted by delmoi at 12:02 PM on December 12, 2005

With the impending MTA strike, I'm not sure how useful this will be...
posted by yeoz at 12:17 PM on December 12, 2005

The guy who made free subway maps for the iPod was busted.
posted by swift at 12:23 PM on December 12, 2005

...it (NJ) has a horrible reputation due to NYC's cultural influance.

You have to be kidding. New Jersey's reputation is well deserved and independant of its proximity to NYC.
posted by R. Mutt at 12:40 PM on December 12, 2005

Yahoo! Maps had the subway feature years ago. But let's fellate Google anyway!
posted by Kwantsar at 1:17 PM on December 12, 2005

Oh, and thanks for the link, swift. What festering piles of shit BART and the MTA are.
posted by Kwantsar at 1:18 PM on December 12, 2005

Is it me or is the subway data hella out of date?

It doesn't show the B or D as stopping at Broadway-Lafayette, so I suspect the data stems from before the construction on the bridge wrapped up.
posted by o2b at 3:12 PM on December 12, 2005

It doesn't show the B or D as stopping at Broadway-Lafayette

Huh. I don't think it's a matter of out of date info, or if it is, the problem is specific to stations. Because they properly have the D train going through 36th St (in Brooklyn) and the B train travelling the Q line. During the last round of construction it would have been the W at 36th, and before the construction started it was the B running through 36th St and the D running alongside the Q.

The West 4th St stop has the proper B/D info. Dekalb Ave. doesn't.

Huh.
posted by nobody at 3:32 PM on December 12, 2005

(oops: "specific to certain stations")
posted by nobody at 3:33 PM on December 12, 2005

It's not quite as impressive, but here's a Google version of the Toronto Subway.
posted by Popular Ethics at 4:23 PM on December 12, 2005

Hopstop sucks. So does this. I hate Google Maps and their utter uselessness. Yahoo maps plus lots of experience on different routes is the only thing I've had work. And I'm a subway master, believe you me.
posted by dame at 4:23 PM on December 12, 2005

What I really lust after though is a book of the neighborhood maps in all the subway stops. The MTA could make good money, and those are the best maps of the city I've seen, plus they show the layout & all the entrances for each stop. Yum.
posted by dame at 4:26 PM on December 12, 2005

Dame: Just curious. What's utterly useless about it? Doesn't it do exactly what a map is supposed to do -- show you where things are? In this case, it cross-references street data and subway stations. What does it not do that you think it should?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:33 PM on December 12, 2005

Okay, I realize that just saying hopstop sucks is vague, so I think I will procrastinate and give you an example. To get from my house (Jefferson L) to my office (DUMBO--High Street A or York F) is a difficult and annoying subway trip. Hopstop gives the absolute worst choice for getting there: the L to the F at Sixth Ave. I can think of three faster ways of going off the top of my head, and all three also give you a better chance of having a seat: walk to the M at Central, change to F at Essex/Delancey; L to A at Broadway Junction; L to G at Lorimer/Metropolitan to A at Hoyt-Schemmerhorn, three trains and still faster than taking the L to Sixth Ave.

Thus, I don't trust them for anything but basic trips, and who needs them for that?
posted by dame at 4:38 PM on December 12, 2005

On post-view: See the problem is they give crap directions. If they were just a map, I might not hate them. But I hate to see people do the subway so badly.
posted by dame at 4:40 PM on December 12, 2005

what swift said. the gis portal rocks. and it's not just subways vs. street maps, there is tons of other residential and statistical information 'bout your 'hood on there. I have been using it for a few months and am constantly amazed how they managed to not-fsck it up and make it useful even.

ps dear google, your map solution is still broken in konqueror. get on it already.
posted by dorian at 5:04 PM on December 12, 2005

(but to be fair the nyc gis portal is still out of date on a handful of stops which used to be local but now express-only, or vice versa)
posted by dorian at 5:06 PM on December 12, 2005

I think this is overkill; is it really that difficult to figure out which subway line goes where, especially in Manhattan?

And I will take this opportunity to declare that I find the long ride on the J/Z line from the Williamsburg Bridge to Jamaica, Queens to be sublime. It's elevated, and crosses sections of NYC I barely knew existed; sections which make me think I'm in another City, or a lost City. SUBLIME!
posted by ParisParamus at 5:20 PM on December 12, 2005

What I really lust after though is a book of the neighborhood maps in all the subway stops. The MTA could make good money, and those are the best maps of the city I've seen, plus they show the layout & all the entrances for each stop. Yum.

yes. those maps in the subway exits are some of the best and most usefullest maps ever. why do they not publish them? terrarists? pfah. more likely they just can't find the originals / data files / whatever. which would explain why a 3" radius around where the "you are here" marker should be, is all scratched out by poking fingernails and pens and whatnot.

also, I agree -- hopstop is vaguely useful but generally it only ends up pissing me off. the njtransit trip planner is somewhat better, but not by much.

in terms of computer science, these are very, very difficult, difficult problems to solve. even if the initial data/premises were correct (which they're obviously not, since half the time even the mta doesn't know what train is doing what. to wit: I think this is overkill; is it really that difficult to figure out which subway line goes where, especially in Manhattan? yes! this data changes daily, hourly, minutely...) -- it takes a truly brilliant mind, or an ai programmed by a truly brilliant mind, to solve them. in fact in certain cases the problems may or may not be solvable in real time (and in some of those cases we can't even tell if it's one or the other)

so for the results we get from the fairly clever/smart people who did program what we do have now, it ain't half bad. i.e. a lot of times they are just fudging it. mmm, pseudo-determinism.

but it still pisses me off that google maps can support the modified khtml engine of safari but not the classic khtml goodness of konqueror. viva yahoo maps, you bastards.
posted by dorian at 5:22 PM on December 12, 2005

dame: You can order the neighborhood specific subway maps directly from the MTA, though I think the only size they offer are the huge wall-sized posters that they post in the stations, and they might not be worth the $25 that they ask for them. You can also get the wall-sized map of the entire system for $15.
posted by Venadium at 5:25 PM on December 12, 2005

I think part of the problem with hopstop, too, is that they are missing a lot of information we take for granted--they aren't considering how crowded the trains are, how far apart the stops are, how easy the transfer is, etc.

In my example, I know why they give the route they do: from looking at a map, it seems the easiest. But it doesn't consider the fact that though Broadway Junction is as many stops from Jefferson as Sixth Ave., it doesn't involve the three minutes under the river and extra long person-imbibing and person-barfing times at places like Bedford and Union Square. Likewise, I don't think it considers the fact that though the A route seems much longer, that sucker rockets through, actually stopping fewer times than the F. Likewise, I imagine that it would send you to the 1 from the L in instances that I would take the A or F for, because of the long low evil tunnel. It clearly doesn't know that the G/A transfer at Hoyt is peaches because you don't have to change platforms. So basically, I hate it because I am smarter than a computer.
posted by dame at 5:58 PM on December 12, 2005

Also, thanks for the tip, Venadium. Now all we have to do is organize a group to raise the money to order the entire set, send them to a printer to be rephotographed and bound, then distibute them to the handbag-knockoff and DVD merchants for total urban penetration.
posted by dame at 6:04 PM on December 12, 2005

yay, pirated hood-specific maps for us all! did I mention I love those maps?

but christ, I can't even imagine the profits from such a thing... you just know that the ppls everywhere (er in the city) would buy it. put them all on a cdrom as pdf, or on an illicit ukrainian website as gis/google/hopstop/etc. application and sell subscriptions.

then again, I dnno if the mta would stand for it the same way they don't seem to care terribly much for the dvd-sellers 'cept when the mpaa is kicking^Wbribing the nyc po-lice ass and calling them in to make a few token busts... 'cos this is like, their copyright/livelihood or some junk.
posted by dorian at 6:29 PM on December 12, 2005

also: I hate it because I am smarter than a computer

see this what I was saying: determinism at its finest, thy name is human. machine intelligence still has a long way go to. 5 or 10 years, at the least. it will take longer than that for true non-human determinism, but it will have been a good start.
posted by dorian at 6:41 PM on December 12, 2005

High pitched feedback-garble-SCHREEEECH Please note that, except solely for your own personal and non-commercial use, no part of these maps may be copied or used without the prior written permission of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.SRCHEEEECH------
posted by R. Mutt at 7:26 PM on December 12, 2005

Not to burst your bubble, but New York subway stations are already marked on Google maps. You just need to search for "subway stations near your address, new york, ny".

Example: "subway stations near Broadway and Houston, New York, NY".

Hopstop is also nice.

posted by hooray at 9:07 PM on December 12, 2005

I'm not sure what the MTA's reaction to this would be. I know what happened with the guy offering downloadable maps for the ipod but it looks like he used the MTA's own subway map as the source image. In this case, the map doesn't even closely resemble the MTA's, in fact it might even be better. I like the idea of the geographically correct map.
posted by Venadium at 10:23 PM on December 12, 2005

YES!!!!!
posted by lorrer at 12:28 AM on December 13, 2005

But wait... it's wrong on the W4th street stop for the ACE BDFV. The station's at West 4th with entrances on eighth and third... not with just an entrance on 8th...hrm.
posted by lorrer at 12:39 AM on December 13, 2005

Hooray, that doesn't actually show the lines, which the linked ones do. But then again, you think hopstop is okay, so . . .
posted by dame at 6:25 AM on December 13, 2005