A better NYC subway map

I don’t really know how I missed this, but I did and I’m only now hearing of this fantastic project by Kick Design to make a better and more user-friendly NYC subway map. The “Kick Map” (as it’s been called) sacrifices some of NYC’s geographic features for better usability and readability.

Some folks at Visual Complexity have said that this sacrifice is not good in the long run because it doesn’t (or rather, can’t because of space constraints) show you where each subway station is in relation to the street. As I looked at the map, the first thing that popped into my head was that it looked so nice, but then that thought was immediately followed by how the separation of subway lines must mean that the map either has to be bigger (it’s already inconveniently big) or the map must be totally wrong in some areas.

And wrong it is. Rather than following the exact line routes, another “issue” with the Kick Map is that the subway lines only make 45-degree and 90-degree “turns”, meaning that the visualization of the underground system can’t possibly be correct in its entirety.

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

I caught wind of this project from the recent New York Times article on Eddie Jabbour, the person behind the radical new map.

The other day, in his minimalist office, Mr. Jabbour pinned two maps to the wall, then pointed to the different renderings of the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn, which he says is the most difficult station to represent because so many subway lines converge there. In Mr. Jabbour’s map, the subway lines run parallel to one another, making the map easier to read, if slightly inaccurate. Each line is marked with a circle bearing the route’s letter or number, instead of the oblong station markers used on the current map.

There are other differences. Unlike the official map, Mr. Jabbour’s map does not have a single line representing all the trains in a “cluster” route, like the 1, 2 and 3 trains in Manhattan. He used the same type font throughout, and words travel left to right, rather than diagonally, as on much of the official map. The lines bend only in 45- and 90-degree angles, to create a gridlike pattern.

In the eyes of Mr. Jabbour, the New York system is too complicated to layer on information like commuter rail and bus routes, as the current map does. He would like to see a map that is singularly devoted to the subway.

Despite all the pitfalls of this map, I really think this map looks really good. It certainly is easier to read each line when they are all separated like it is on the Kick Map. I think Eddie Jabbour should just release a PDF version of his map for those of us who do want to use it. That way those who like the current map can still use that one while those who like the Kick Map can download it and use it too.