Alternative Subway Maps

I love maps. They are a compact abstraction of reality. They take an often unwieldy reality and compress the information to the essential bits and display it a form that can be used by people.

Google Maps, Google Earth, NASA Worldwind, and Bing (Microsoft) Maps are all an attempt to put as much information of the real world at the fingertips of the user. It takes terabytes (probably petabytes) to provide this streaming information at the touch of a button. But you have to credit map makers who still value the idea of the compression of reality into a small map.

That is why these subway maps of New York City and London are so cool and unique. They take essential information the user is looking for and compress it into a usable map using modern graphical techniques.

The New York map allows the user to enter an address and then it outputs a red-yellow-green topographical-looking map displaying ride times to various places throughout the city. The user can see where they can go in 0-10 minutes (red), 10-20 minutes (orange), etc. The map takes the idea of a topographical map which any hiker/camper or military person can estimate time from point A to point B because of the terrain, and applies it to the city of New York. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.

I wonder if this isn't a great idea to synthesize with the traffic algorithms already in use by most online maps (Google, Microsoft, etc.) Instead of just showing whether a road is green (no traffic) or various shades of non-green (e.g. red for slow traffic), it might be better to create a "terrain" map or "topographical" map of the city by ride time so users can understand where they can go in a certain amount of time.

That combination of technologies, topographical overlays for cities with traffic algorithms, may allow researchers to learn new patterns of traffic flow and population distribution over time if they take time-sequenced snapshots of the city over the course of a day, week, month, or year.

The London subway map is actually quite useful for a tube-rider if they printed it out. The map has dotted lines connecting tube stations that are actually 500 meters or less apart. What often happens, especially to tourists, is they get underground to take the tube and because of the abstraction of the map, do not realize they may be closer to their destination by walking above ground than waiting for the next train.

Subway maps alter the actual geographical distances in order to make room for text and provide an overall aesthetic to the map rather than capturing every jink, turn, or spur of the rail line. This map attempts to overcome that abstraction by linking tube stations that are actually close together above ground. Just looking at it you get the sense that many of the stations in the center loop of London are actually quite close and within walking distance.

The last subway map I'm interested in displays most of the world's subway systems on the same scale right next to each other. You can compare the subways of London, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow all at the same time and on the same scale. It provides an interesting comparison of both the complexity of the subway systems and the relative size and sprawl of various megalopolis cities around the world.

For instance, you can see how expansive and sprawling London and Seoul are compared to many of the other world's cities just by looking at their subway maps. The Tokyo system, and to a lesser extent Paris subway system, are much more dense and complex than many of the other subway systems. The Moscow subway is quite an achievement of government planning with a central loop and multiple spokes going away from the center in a very logical way. This map comparison also demonstrates how dumb the Atlanta MARTA (subway) system is for a city of 4 million people sprawling over an expansive area.

Go visit these subway maps and think about how the creators are introducing new levels of abstraction using modern graphical techniques to the centuries-old tradition of map-making.