The NY Times got an advance look at the MTA's latest overhaul of the NYC subway map, which was last refreshed in 1998. The Times, which says the new version is "resized, recolored and simplified," reports, "Manhattan will become taller, bulkier and 30 percent wider, to better display its spaghetti of subway lines. Staten Island, meanwhile, will shrink by half. The spreadsheetlike 'service guide,' along the map’s bottom border, will be eliminated, and the other three boroughs will grow to fill the space."
Also: "A separate, stripped-down map will also be produced, to be displayed only inside subway cars. Neighborhood names, parks, ferries and bus connections will not appear on this version, making for a less cluttered composition that may be easier to read over a fellow rider’s shoulders." The Times also has a nifty interactive feature that compares the latest version with the 1998 version, the 1979 version that first showed a street grid, Massimo Vignelli's classic 1972 design and the 1968 version, plus the fattening of Manhattan.
Of course, this means there's some subway map trash-talking. Eddie Jabbour, who believes his Kick Map (see it here) is the best way to understand the system, calls it complicated—"You have to read the map rather than scan the map"—and says it's an "artifact of its time, and its time was 1979." But Michael Hertz (check out our interview with him), whose firm has been designing the subway map since 1979, tells the Times, "It continues to be the right balance between information and graphic clarity. We have given the public a good tool to get around the city." What about this 2008 update to Vignelli's design?
The MTA tells us that the expected "launch" of the new maps will be June 27—to coincide with service changes.
