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." more ›

Bryan Haggerty created a totally stripped-down version of the NYC subway map, reducing it to "expose the grand complexity of this weaving system of people movers." He writes:This reduction evokes an interesting view into the history, sprawl, and the expansiveness of New York City’s subway. Through abstraction of the subway map, the often spoke of, subway as the arteries of the city, is made unequivocally clear. No borough or neighborhood is given prominence, only... more ›

Did you ever want to see an animated map of how the city's subways were built? Okay, probably not, but 2nd Avenue Sagas points us to a map someone made that shows the lines in the order they were built.

Starting with the Franklin St. Shuttle, remnants of the original Brooklyn El system, and the far reaches of the J line which contain the oldest surviving transit structures still in use in the city, the map moves on to the original IRT lines before extending through time. The subways and the city literally come to life as the map unfolds its stations and tunnels.

In a constantly changing city, it's impressive to realize that New Yorkers have had essentially the same subway map for almost 30 years. The current map varies only in detail from the one that Michael Hertz and the MTA presented to the public in 1979. Its predecessor map's design is primarily credited to Massimo Vignelli, and it was criticized as being too abstract. Hertz was hired by the MTA to create a new map that incorporated a more realistic look, as well as more information about the city itself and its transportation system. more ›