First New Major Subway Map Overhaul in Nearly Half Century Unveiled by MTA
The new map uses straighter lines, bolder and more numerous lines for train routes and other enhancements. John Tauranac, the man who oversaw a 1970s map overhaul, calls the new version a “bastardization” of a map first unveiled in 1979.
| 07 Apr 2025 | 03:52
A new subway map, last redone during the Carter administration, is being rolled out in stations across the city, the first major redesign in 45 years.
“The new version is much easier to read while also reflecting all the enhancements we’ve made over the years,” said MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber, who unveiled the new map at the Times Square station with NYC Transit president Demetrius Crichlow on April 2.
The new “map” changes the game with a “diagrammatic” style, employing bold, straight lines that are more suitable for digital users, the MTA said. It employs a white background, bold colors, horizontal writing and the use of black dots to make the map more ADA-friendly and easier for people with low-vision or cognitive disabilities to read, the MTA added.
In a nod to the past and the maps designed by Italian designer Massimo Vignelli in a 1972 overhaul that was tweaked in 1979, the map creative team is using the official “brand” colors established by the 1979 and 1998 maps, and using a similar geometric and diagrammatic palate first used in 1972. The new design should make key things easier to find, including express service stops, and transit hubs for connections, and show which stations are compliant with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), the MTA says.
Costs were held down because the redesign was done in-house by the MTA’s Creative Services Mapping Department. Lieber said the total cost was only in the low six figures.
While the map announcement draws attention to the paper version, some of the biggest upgrades will be visible digitally. If your subway station has digital screens, those subway maps reflect weekday, late night, and weekend service. They are soon to be included on NYC Transit’s newest cars, the R211s, which have digital screens; all the other subway cars will be remapped in phases during the coming weeks.
With the station screens, a software redesign now updates every five seconds, pairing a more realistic match of countdown clocks and real-time train arrivals. These were based on customer feedback, surveys, and analysis of all 472 stations, and provide better customer service for harried riders. Station screens, monitored remotely via cloud technology, can instantly alert crews to a malfunction, eliminating the time-consuming step of manually reporting issues.
The new version also has a QR code that connects to the MTA website from smartphones.
Reaction to the new map has been generally favorable, but in a city of over eight million people, you can’t please everyone. Alex Smith, a self-described cantankerous New Yorker who runs the Flaming Pablum blog, doesn’t like the new smoother-look paper map. “On the original, the subway lines radiate through the boroughs like the squiggly fibers of a pulsating nervous system,” he said. “The new one looks like it was done on an Etch-a-Sketch.”
The MTA said the straighter, slightly thicker lines are in recognition that many will be looking at the maps on mobile phones. Still, Smith preferred the thinner, more squiggly lines of the old map because “it looks like an actual map, replete with arguably needless topographical detail, as opposed to the new design, which is just basically all perfectly straight lines and carefully rounded curves.“
John Tauranac, who had chaired the MTA map committee that worked on a new after objections to the 1972 map designed by Massimo Vignelli emerged, doesn’t like the new version at all. He calls the new map a “bastardization” of the revised map that his committee finally unveiled in 1979 that was “diamterically opposed to the Vignelli map, resembling more of NYC’s geography and less of a giant diagram,” according to Tauranac. He says the newest map is a “giant step backward” from the ‘79 version that was tweaked in 1998.
“Something that I just noticed is that the MTA is not calling this new publication a ‘map’–they’re calling it a ‘diagram,’ which is the way many schematic maps are described. Ridership deserves not just a map, but a better map.”
Tauranac thinks the new maps are too busy. The “diagram” depicts 17 routes operating north-south in Midtown–with each given its own lane, as it were, he points out. “So of course there’s a crowd. With a true trunk-line color-coding system–and the primary reason that it was introduced in 1979–is that there were only five colors operating north-south in Midtown.”
With certain details lacking, the 2025 map committee “did not do the job they should be doing,” said Tauranac.
But some riders were obviously pleased. “You could see it much better and more clear,” Wells Brown, a daily commuter from Brooklyn, told NBC News 4.
In the weeks ahead, 22,000 paper versions of the new map will go up in stations and into subway cars across the entire system.
If you are a fan of the “old” maps, throughout 2025, both the redesigned map and older versions will be available for download on the MTA website, https://www.mta.info/map
The new design should make key things easier to find, including express service stops, and transit hubs for connections, and show which stations are compliant with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), the MTA says.