MTA Introduces New Subway Map to Make You Less Angry on Weekends

A portion of one of the new Weekender maps

Have you heard of "the Weekender"? No, it's not this. It's a new online mapping system that the MTA hopes will help make you less angry on weekends! Basically, this is the MTA's admittance to you that, yes, they mess up a lot of your plans on weekends, but they do it because they have to, and they do care, they really do...or, in their words,

"In order to keep our 24/7 subway system running reliably, we do an incredible amount of construction work on the subway every weekend," said Thomas F. Prendergast, President of MTA New York City Transit. "This work is critical, but we also know that even the most veteran subway riders can be frustrated and confused when service is reconfigured and information is hard to find. That's why we created The Weekender, which will revolutionize the way riders use the subway on the weekend."

Revolutionize? Well...let's just say we needn't aim that high. Most subway riders simply want to know, if the schedule has changed due to construction, does that F train that's pretending to be a B but on the D line...well, what is it, and where is it going?

In an attempt to answer such questions, each Friday afternoon, the Weekender will take over the front page of MTA.info, and will stay there through the weekend. At its center is a subway diagram showing service to be provided each weekend, including all service changes -- any station that has a "service diversion" gets a blinking light. And, the map is interactive.

You can view the map in three ways:

· Service by Line: Click on a subway line symbol to get a line diagram showing an overview of the line's service changes, as well as text summaries of the changes.
· Service by Borough: Click on a borough for text-based information about any service changes impacting a borough.
· Service by Station: Select a station for details on any service changes impacting that station, or click on the map to zoom to a detailed area.

A sample image, for the 2 train:

Subway/map nerds will rejoice: the diagram for the Weekender was inspired by Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York City subway map, and the Weekender was designed by Vignelli, Beatriz Cifuentes and Yoshiki Waterhouse.

Will the Weekender help with our weekend transportation woes? Is the L train running? (That was rhetorical.)

[JDoll / @thisisjendoll]

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