Shows Lines With Shuttle, Local Svc.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) released on Monday, Jan. 30, the first-ever map showing the scheduled overnight service of the subway system, when three subway lines don’t run, three lines become shuttle trains, six express trains run as locals, and a night-only shuttle appears.
The map has a gray background color to prevent confusion with the normal subway map.
The New York City Subway is the only large subway or metro system in the world to maintain service to all its stations around the clock. The overnight service shown in the night map runs generally from midnight to 6 a.m., although certain lines’ overnight service patterns depicted in the map may begin or end slightly earlier or later than these times.
The MTA has printed 25,000 copies of the map in tandem with its normal press run of a million copies of the standard subway and railroad map. The night map is available free of charge while supplies last at the New York Transit Museum, at Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn, and at the Transit Museum Annex in Grand Central Terminal.
The night map, developed inhouse by the MTA, is the same size as the standard map and similarly folds into a handy pocket-sized document. In addition to the folded version, 300 unfolded press sheets of the night map are available for purchase at the Transit Museum Annex for $20 each.
The night map has also been posted to the MTA’s website as a PDF.
The reverse side of the map shows a work commissioned for MTA Arts for Transit, “City of Glass,” a faceted glass piece by Romare Bearden installed in the Westchester Square station in the Bronx in 1993. For each subsequent night map in the series, a new artwork will adorn the reverse side. The theme for 2012 is “night.”
In “City of Glass,” jewel-like colored glass reveals a train wending its way through the canyons of towers and tenements under a full luminous moon. It is a moving work of art in brilliant color and is Bearden’s only glass art installation.
“The standard subway map depicts morning to evening weekday service,” said MTA Chairman Joseph J. Lhota. “This companion night map will, for the first time, depict service for a particular portion of the day. This is the latest effort we’ve taken to improve the availability of information and detail we provide to our customers.”
The following details the major differences in service shown on the night map, as compared with the standard subway map:
– Three subway lines (the B, C and Z) and the 42nd Street Shuttle do not operate overnight and are not shown on the map.
– Five subway lines offer shorter service than usual: the 3 train terminates at Times Square; the 5 train runs as a shuttle in the Bronx between East 180 St and Dyre Avenue; the M train runs as a shuttle between Myrtle Avenue-Broadway in Bushwick and Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village; the Q train terminates at 57th Street-Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan; and the R train runs as a shuttle in Brooklyn between 36th Street and 95th Street.
– Six lines make additional stops they don’t make during the daytime: the 2 train makes all local stops in Manhattan; the 4 train makes all local stops in Manhattan and Brooklyn and is extended to New Lots Avenue, Brooklyn; the A train makes all local stops in Manhattan and Brooklyn and runs to Far Rockaway but not Lefferts Blvd or Rockaway Park, which are served by shuttle trains; the D train runs local via Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn; the E trains runs local via Queens Boulevard; and the N train runs local via the Financial District.
– There is no skip/stop service on the J train, which terminates at Chambers Street on weekend overnight periods.
– Six subway lines (the 1, 6, 7, F, G, and L) and Franklin Avenue Shuttle run their normal routes as local trains. (There is no 6 or 7 express service.)
Customers using trains at night should use Trip Planner+ at www.MTA.info and MTA.info mobile, which also takes into account all planned work diversions.
