Submitted by Henry, who says:

I stumbled upon this diagram of MTA services available from the MTA. While the general positioning of the lines looks like it’s very clean and has very good bones, the small design decisions (like the shape of transfer points to subway and commuter rail, the rail tickmarks, etc.) make this map feel very cheap and tacky.

Transit Maps says:

I’m not really feeling this map at all, Henry… not the least because it appears to be a poor-quality image (A scan of a printed page? Surely not!) that has had both sides cropped off: note that labels and the legend are truncated on both sides… oops! That’s pretty poor work for a major transit agency like the MTA.

It appears to have been produced in the short window between the reopening of the “W” (November 7, 2016) and the opening of the Second Avenue Subway with its rerouting of the “Q” (January 1, 2017) – so it already needs an update to be accurate, as the SAS is missing entirely.

The map itself is an uncomfortable blend of the regular subway map – geography, colours, typefaces, tickmarked railroads for Metro-North and the LIRR, etc. – and a stylised transit diagram. This means we get accurate outlines for parkland (and, bizarrely, all the roads within Central Park and on Randalls and Wards Islands!), but also simplified route lines which omit most intermediate stations in favour of highlighting connection points. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as most users will effectively orient themselves using these “landmark” interchanges, and it does handle tourist trips between the airport and Manhattan quite well.

As Henry says, the attention to detail on this map is somewhat lacking – best illustrated by the oddly tiny interchange marker at 63rd Drive/Rego Park. Also, the note at the bottom of the map about late night/weekend service seems to use a different point size for the first line, suggesting that it was edited after the initial version to add the “W” to the list of affected lines and the type had to get smaller to squeeze everything in.

Our rating: Something of a neglected afterthought without much love or care applied to it. Two stars.

Source: MTA website (PDF)