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NYC Subwaysheds

subwaysheds.com

41–50 of 116 posts

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#41
post #35
post #8

It seems to make the assumption that you’ll get any particular train instantly. Factor in expected wait time for each line and the local/express variants and the sheds will shrink substantially. it’ll also get confusing because the sheds will change as a function of time of day

It’s still interesting/useful, though. Once you require factoring in average train wait times and stuff like that the project is going to be way too complex to ever be achievable.

for sure, it's still useful, but i think it might be worth some sort of down-weighting for trains that run less frequently.

for example, if the ratio of local:express trains is 5:1, the watershed should be more heavily influenced by what's accessible in 40 minutes via local.

this is also in part due to the way people use the subway in NY -- nobody looks at a timetable and says "i'll head down to the station to catch the 6:37 express" like you would in some cities with reliable timetables/schedules. in NY, you just go to the station and wait and hope the train you want shows up next/soon.

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#42
post #2

Nice first pass, but its clearly calculating these as the pigeon flies and not taking the various stitched together street grids into account. You should get diamond and square shapes, not circles, for the most part. I'm working on a redesigned subway map / nomenclature an indicators of walking time to nearest stations is a subtle feature I want to build in. Something between a watershed like this and a vornoi diagra…

No, it is clearly not as the pigeon flies. That is incorrect. When I click on my local subway stop it seems entirely accurate, and the stations don't form any kind of circle at all. In fact I can't find any subway stop origin that seems to form anything even close to a circle. Also, according to the "about" it's calculating from actual subway schedules. And it has nothing to do with street grids. It's subway trips, n…

> not walking

The site says "accessible within 40 minutes by subway and walking"

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#43

very cool. but I noticed some of the stop information is incorrect. for example, the franklin stop on the C train in Brooklyn, isn't connected to the franklin stop on the shuttle. (I live like 2 blocks from that station)

If you live 2 blocks away, you probably often see the green skyway that crosses Fulton to connect the C and S ;)

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#44
post #2

Nice first pass, but its clearly calculating these as the pigeon flies and not taking the various stitched together street grids into account. You should get diamond and square shapes, not circles, for the most part. I'm working on a redesigned subway map / nomenclature an indicators of walking time to nearest stations is a subtle feature I want to build in. Something between a watershed like this and a vornoi diagra…

No, it is clearly not as the pigeon flies. That is incorrect. When I click on my local subway stop it seems entirely accurate, and the stations don't form any kind of circle at all. In fact I can't find any subway stop origin that seems to form anything even close to a circle. Also, according to the "about" it's calculating from actual subway schedules. And it has nothing to do with street grids. It's subway trips, n…

Nah, GP is right.

The station-to-station part does indeed use subway travel times, but the website says "Hover over a station to see how much of the city is accessible within 40 minutes by subway and walking."

And the "walking" part clearly shows a perfect circle around each destination station, so it is 100% doing an as-the-pigeon-flies estimation for the walking.

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#45
post #2

Nice first pass, but its clearly calculating these as the pigeon flies and not taking the various stitched together street grids into account. You should get diamond and square shapes, not circles, for the most part. I'm working on a redesigned subway map / nomenclature an indicators of walking time to nearest stations is a subtle feature I want to build in. Something between a watershed like this and a vornoi diagra…

No, it is clearly not as the pigeon flies. That is incorrect. When I click on my local subway stop it seems entirely accurate, and the stations don't form any kind of circle at all. In fact I can't find any subway stop origin that seems to form anything even close to a circle. Also, according to the "about" it's calculating from actual subway schedules. And it has nothing to do with street grids. It's subway trips, n…

The “pigeon flies” part is about the circles that form around each station to reflect walking time after you leave the train.

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#46
post #2

Nice first pass, but its clearly calculating these as the pigeon flies and not taking the various stitched together street grids into account. You should get diamond and square shapes, not circles, for the most part. I'm working on a redesigned subway map / nomenclature an indicators of walking time to nearest stations is a subtle feature I want to build in. Something between a watershed like this and a vornoi diagra…

No, it is clearly not as the pigeon flies. That is incorrect. When I click on my local subway stop it seems entirely accurate, and the stations don't form any kind of circle at all. In fact I can't find any subway stop origin that seems to form anything even close to a circle. Also, according to the "about" it's calculating from actual subway schedules. And it has nothing to do with street grids. It's subway trips, n…

Parent poster is referring to the walking segments; the walking bubble around each station is a circle.

Click on Rockaway park. A pigeon could reach those islands, but a walking person could not.

This is still a great visualization.

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#47
Interesting, and it's cool to see an illustration of how weird it is that there's no quick way to cross the park! It takes the same ballpark amount of time to get from east 86th St & 2nd to Kew Gardens (~14 miles apart) as it does to get from east 86th & 2nd to west 86th St & Broadway (~1.5 miles apart)...

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#48
post #8

It seems to make the assumption that you’ll get any particular train instantly. Factor in expected wait time for each line and the local/express variants and the sheds will shrink substantially. it’ll also get confusing because the sheds will change as a function of time of day

That might not be an entirely wrong assumption to make. An office worker's working hours usually has some amount of slack, and people are willing to adjust their schedule to minimize wait time. No point waiting 25 minutes every day when you can get up 5 minutes earlier and wait basically zero.

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#49
post #47

Interesting, and it's cool to see an illustration of how weird it is that there's no quick way to cross the park! It takes the same ballpark amount of time to get from east 86th St & 2nd to Kew Gardens (~14 miles apart) as it does to get from east 86th & 2nd to west 86th St & Broadway (~1.5 miles apart)...

There are buses running the transverses. I think this map only does subway. Check Google Maps transit directions and you'll see.

Re: NYC Subwaysheds

#50
post #48
post #8

It seems to make the assumption that you’ll get any particular train instantly. Factor in expected wait time for each line and the local/express variants and the sheds will shrink substantially. it’ll also get confusing because the sheds will change as a function of time of day

That might not be an entirely wrong assumption to make. An office worker's working hours usually has some amount of slack, and people are willing to adjust their schedule to minimize wait time. No point waiting 25 minutes every day when you can get up 5 minutes earlier and wait basically zero.

The subway doesn’t keep to a strict schedule (it has one in theory but no one would depend on it), and has anywhere between 3 and 20 minute headways (time between trains).

You can sort of kind of get close to 1-2 minutes of slack if you have an app telling you how far away the subway is (CityMapper has this feature), but you can’t really time your sleep or known work hours for making a specific subway.

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