Subway Specs - Part II

New York architect Candy Chan was so amazed to discover that there are no three-dimensional plans of New York subway stations that she decided to go ahead and create her own. The result is X-Ray Area Maps, a series of beautifully drawn bird's eye view illustrations of subway stations which reveal the tunnels, platforms and escalators which exist under New York's streets.

Last Year Chan created 3d plans of ten different New York subway stations, each of which can be explored on its own Leaflet.js powered interactive map. This allows you to zoom in on all the fine details in Chan's drawings. If you like Candy Chan's illustrations you can also buy prints of each of the 3d subway station plans. Candy Chan has also now created another series of 3d map plans of the New York subway.


In this new series of 3d subway maps, instead of one plan for each station, Chan has created 3d plans which show multiple stations in each plan with the colored tracks connecting the stations. These new X-ray Station Clusters show how complicated the subway network and the connecting tunnels can be. The plans focus on two areas - Downtown Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan, areas where stations are often situated very close to each other.


Unfortunately if you live in London there doesn't appear to be any interactive mapped 3d plans of underground stations. However Transport for London has created a series of axonometric diagrams for each station on the London Underground network. You can view the axonometric diagrams for all of the stations at IanVisits.