Below is a New York Times article about how the NYC Transportation Department is
installing a network of over 400 pedestrian maps around city streets. Everett Studios is
manufacturing the maps. That entails printing each map graphic onto a clear adhesive
film and mounting it to the back of tempered glass about six feet tall with varying widths.
Once we add security hardware, they are shipped to the Transportation Department for
installation.
It is the local traveler’s private shame — all-consuming as the numbered
streets disappear, or at the top step of an unknown subway exit, or
maybe a half block away from the station, at the unfamiliar intersection
where the truth is inescapable.
You are a New Yorker. Your inner compass has betrayed you. You, dare say it, may even be lost.
On Monday, the city announced a possible remedy for the uncertain: a
new, $6 million network of pedestrian maps, oriented in the direction
that the viewer is facing — so that someone looking east from Lower
Manhattan, for instance, might find the Brooklyn Bridge at the top of
the display.
The maps, to be installed on sidewalks and inside subway stations, will
include the locations of transit hubs and bike lanes, as well as
estimated walking times for pedestrians.
By summer’s end, about 100 of the maps will be installed, according to
the Transportation Department, with plans to expand citywide over the
next year.
“We all know that feeling of being turned around,” Janette Sadik-Khan,
the city’s transportation commissioner, said at a news conference beside
a newly installed map in Chinatown.
A department study, based on a survey of 500 pedestrians, found that
one-third of New Yorkers could not say which direction north was.
Fourteen percent of residents and 27 percent of visitors could not name
the neighborhood or borough in which they were being surveyed. And
nearly 10 percent of locals admitted they had gotten lost in the
previous week.
“There is a clear need for this system,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said.
Midtown Manhattan; Prospect Heights, Brooklyn; and Long Island City,
Queens, are among the other neighborhoods set to receive maps during the
program’s introduction this summer. The maps can already be found on
the more than 300 bike-share kiosks installed in Manhattan below 59th
Street and in parts of Brooklyn. And the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority plans to replace its network of neighborhood maps — posted in
each station near the turnstiles — with a version of the new maps.
Beside a station entrance at Canal Street on Monday, examples of subway
dislocation persisted. Riders reached street level, fumbling for their
phones (and the maps they supplied) before making their first moves.
Others turned sharply as they exited, then doubled back to reconsider.
A survey of 10 New Yorkers, conducted near Centre and Canal Streets —
where no numbered street signs could be consulted — suggested that the
Bloomberg administration’s data may even overstate the city’s collective
sense of direction.
Four respondents correctly identified which direction was north on their
first try. Two pointed south, one pointed east, and one could not
hazard a guess. The remaining two pointed west, including one man who
consulted a compass app on his smartphone before guessing.
“This way,” the man, Eric Rahman, said in front of the small gift shop
he operates, stretching an arm along Canal Street, as his app seemed to
instruct.
He was informed of his mistake. “Hold on,” he said, punching at the phone again.
The city might be wise to install the maps in front of his shop, if only
to give a second opinion. Mr. Rahman said he often helped passers-by
who asked for directions.
