Transportation

Are Our Transit Maps Tricking Us?

Subway maps distort the reality on the ground for all kinds of reasons. What happens when we make decisions based on them?
MTA

London’s city center takes up about two percent of the city. On the Tube map, it looks four times as big.

Over in New York City, Central Park—which is a skinny sliver, much longer than it is wide—was depicted in some 1960s and ‘70s IRT maps as a fat rectangle on its side.