9 Things You Need to Know Before Using the New York Subway

The New York subway is great. It runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and there are stations everywhere. And it’s cheap – only $2.75 for a ride that could take you from one end of Manhattan to the far reaches of Queens or Brooklyn. There are no zones to worry about, it’s a one-size fits all system.

So using the subway to get around New York should be dead easy right? And it is. Sort of. So long as you take account of its quirks and allow yourself a bit of time to get your head round it without beating yourself up when you find yourself in completely the wrong part of Manhattan.

To help you get started (and be slightly less confused than I was) there are 9 things you need to know before using the New York subway.

The subway map resembles a Jackson Pollock painting

The London Underground is the oldest metro system in the world. It makes sense then that London was the first place to figure out a new and improved way of presenting its metro map. Over the years as more tube lines had been added to the original Metropolitan line, the map of the underground had become a tangled mess. In 1931 Harry Beck, an engineer and draughtsman with London Underground, had had enough of trying to follow squiggles and spent his spare time coming up with a new way of helping people plan their routes. He realised that as you were travelling underground most of the time and just going from station to station, you didn’t really need to know the route the train took. He came up with the schematic map we know today. It’s more of a diagram than a map and has clear straight lines linking the stations which are pretty much evenly spaced apart. This map was such a success other cities around the world quickly followed suit.

Apart from New York.

The New York metro map is still in the original squiggle style. Lines swirl around all over the place making it confusing to any first-timer who’s used to metro maps in, well, just about anywhere else really.

And if this wasn’t enough, there is a city street map underlying the subway map. It’s all very heavy on the eye. The type on printed versions of the map is also so tiny I could have done with a magnifying glass. I ended up taking photos on my phone of a large map I found on a platform and just zooming in on it when I needed to.

Many stations share the same name

There’s a reason why the subway map has a city map underneath it and that’s because many stations share the same name. So you have to look at the city map to check which 23rd street station it is you want and then check to make sure you’re on the right line. Get the wrong one and you’ll exit on completely the wrong side of Manhattan.

Confused by what I mean by this? Well let’s imagine London for a moment. In New York the stations are named for the streets on which they are found. In London they have names. For example, Piccadilly has three stations along its length, but not one of them is called ‘Piccadilly’. At one end is ‘Piccadilly Circus’ and at the other end is ‘Hyde Park Corner’. In the middle sits ‘Green Park’. Now imagine that all three of these stations were just called ‘Piccadilly’. If you got out at Piccadilly Circus when you actually wanted to be at Hyde Park Corner you’d have a bit of a trek. Well this is what can actually happen in New York unless you really understand which station it is you want and ensure you are on the right line.

Many lines share the same colour

Well that’s not so difficult is it? Just make sure you’re on the right line? Actually it’s not that simple. The lines are coloured, but it’s not a case of each line being assigned a unique colour. The brown line, for example, could be the J or the Z line; the green line could be the 4, 5 or 6 lines and the orange line is the B, D, F and M lines.

The stations aren’t always clearly named

Once you’re on what you hope is the right train you just need to get off at the right station. Looking out of the window as the train pulls into a station won’t always help you as some stations are really badly signed and you won’t see a name at all from your train window.

There isn’t always information on the train to help you know where you are going or where you are

Some of the more modern trains have an electronic board inside each carriage which lists each station along the route and lights up to show you which station you are at. These carriages may also have an additional electronic board which shows the next station, the destination station and which line train it is. There may even be a clear tannoy system announcing the stations and which trains you can connect with at that particular station.

Not all trains are modern however. If you happen to find yourself on an older train, then the tannoy will be so unclear you won’t understand a word of what is being said and there are no electronic boards. There may be a paper copy of the route pasted to the inner wall of the carriage, but it won’t necessarily be for the train you are on.

The names of the stations that are written on the map or in the stations themselves are not necessarily recognised by the journey planner on the MTA website

One thing I found really helpful was that the stations all have free Wifi. So once in a station I could connect to the Wifi and go to the trip planner part of the MTA website. The trip planner enables you to put in your start and finish stations and it will tell you which train to take, where to change and how long your journey will take.

Don’t think though, that because you’ve looked at the map or found a sign inside or outside the station with the name of the station that you can just put this into the trip planner and get a result. Doing this is likely to get you a ‘station not recognized’ response. Why? Because the website planner only accepts station names written in a specific way. One evening I found myself at 8 Street. Or so I thought. After all that’s what was written outside the station and on the map. The website wouldn’t recognise it at all though and it was only when I went down to the platform thinking I’d just have to get any train to the next station and then try again there, that I noticed some of the signs on the platform (this was a station that had plenty of signs on the platform) said 8th Street, not 8 Street, although many of them still said 8 Street. When I tried putting 8th Street into the planner it was fine. It struck me as quite bizarre that the planner wasn’t intuitive enough to offer suggestions for station names similar to the one I was trying to enter or even to recognise a station name as it is written on the signs in the station and on the map.

The reverse of this problem is when you do enter a correct station name and it offers you half a dozen options. Remember how lots of the stations have the same name? This is where you need to know the cross streets or the lines that run through the station so you can choose correctly.

Sometimes you have to leave the station to change platforms

If you find you are on the wrong train or going in the wrong direction, your instinct will be to jump off at the next station and cross the platform to get a train going the right way or back to your original station so you can pick up the train you were supposed to be on.

Don’t do this without checking first. Some stations have no way of moving between platforms without you having to exit the station, cross the road and re-enter the station. If you need to do this and you don’t have a travel card you will have to pay again. Also bear this in mind when first entering a station. Depending on which train you want and which direction you want to travel in, the entrance you are standing in front of may not be the one for you. You may need to do the crossing the road thing first.

Stations that are like this will have the lines and destinations written up outside them. You just have to hope that what is written there matches what is written on the map or what the trip planner has told you to look out for.

You can’t buy a ticket in every station

Not all stations have ticket machines. This could be a problem if you’ve left a station to change platforms and then can’t get back in. If you have a weekly travel card you won’t need to worry about this. Alternatively you can estimate how many journeys you are likely to make and load the money onto your metro card.

The first time you buy a metro card you will pay an extra dollar for the card. After this you can just reload it when necessary without having to buy a new card each time.

There’s no such thing as a daily travel card

The best thing of course is just to have a travel card. Then you can enter and exit stations to your heart’s content. If you’re not staying for a week and you don’t think you’d get your money’s worth out of having a weekly travel card for just a few days then a daily travel card would be your answer. However, it’s not your answer because they don’t exist.

All you can do to save having to buy a new fare each time you go into the subway (assuming the station is one where you can buy a fare) is to work out in advance how many journeys you are likely to take and what that will cost and then load that amount of money onto your metro card. For example, if you assume you’re going to use the subway three times a day over the next two days then you can load the fare for six subway journeys onto your card (at the moment that would be 6 x $2.75).

Tip: if you’re paying with a foreign credit card and it asks you for your zip code just press enter.

So as you can see the New York subway can take a bit of getting used to. I was fortunate to be there for 10 days so I was able to buy a weekly travel card to start with. This meant that by the time I needed to pay for individual journeys I’d got over a lot of my confusion and wasn’t likely to make mistakes that would cost me extra.

I did find that people were really helpful and would help me out with telling me where a train was going or what the station was when I was really confused. There are often signs on the edge of the platform saying which trains run from that platform and what their destinations are and the trains themselves have a sign on the side saying which line it is, where it’s going and if it’s an express or local train (don’t get an express without checking it stops at your station and doesn’t just whiz by it).

And there you have it. Remember these few quirks and you’ll be fine navigating the New York subway.

Have you used the New York subway? Are there any tips you can add to this? And do you agree with me that it’s the quirkiest metro system of all? Or have you found an even quirkier one? Share your thoughts and tips in the comments below.

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