NYC Subway Station Maps (WIP)

I've been making station maps for some stations of the NYC subway. They started simple and got more interesting with time; I will present them here in reverse chronological order with their reddit text accompanying them. This page is supposed to be a stand-in for a yet-to-be-written blog post detailing my process and the map results which is... uh... definitely going to happen eventually. Please be very excited for it.

How it works, tl;dr: I walk around the stations 3D scanning with rtabmap on my iPhone Pro, then process that with the desktop rtabmap, then puzzle the individual scans together in Blender, then use that as reference to create my custom model of the station, then render that, and then add labels and stuff in Affinity Designer. There might be more information about the process in some of the linked posts below, hopefully I'll do a decent job at writing a blog post about all that one day, again.

42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal (A/C/E)

(Almost) Happy New Year! 2025 may have been one of the roughest years of my life, but it did see me start and now finish scanning and modeling the 42nd Street station complex, its almost-conclusion being my final individual map of the three (teased earlier this week, try to spot these new gates): the PABT end of things! (Not including the bus terminal itself, sorry, maybe if I ever revisit this hobby in the future, but just like Grand Central that just seems a bit much to scan and model and deal with for now.)
The next stop is: compile one big 42nd St complex mega-map that may then serve as header picture for a yet to be written blog post about the process of how I made these maps (wonder if I should post that one here, too?), and then... I think I'm done with making these maps, for a while anyway.
Hope you all get into the new year safely and thank you so much for the support over these past almost two years of mapmaking!
(2025-12-31)
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Times Square–42nd Street (1/2/3/7/N/Q/R/W/S)

It's been a while, but as teased, here is what I dreaded as the final boss in my station complex mapping project: Times Square. Andrew Yang's favorite station (what happened to that guy anyway?) is not only notoriously complex and confusing, but also busy as hell, making the scanning a real unpleasant awkward process, but slowly chipping away at it over the past few months, I conquered my fear and produced what you see here :)
The next stop is: the 8 Av part of the complex, then one big mega-map, and then, finally, hopefully, a blog post to wrap this project up nicely!
(2025-09-05)
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42nd Street–Bryant Park/Fifth Avenue (B/D/F/M/7)

It's Map Monday! Celebrate another dreary week with this first map in the tetralogy it's all been leading up to: the 42nd St megastation maps. Next up: Times Square, then PABT, and finally one mega-map to rule them all with accompanying blogpost elucidating my methodology... or that's the plan at least :)
(2025-04-07)
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Court Sq–23 St (E/G/M/7)

After fighting my little laptop to render yet another map, here is the latest, a quick and sketched (read: I was tired of it and didn't want to do tracks and streets, think it looks nice and simple this way, though) map: Court Sq–23 Street (E/G/M/7). First time drawing alpha maps on my meshes (the street planes mostly) which was fun to figure out, other than that, a simple return to the basics, a breather, as I try to summon the courage for my next project...
(2025-01-14)
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Atlantic Terminal / Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr (2/3/4/5/B/D/N/Q/R)

Here we are again! I didn't really have this complex on my agenda, but since so many of you asked for it since I started... here it is! Kinda a combination of the visual threads of the last two maps, which feels nice like... it's all coming together :)
One thing that was fun was building and texturing the LIRR trashcans, benches, and ticket machines... not that you can really see them from afar, but hey, fun is fun.
Not much else to say except that I feel like I'm running out of ideas... or is this burnout? Stay tuned for the next transit render, map or not!
(2024-10-23)
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Borough Hall & Court St (2/3/4/5/R)

After the horrors of Fulton St I decided to treat myself to a cute little station I've also found myself a little confused in many times: Borough Hall (and Court St) in Brooklyn, New York! Returning to the single view, not separating floors, worked out okay here I think and the addition of the train tracks was a fun little puzzle; together with the gradients and the fadeout under the mezzanine on the R tracks I got to dig deeper into Blender and that's always fun :D
(2024-09-16)
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Fulton Street (A/C/J/Z/2/3/4/5)

After months and ~60h of work I proudly present the latest and greatest (?) station map: Fulton Street, Manhattan. I was motivated by the stair mess of Fulton Center, but there's other interesting things throughout the station, too. Going off my last map, Union Square, I wanted to change some things up and opted for clearly separated floors and a perspective camera, and there's other... interesting choices throughout. Let me know what you think!
(2024-08-06)
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14 St-Union Square (4/5/6/L/N/Q/R/W)

Ever wondered what a big station like 14 St-Union Square actually looks like? Eight services, three lines, many stairs...
I didn't know the station had this ring-like topology until I spent tens of hours scanning and modeling and now you can see it too!
Including the four Blender renders for your zooming in pleasure and if you prefer any one of them for daily usage as well as some detail views to show how much fun I had learning about curves, meshes, shader and geometry nodes, and so much more in modeling this :)
(2024-04-10)
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Nevins Street (2/3/4/5)

I've spent hours 3D scanning NYC subway stations using my phone with Polycam3 and rtabmap, using Blender to compose and Affinity Designer to trace a first map as warm up: Nevins St (2/3/4/5).
The underlying 3D scans were some of my first so I was still figuring out how to best get it done with iPhone LiDAR. In this tweet ( https://x.com/sjmielke/status/1773696955908083794 ) you can compare the Polycam scan from months back on the left with the rtabmap scan (shown in Blender) from a few days ago on the right.
Scanning around people is hard. If they're moving, you feel bad for being in the way with your silly phone, if they're stationary, you can't scan the spot they're occupying if you don't want to photograph them. Luckily this station isn't too busy, but others I had to go at night.
While my original plan was to model and render isometric 3D in Blender, realizing that Affinity Designer has convenient isometric protection tools made me curious if this was viable: trace the 3D scan (left, https://x.com/sjmielke/status/1773696963273162878 ), then project and add elevations and decorations (right).
All in all, I've gotten a lot of comfort out of my late night scanning activities and the puzzling afterwards!
After this quick proof of concept, next on my agenda for the "real thing":
- Union Square (456LNQRW), scanned and modeled in Blender
- Fulton St (2345ACJZ), 90% scanned
(2024-03-29)
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BONUS, my system map of sorts:

"BMT Sea Beach"? "IND Culver"? A schematic map of NYC Subway *lines*, not services

Made by yours truly for... well, I wanted this map to exist so here it is 😅 Impress your friends by saying "Sixth Av lines" instead of "the orange lines."
NB: there's issues with this map that I'm aware of thanks to kind strangers' messages that I have yet to fix. One day. I'm aware. Sigh.
(2024-05-15)
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