Redesign the New York Subway with Brand New Subway

By Kyle McKenney  |  August 4, 2016 | 2:04pm
Image via JPWright
Design News Public Transportation

Think you can design a better system than the MTA? Prove it with new web game/simulation Brand New Subway, which lets players redesign the New York subway. Brand New Subway lets you either start from scratch with a blank map of New York City or start with the modern day subway system and try to improve upon it and all the maps are accurate recreations of New York City.

Brand New Subway plays like a city-building game set in the real world. You place subway stations and connect them with others. You can build walking transfers between stations, add more train lines to a built station, add stops on preexisting lines, all with the goal of building the best subway possible.

Brand New Subway grades your performance from an A+ to an F based on how many people you are able to transport for the lowest ticket cost possible. It pulls in real data on population, income levels, cost of construction and taxes to determine how many people a station will service and what the ticket price will cost.

brand new subway img2.jpg

Based on their grading metrics, the current MTA subway system in New York actually manages a B grade, even despite the closing of the L. When the changes through 2025 are taken into account, MTA’s system will actually work up to an A-.

Brand New Subway is a brilliant way to use game mechanics to teach about real world systems and issues. Public transportation is meant as a resource for all people. Brand New Subway can let people see how hard it is to actually make that goal a reality but it might even lead to people coming up with new ideas for how public transportation should be handled. You can play Brand New Subway here.

 
Join the discussion...