The NYC Subway map is one of the most iconic maps around, constantly mirrored and mimic’ed in various visualizations. A new project from Chen Alexander animates the trains on the map, and adds an interesting musical aspect to it all. And puts the results on the web, all in HTML5 Canvas (No Flash).
The piece follows some rules. Every minute, it checks for new trains launched from their end stations. The train then moves towards the end of the line, with its speed set by the schedule’s estimated trip duration. Some decisions were made for musical, aesthetic, and technical reasons, such as fading out routes over time, the gradual time acceleration, and limiting the number of concurrent trains. Also, I used the weekday schedule. Some of these limitations result in subtle variations, as different trains are chosen during each 24-hour loop.
