Thursday, September 3, 4-7 p.m.: 59 St (N\/R), Brooklyn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\u2013 Charlie Gans, Senior Vice President and Project Executive for the Interborough Express<\/p>\n
Q: Who decided which colors were assigned to each subway line? <\/b>\u2013 Brianna B., Astoria<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
A:\u00a0The way subway lines are identified, known as nomenclature, has evolved considerably since the system opened in 1904. Because New York\u2019s subway was built as three separate systems, early maps typically used different colors to distinguish among the operators. After the systems were unified under city control in 1940, efforts began to simplify and clarify information for riders. Various proposals emerged over the next two decades, including one based on the Munsell color system.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the 1960s that the New York City Transit Authority hired Unimark International, led by designers Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda, to redesign the subway\u2019s visual identity. Their system assigned 22 different colors to individual services. In 1979, the color scheme was simplified by grouping routes that share major stretches of track in Manhattan, known as trunk lines. John Tauranac and Michael Hertz were among those responsible for developing that system, which reduced the palette to eight colors and two shades of gray. That color palette lives on in the new subway map the MTA debuted last year. \u2013 Jodi Shapiro, Curator, New York Transit Museum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proposed IBX route. Image courtesy of the MTA amNewYork, in conjunction with the MTA, present \u201cAsk the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":959107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,150908,70622,151735,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,122693,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-959106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-ask-the-mta","tag-ibx","tag-interborough-express","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-subway-lines","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116982775733173756","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"map-ibx-mta-07-30\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/map-ibx-mta-07-30-.jpg\" "\\"Ask")
\t\t\t<\/p>\n