If you haven’t heard me say it before, I love Arts for Transit. The artworks scattered around the various Metro-North stations are a cheerful addition to an often-repetitive morning and evening commute (possibly with the exception of North White Plains. Anyone who has seen it probably agrees with me). Several of the New York state New Haven Line stations have Arts for Transit works, and one of my new favorites is Mount Vernon East, which I posted about several weeks ago. Unfortunately, after viewing a few more NH Line stations, I have a beef with Arts for Transit. Why did we put public art in the station buildings, buildings that are closed more than they are open? Larchmont’s mosaic is completely inaccessible when the station is closed. And the best view of Harrison’s faceted glass is from the inside of the station building, though at least it can be somewhat enjoyed from the outside. Despite that, Harrison’s faceted glass does make my list of favorite Arts for Transit works. Unfortunately, the best views I got of the piece were on the artist’s website, and not in real life.

Above images are from artist Tova Snyder’s website. The original acrylic on canvas paintings are shown on top, and their faceted glass counterparts (which are installed at the station) on the bottom.

In addition to lovely art, Harrison has an old station building, though it is no longer used by Metro-North. Which is a shame, as it has much more character than the more modern station. I can’t seem to find too much information about the station building, but as far as I am aware it is owned by the town. Perhaps one day it will be occupied more than just having Metro-North notes stuck to the door. Besides the lonely station building, the area surrounding the station is quite nice and has various shops. In fact, after taking photos at the station I purchased some ice-cream to eat on the platform, while waiting for my train to arrive and carry me the 22 miles back to Grand Central.

Hello, and welcome to planet Earth. The Earth is a planetary body that revolves around the sun… unless you are one of the many Metro-North riders that have the erroneous belief that the world actually revolves around them. Those special people are known to cause scenes on the morning train (like the woman I saw last week yelling, “for every minute we’re late I’m docked pay!”), and somehow have the strange belief that Metro-North has one train running on each line: their train. The remainder of us, however, are well aware that the busiest commuter railroad in the country certainly has more than 3 trains running at a time. But how many? And where are they?

I had a kind of silly idea – I would create a map that showed the location of every Metro-North train at an arbitrary time during the morning rush. That way people would be able to really visualize how many trains there are, and to understand that they aren’t alone on the rails – not by a long shot. The map would provide a quick snapshot of what exactly is happening on every weekday morning. Somehow along the way the map turned into a little bit more interactive of a piece – using Google maps, one can zoom in and out, pan, and click on each train placemark for more information. Then I got a little bit more crazy – I added in the Shore Line East and Amtrak trains passing over Metro-North territory, as well as the deadheads I was aware of. If anything, there could be more trains than what are currently shown, but for the most part it is fairly exact.

If you click the above image, the interactive map should open in a new window. You can click any train placemark for more information. Any train deadheading (moving from one place to another, but not carrying passengers) will be labeled “not in revenue service.” You can also toggle on and off the various lines to, for example, show only Harlem Line trains. By default all trains are turned on – and there are quite a lot of them. Did you realize there were quite that many? Perhaps the subtitle of this map should be “RTC’s are awesome and I salute them.”

I must thank Eric (@kc2hmv) for doing quite a bit to help me get this map looking awesome, as my programming skills are nonexistent (the toggle feature was all him!). Secondary thanks goes to this site, as I based the design of my map off of the clean and nicely done commuter map found there.