When it comes to the New York City subway, what once was old is new again.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday revealed a revamped map of the city’s subway system that takes its cues from a 1970s throwback that was cheered by design connoisseurs and reviled by many traditionalists.
It is the first major overhaul of the subway map to be introduced by the authority in almost 50 years.
The reveal of the map, on a train platform in Times Square, was another step in the M.T.A.’s campaign to revitalize the subway’s image. The move comes at a time when the authority is lobbying for billions of dollars to upgrade the city’s mass transit system, while fending off criticisms from Washington about crime and congestion pricing.
The new map — a brightly colored variation on the current version that sacrifices some geographic detail for clarity — is reminiscent of the 1972 Unimark map, a modernist streamlining of the subways that straightened the curvy contours of the system. The map was short lived, replaced in 1979 by a version resembling the current one.
Critics of the Unimark map bemoaned its stark departure from conventional maps. Landmarks seemed squished together. Bodies of water were beige. Tourists who misjudged the distance between stops were confounded. But fans saw an elegant solution to an increasingly complicated system.
The updated version, which blends elements of the Unimark design with a successor known as the Tauranac map — named after John Tauranac, a well-regarded New York mapmaker — is already being displayed on digital monitors, and will be posted in subway cars and platforms over the next several weeks, the M.T.A. said.
For Janno Lieber, the authority’s chairman, the occasion was also an opportunity to tie his ambitions for the system to a critical moment in its past.
“This is a linchpin moment, like in 1979, when we started to fix the subway system,” Mr. Lieber said, referring to the year before the M.T.A. debuted its first capital plan to upgrade the aging transit system. As then, the system is in dire need of new trains and infrastructure improvements. So far, the State Legislature has yet to fully fund the latest $68 billion plan.
Two of the biggest alterations address the legibility of transfer points at some of the busiest hubs and the depiction of the system’s accessibility features, said Shanifah Rieara, the authority’s chief customer officer.
Mr. Lieber declined to say how much the redesign cost, but said it was paid for “entirely in house,” without a stand-alone budget.
The subway system has been looking less and less like its old self. Its iconic MetroCard, in use since 1993, will be phased out by the end of the year. Subway turnstiles are being fitted with half-moon fins and serrated barriers to deter fare evasion. Waist-high metal barriers are rising at the edge of platforms, to prevent riders from falling onto the tracks. And some station benches — if one can call them that — are getting skinnier.
The makeover is unfolding as the transit system has been castigated in recent weeks by Sean Duffy, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Last month, using a vulgarity, he compared the subway with a toilet, after threatening to cut off untold funding for the M.T.A. if it did not comply with a detailed request for crime and policing stats.
The Trump administration has also ordered New York to kill its congestion pricing program, a new toll for drivers in Manhattan, by mid-April. The president has claimed, without evidence, that the plan will hurt the local economy.
But Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has vowed to keep charging the toll, which is expected to raise $15 billion for long overdue upgrades to the subway, bus and regional rail systems.
As a centerpiece of the M.T.A.’s recent face-lift, the new map is likely to invoke a range of responses from riders and armchair cartographers alike.
Karen Hedju, 57, a resident of Morningside Heights in Manhattan, was one of the first to lay eyes on the latest design.
“Meh,” Ms. Hedju said, as she squinted at the design on a color printout. “It looks cluttered,” she added.
Terence Richardson, 56, a home health care supervisor, was more enthusiastic, praising the more detailed legend in the top-right corner.
Others noted the design’s similarities to London’s transit map.
The reveal was also a vindication of sorts for the designers of the 1970s version — more diagram than map — that split New Yorkers a generation ago.
The 1972 Unimark map, created by the designers Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda and a team including Joan Charysyn, was a major departure from past iterations, said Jodi Shapiro, the curator of the New York Transit Museum. Its angular style — depicting Central Park as a square, not a rectangle, and flattening the city’s diverse topography — was a bridge too far for some, she said.
For those with a more personal connection to the debate, the return was long overdue.
“Great! Finally!” said Luca Vignelli, the son of the senior Mr. Vignelli, who died in 2014.
Mr. Vignelli, reached by phone in Italy, was working on a retrospective of his parents’ work that will run in Milan and showcase the 1972 map.
“I wish he was around to enjoy it,” he said.
Sean Piccoli contributed reporting.
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system. More about Stefanos Chen
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