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Belowtown

New York City's subway, to scale, from underneath.

Belowtown draws every tunnel, platform and stairway of the subway where it really is under the street, and walks you through it in first person: the entrance to use, the turnstiles, the stairs, the platform, the train, the transfer passage, and the corner you come up on.

Not an MTA product

Belowtown is an independent app by WileyWorx LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) or New York City Transit. Route letters and numbers identify services. Line colours come from the schedule data the MTA publishes; the route badges, icons and maps in this app are Belowtown's own design, not the MTA's. Always follow posted signs and MTA staff instructions.

About the live data

Transit data in this app was obtained by Belowtown from MTA servers and is stored on Belowtown's own server, which the app reads from. It is provided as-is: Belowtown does not represent it as accurate, complete or timely. Live train positions and arrival times may lag the real thing by up to a minute or more, so they may not be real time; the app says how old the data is, and train positions between updates are estimated. When the app has no connection it runs on the timetable and says so.

Where the data comes from

• Routes, stations, timetables and live trains — MTA GTFS static and GTFS-realtime feeds, through Belowtown's own relay so the MTA sees one request, not one per phone.
• Station entrances, elevators and accessibility — MTA Subway Entrances and Exits and Stations datasets on data.ny.gov.
• Street corners and exit names — NYC Department of City Planning street centerlines (NYC Open Data).
• Buildings and ground — NYC Open Data building footprints (every building in Manhattan).
• Parks, neighbourhoods, sidewalks — NYC Parks properties, Department of City Planning neighbourhood tabulation areas and street centerlines (NYC Open Data).
• Service alerts — MTA public alerts feed.
• Crowding — MTA hourly ridership, by station.
• Fares — the MTA fare page; a single figure in the app, updated with each fare change.
• Elevators, escalators and station amenities — MTA asset inventory and station amenities tables.
• Buildings outside New York, piers, park paths, stadium outlines and airports — map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License (openstreetmap.org/copyright); building footprints © Microsoft, Open Database License; NJOGIS land.
• Photo-real 3D city — Google Maps Photorealistic 3D Tiles, streamed while you are online and never stored; the image credits for what is on screen are shown along the bottom of the map. Tunnels, stations and trains are drawn by Belowtown. You can switch it off in View.
• Live buses and bus times — MTA Bus Time, through Belowtown's own relay.
• PATH — Port Authority of New York and New Jersey GTFS feed.
• NYC Ferry — NYC Ferry GTFS and GTFS-realtime developer feeds.
• Address search — NYC GeoSearch (NYC Department of City Planning, Property Address Directory).
• Events near stations — Ticketmaster Discovery API; tickets open on Ticketmaster.
• Park trees — NYC Parks Street Tree and Forestry tree points.
• Terrain — 3DEP elevation data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, and NYC 2017 LiDAR (public domain).
• How the data is changed — NYC Open Data and data.ny.gov datasets are simplified, merged and placed in 3D for the map; transit feeds are cached for up to a minute.
• Street imagery — Apple Look Around, shown in Apple's own viewer; nothing from it is stored.

How exact is it?

Track alignments and station positions follow the MTA's own geometry. Platform depths are published for some stations and modelled for the rest from construction era and the lines they pass over and under; the order of levels is reliable, the exact footage is an estimate. Station interiors are built from documented layouts (track and platform counts, mezzanines, passages, stairs and elevators) for the large complexes and inferred from the data for the rest. A scanned interior replaces the built one where a scan exists.

Privacy

Your location is used only on this device to place you on the map and to time your directions. Belowtown does not collect, store or share it. Street-address searches are sent through our server to NYC GeoSearch, the City of New York's public address search, and are not linked to you. Saved trips and settings stay in this app. No cookies, no ads, no tracking.