Show HN: NYC Subway Simulator and Route Designer

119 HeavenFox 11 7/7/2025, 2:13:56 PM buildmytransit.nyc ↗

Hello HN!

As a long term NYC resident, I have read countless articles on ideas tweaking subway services, but always found them hard to follow without visual aid. So over the long weekend I decided to build one. It has all the basic features: trains would spawn at their origin, stop at stations, and slow down if it gets too close to another. You can also design custom routes by piecing tracks together.

Have fun, and let me know what you think!

Comments (11)

blehn · 29m ago

I want to love this but the visual language makes it kind of unusable for me. Why not match the track and train colors to their line color (red for the 123) and then use different visual indicators for train state (stopped, at station, etc)?

For example: Selected: Black fill Normal operation: Color fill with 100% opacity Slowing down: 70% opacity Stopped: striped fill, 50% opacity At station: pulsing opacity

darthplagius · 4h ago

I contract out work to MTA, specifically their AI/ innovation teams.

I'm 100% showing this to them today just for fun. They'll get a kick out of it.

Aaronstotle · 1h ago

Finally, I will make a subway that crosses the park!

evanb · 39m ago

92nd and Broadway, CPW, 5th Ave, Lex, 2nd Avenue, follow Astoria Blvd to the Grand Central to LGA is a no-brainer.

kiwibyproxy · 5h ago

Very cool! It would be nice to have a bit more information in the readme about the project structure and e.g. how to adapt it for other cities :)

indoordin0saur · 3h ago

Very nice! I thought of doing the same thing in the past!

xnx · 10h ago

Very cool.

Sometimes when I Edit Routes and click an "<- Add" button I get the console error "Uncaught Error: coordinates must be an array of two or more positions" and the page blanks out.

HeavenFox · 9h ago

Thanks - this is likely due to adding two tracks facing each other, i.e.

-->-->-- --<--<--

I'll add some logic to prevent such options from showing up.

ars · 3h ago

I can't figure out how to add a route from Bay Ridge to Clinton in NJ. That's my wishlist subway - got to Newark Airport from Brooklyn without going through Manhattan.

Edit: Actually Clifton is in NY, and playing with Google maps there's ZERO public transport from Staten Island to NJ, except by going through Manhattan!

So my idea wouldn't help anyway, unless they extended that subway all the way over the Goethals Bridge.

HeavenFox · 3h ago

As a Brooklynite I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately this is more of a service designer as opposed to a track designer, and it only works with existing infrastructure :(

pimlottc · 8h ago

This is sadly not mobile friendly in an amusing way; the map controls are nice and legible but they block basically the entire map. If there was a way to minimize them (perhaps automatically), this might work well on mobile.

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