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ERA BULLETIN — MAY, 2020 The Bulletin Electric Railroaders’ Association, Incorporated Vol. 63, No. 5 May, 2020 The Bulletin FORMER ACTING LIRR PRESIDENT Published by the Electric Railroaders’ RAYMOND KENNY PASSES AWAY Association, Inc. P. O. Box 3323 Former Acting LIRR President Raymond leading the railroad’s response to the con- Grand Central Station New York, NY 10163 Kenny, a Lindenhurst resident whose child- cerns raised by a Newsday investigation hood fascination with trains led to a railroad- about the dangers of wide gaps between For general inquiries, or Bulletin submissions, ing career that spanned a half-century, died trains and station platforms. contact us at April 18 from complications of COVID-19, his "I was not stressed, because I had a lot of bulletin@erausa. org family said. help. Everybody was pulling the same or on our website at erausa. org/contact His family said Kenny was admitted to weight," Kenny said in 2014 about his time Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center as Acting President. "I really did enjoy the Editorial Staff: about a week earlier with symptoms of the job. I tried to bring the place together." Jeff Erlitz coronavirus, and later tested positive and After Helena Williams was appointed as the Editor-in-Chief was put on a ventilator. Kenny, who most railroad’s 38th president, starting on June 18, Ron Yee recently headed rail operations for NJ Trans- 2007, Kenny took on the position of Senior Tri-State News and it, was 69. Vice President of Operations. Williams, who Commuter Rail Editor In a 2014 interview, Kenny said he became is now a Deputy County Executive in Nas- Alexander Ivanoff interested in the LIRR while riding the train sau, acknowledged leaning heavily on Ken- North American and between his Cedarhurst home and Molloy ny’s experience and wisdom as her “right- World News Editor High School in hand man.” David Ross Queens. He began Kenny was credited Production Manager working at the railroad with coming up with Copyright © 2020 ERA as a summer ticket key strategies for the clerk in the early LIRR’s Double Track 1970s, while pursuing project between This Month’s a bachelor's degree in Farmingdale and Cover Photo: business administra- Ronkonkoma and for In a scene long-gone from old-town Brussels, Bel- tion from John Jay its East Side Access gium, Standard motor 1263 College. After gradu- link to Grand Central (Tramways Bruxellois, 1936) ating, he was hired Terminal. is operating on the 28 route to St Lambert at the full-time on the man- After serving as a Rue du Marché aux Poulets agement side of the “champion” in the rail- stop on 8/13/1968 (Photographer unknown, LIRR as a junior in- road’s recovery from from Eurotrams listserver) dustrial engineer. superstorm Sandy, Kenny worked in according to Williams, various management Raymond Kenny. Kenny retired from the Railway Age photograph In This Issue: roles until being pro- LIRR in 2014. He Michael Hertz, moted in the early 2000s to Chief Transporta- worked in the private sector until being hired NYC Subway tion Officer. When then-LIRR president by NJ Transit in January of 2019 as Senior Map Designer, James Dermody retired in September, 2006, Vice President and General Manager of Rail Kenny served as Acting President for ten Operations. (Newsday, April 18) Passes Away at months. In the role, Kenny was charged with 87…Page 2 1 NEW YORKERA DIVISION BULLETIN BULLETIN — MAY, OCTOBER, 2020 2000 MICHAEL HERTZ, NYC SUBWAY MAP DESIGNER, PASSES AWAY AT 87 by Subutay Musluoglu (Photographs by the author) It is with sadness that we report that Michael Hertz, In the postwar years, attempts were made to bring a the graphic arts designer responsible for the 1979 rede- more modern look to the subway map. The Board of sign of the New York City Subway system map, died on Transportation gave way to the New York City Transit February 18, 2020. The map in current use is a direct Authority (TA) in 1953, and after retaining the Hagstrom descendant of Hertz's original design and is by far the maps for a few more years, the TA embarked on a rede- longest serving map in continuous use in the subway's sign. In 1958 it retained George Salomon to develop a history. new map. Salomon had previously approached the A cause for Mr. Hertz's death has not been given but Board of Transportation with ideas for a new map but was reported to have been at Nassau University Medi- had been turned down. When the TA took over it was cal Center in East Meadow on Long Island, which is more open to new ideas and gave Salomon an oppor- also the town where he resided. Media outlets did not tunity. report his passing until February 25. Mr. Salomon had studied modernist graphic design Mr. Hertz's involvement in the subway map began in and typography in England and had clearly been influ- the late 1970s when the MTA was in search of a solu- enced by Harry Beck's map, as reflected in his proposal tion to a challenge that has vexed subway riders and to the TA, which was a broad effort that went beyond planners alike for decades — how to navigate the com- just a map. He sought to revamp the entire system of plex subway system. A map developed by the famous wayfinding, signage, and customer communications in graphic designer Massimo Vignelli had been introduced the subway in the interest of clarity and uniformity. in 1972 but its usefulness to subway riders was quite The TA ultimately did not go as far as Salomon envi- limited. The chief complaints centered around two fun- sioned, though the map was redesigned. It still retained damental issues — that it was difficult to determine the distinction between the three divisions, but it was which lines were local or express or even in service at simplified and made clear enough to serve for almost a certain times, and that there was no relation of the sub- decade with just occasional tinkering. However, its limi- way system relative to the city's actual physical geogra- tations became very apparent by the late 1960s. phy. In 1967 the TA opened the Chrystie Street Connec- The history of guiding passengers using the New York tion, which integrated the services of the BMT's Eastern City subway has been as convoluted and complicated and Southern Divisions with the IND. This seminal as the history of the system itself. In the early years the event in NYC subway history reordered service patterns responsibility for providing a map to customers fell to that had been in place for decades, creating massive the private companies operating the subways, so that confusion among the public and raising the clamor for a the IRT and BMT each had their own map, with no indi- better map. cation of the existence of their rival. The demand only grew further a year later, when the The building of the IND by the City of New York's MTA was created in 1968 with a great desire to present Board of Transportation only complicated matters fur- a new brand and image to the public, commensurate ther when it introduced yet a third map, which actually with the mission heralded by the agency's creation, to did reference the two other legacy subway systems at integrate the region's disparate rail systems. transfer locations. To make matters worse, maps would First came a new graphics standard developed by the be produced by other sources such as telephone com- firm Unimark, which designated the Standard font as panies, banks, department stores, and such, making for the one and only font to be used for all service infor- a haphazard collection of maps of varying styles and mation, wayfinding, signage, and MTA communications sizes which did not serve the riding public well. materials. This was followed by the introduction of a The situation improved somewhat after 1940 following collage of colors and bullets for each individual subway the unification of the three systems into one owned and line. And then came the Vignelli map in 1972. And when operated by the Board of Transportation. They contract- it was decided four years later that another rework was ed with the Hagstrom Map Company, which produced needed, the door opened for Michael Hertz. the first map representing the entire system, using a And so, in 1976 the MTA put out an RFP for the different color for each of the legacy systems, now re- "Design of a New Subway Map." Hertz's firm won the ferred to as divisions. Hagstrom had already developed contract and thus embarked on an effort which has giv- prior experience in this regard, having made maps for en us the map in use today. each of the legacy systems prior to unification. Those Their vision for the map attempted to reconcile the maps were notable for emphasizing each system sepa- layout of the subway with the city's geography. To rately, with the other two systems shown as just simple achieve this, and to fit within the confines of a subway black lines. (Continued on page 3) 2 ERA BULLETIN — MAY, 2020 Michael Hertz Passes Away Hertz's work, identifying himself in public and in the me- dia as the "Chief Designer of the NYC Subway Map." (Continued from page 2) This was a blatant false claim, and Mr. Hertz was forced car's standard map frame, they distorted the city's land to play a game of cleanup by writing letters, presenting mass in a way that widened those parts of the city evidence, and enlisting the assistance of colleagues where the subway system is densest.

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