The New York Subway Renaming Project

1. Stations that have more than one name for the same station. For example, since I live downtown, I regularly use both the Delancey St and Broadway-Lafayette F stops, but if one is instructing someone else on how to get somewhere, you have to remind them to get off at Essex Street or Bleecker Street respectively to get on the F line at these points. Yes, there are explanations, but it's bad design, period.
2. Stations that have the same name as other stations. It happens all the time. In the old days, when, say, the F was called the 6th Avenue Line with regularity, you could feel comfortable about a third of the time when you got to, for example, 14th St, you would come out at 6th and 14th. But, in the end, this only really worked very well in parts of Midtown and Queens, where the grid is well defined. Everywhere else, you just have to know. Now, naming convention requires that we say "the 14th Street F stop", because "14th" won't do the job. The worst case is on the B line where there are two "7th Avenue" stops -- one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.
3. Stations named after a street that is miles long. If I wanted to go to the latest hip bar on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, I had better know that the Smith St stop isn't going to get me there, being at the end of Smith where the bars aren't quite yet, and the Red Hook industrial zone still is.
4. Stations named after numbered streets. I know, hard to avoid in New York. But numbers are hard to remember. And they're terribly inhuman. Just a pet peeve of mine.

So here's the punchline. I went to the trouble of renaming all the stops of the New York City subway system, towards the end of fixing the above problems. The linked map is the result. I used the following criteria:

1. First, if a stop is directly at a well-known landmark that isn't served by any other stops (e.g. Grand Central) it should be named after that landmark.
2. If a stop uniquely serves the central area of a well-known neighborhood, it should be named after that neighborhood. The Bedford Ave L stop is pretty much the only way to get to North Williamsburg, so that would be a good rename.
3. If a stop uniquely serves a less-well-known landmark or neighborhood, it should have that name. The thing about names is that even if people don't know what a name refers to, that the station has a unique name is important. I once lived a block from the Russell Square station in north-central London. It didn't matter that I never went to Russell Square, or even knew where it was. What mattered was that was what my station's name was.
4. Using this same principle of naming, we deal with stations without such clear-cut options. You with see that the 7th Ave F stop is renamed "Park Slope" on my map, even though plenty of other stops serve Park Slope. My thinking was that people know the neighborhood Park Slope, and this stop is right smack dab in the middle of it, so if any station is going to get that name, it should be this one. You'll see that "North Slope" and "South Slope" options are also offered, helping the naive visitor better find the right area. At this point, the naming becomes a judgement call, and sometimes elegance, or history, or something else come into play.