MTA Subway Symphony

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MTA Subway Symphony

A live sonification and map of the New York City subway. Every time a train is predicted to arrive at a station, that station lights up on the map and a sound plays that is unique to the train's line.

Where the data comes from

Your browser reads the MTA's public GTFS‑realtime feeds directly — the same real-time trip data that powers the arrival countdowns in the stations. All eight subway feeds are polled every 15 seconds and no API key is required. Station locations come from the MTA's open “Subway Stations” dataset.

How arrivals become sound

• Each feed lists every active train and its predicted stop times. The app plays a train's sound at the moment it is predicted to reach its next stop, so arrivals are heard in real time between refreshes.
• Every service (1, 2, 3, A, C, E, …) has its own sound and its official MTA color. In Chords mode each line plays a distinct chord; in Chimes mode each line is a distinct metallic ping.
• When many trains arrive at once the sounds are staggered a few milliseconds apart, so a burst rolls out like an arpeggio instead of one loud hit.
• Each sound is panned left or right to match where its station sits on the map.

Reading the screen

• Every dot is a station; it glows in the line's color as a train arrives.
• tracking is roughly how many trains are running system-wide right now.
• arrivals counts how many arrivals have played since you pressed Start.
• The legend lists each line with its arrival count; the newest arrivals scroll along the bottom.

Controls

Switch Chords / Chimes to change the sound, Dark / Light to change the theme, and use the volume slider to taste.

This is a fully static site: your browser fetches the feeds itself, so no server is involved. Free, open-source software under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license — source on GitHub. Part of alexrsaff.dev. Real-time data © MTA, used under their open-data terms. Not affiliated with the MTA.