List of New York City Subway Stations - Station Configurations

Station Configurations

Out of the system's 468 stations, about 280 are underground and about 150 are elevated, the rest are in open cuts, at-grade and on embankments.

• Typical underground station

• Typical entrance to an underground station

• Typical elevated station

• Typical entrance to an elevated station

Many stations have mezzanines. These allow for passengers to enter from multiple entrances and proceed to the correct platform without having to cross the street before entering. They also allow for crossover between uptown and downtown trains on side platforms or a pair of island platforms, which is very useful when local tracks are closed for construction.

Due to the large number of transit lines, one platform or set of platforms often serves more than one service (unlike other rapid transit systems, including the Paris Metro but like some lines on the London Underground). A passenger needs to look at the signs hung at the platform entrance steps and over each track to see which trains stop there and when, and at the arriving train to see which train it is.

Almost everywhere expresses run, they run on the inner one (of 3) or two (of 4) tracks, and locals run on the outer two tracks. In a 3-track configuration, the center track can be used toward the center of the city in the morning and away from the center in the evening, though not every 3-track line has that express service.

There are a number of common platform configurations:

• On a 2-track line, a station may have one center island platform used for trains in both directions, or 2 side platforms, one for a train in each direction.
• For a 3-track or 4-track line, local stops will have side platforms and the middle one or two tracks will not stop at the station.
• For most 3- or 4-track express stops, there will be two island platforms, one for the local and express in one direction, and another for the local and express in the other direction. Each island platform provides a cross-platform interchange between the local and express services.

In a few cases, a 4-track station has an island platform for the center express tracks and two side platforms for the outside local tracks. This occurs only at three stations near major railway stations where the next station along the line is also an express station with the more common platform configuration. The purpose of splitting the platforms is to limit overcrowding by preventing cross-platform interchanges between local and express services. This occurs at Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center on the IRT Eastern Parkway Line (2 3 4 5 trains) with adjacent express station at Nevins Street, where the connection is to the Atlantic Terminal of the Long Island Rail Road; and 34th Street – Penn Station on both the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line (1 2 3 trains) and IND Eighth Avenue Line (A C E trains), with adjacent express stations at Times Square – 42nd Street and 42nd Street – Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the connection is to Pennsylvania Station, one of the two major New York City railway stations. This does not occur with the connection to New York's other major station, Grand Central Terminal, at Grand Central on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line (4 5 6 <6> trains), which has no adjacent express station.

There is one notable 6-track local station, DeKalb Avenue, where trains to or from the Manhattan Bridge (B D Q) either stop at the outer tracks of the island platforms, or pass through and bypass the station on the middle tracks ("express tracks") (D N). Trains to or from the Montague Street Tunnel (N R) stop across the platform from the respective outer track.

Also, some stations have two levels. The levels may divide trains between them in various ways, for example:

• the local trains on one level and the express trains on another level
• trains of two different lines on two different levels
• trains of two different directions on two different levels, with a cross-platform interchange on each level