Take the Tomato 2 Stops to the Sunflower

The colors of the New York City subway map have been described as a rainbow. Turns out, they could also be described as a grove.

Tomato red.

The N, R, Q and W lines sport a shade called “sunflower yellow.” The Nos. 1, 2, and 3 trains use “tomato red.” And the No. 7 line, proudly purple, is actually a hue known as “raspberry.” (Those are usually heard on the 7 only when the Mets are having a bad day.)

Every shade in the subway color scheme has a secret name, known only to the handful of transit workers who oversee the system’s maps and signs. But on a recent visit to the New York City Transit sign shop in Brooklyn, Off The Rails was offered a glimpse at the palette.

The colors, which have stayed static since the map changed to its current design in 1979, are provided by an outside paint supplier for use on the system’s signs. Each shade has its own moniker.

The hue for the A, C and E lines is “vivid blue.” The Lexington Avenue line, which runs through the moneyed Upper East Side, has “apple green.” The L line is “slate gray,” and the J and Z lines are “terra cotta brown.”

Colors are assigned based on a subway route’s “trunk line” – that is, which avenue it runs along in Manhattan. (This might provide fodder to those who feel the city’s transit service is biased toward Manhattanites.)

The recent decision to re-route the M line up Avenue of the Americas, instead of its previous run into southern parts of Brooklyn, is why the route is about to lose its terra cotta tint. All lines along Sixth Avenue are “bright orange,” and the first circular M logos of that color have already been printed by the transit agency’s silkscreen machines.

Subway colors have shifted over time. The scheme now in place was adapted from the Modernist map by Massimo Vignelli in the early 1970s, an abstract masterpiece that was scrapped because its right angles left riders too confused.

Some of Mr. Vignelli’s colors were kept in place, according to Michael Hertz, the designer of the subsequent, less right-angled 1979 map. “We felt there was a familiarity already with dark blue on Eighth Avenue,” Mr. Hertz said in a recent interview.

But Mr. Hertz, whose firm is still in charge of maintaining the transportation authority’s maps, said he was skeptical of a few of his predecessor’s other choices. “His Lex colors were weak,” Mr. Hertz said. “One was a pink, one was a light gray.”