> Vignelli designed the iconic signage for the New York City Subway system during this period, and the 1970s–80s map of the system.

If you're Vignelli, you can tell the MTA which font to pick. If you're not him (or someone of equally high standing), you will most likely have to work with a style guide someone else thought out, and use whatever font(s) the style guide says you should use...

Plus, that was back in the seventies. Nowadays, every self-respecting company wants to have their own font (even if it's indistinguishable from Hel(l)vetica/Arial/whatever for >99% of people) - https://www.hvdfonts.com/custom-cases

For the uninformed like me, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Vignelli says "Vignelli's designs were famous for following a minimal aesthetic and a narrow range of typefaces that Vignelli considered to be perfect in their genre, including Akzidenz-Grotesk, Bodoni, Helvetica, Garamond No. 3 and Century Expanded. ... "Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.""

If not just one, a small handful of maybe 3-5 fonts. The idea that someone needs to scroll through a list of hundreds of fonts every time they have a new project, and pick multiple fonts for every project, seems to mostly be a form of procrastination… or leaning on a font to cover up a weak design.