So we’re plugging away quietly on creating TramMaster, an App with details of all the stops in Croydon, and as part of it we’ve created our own map of the Tram system which has the route numbers which it seems that not everyone is aware of! So we’ve put them in showing that there are indeed four distinct lines on the tram system!
We hope to have TramMaster released soon in the new year, 2016.
Accessibility blobs! Do you love ’em, or hate ’em? It’s essential to know of course these days which stations have step-free accessibility and which don’t, but some argue that the main Tube map has been disrupted by too much information pollution (not just with accessibility blobs, but with all information on the Tube map) and that there should be once ‘simple’ standard Tube map for the majority of users, and then specialised versions for others.
The main issues that people have always had with ‘wheelchair blobs’ (as they’ve become known) is that on a standard Tube map, there are ‘ticks’ and then circular ‘connector blobs’ to represent stations which are and aren’t interchange points.
When a station then gets a ‘wheelchair blob’ it becomes circular in shape, and then there’s no way of knowing if its meant to represent an interchange station or not – therefore rendering the regular connector blob pointless.
Which is why we were intrigued to see this at Covent Garden station the other day, on a map on the wall, where the wheelchair blobs have been stuck to the side of of the regular tick/connector blobs of stations. A really nice touch, the first time we’ve seen it, and something that we wish was more prevalent.
Covent Garden Blobs
London Bridge is undergoing all sorts of construction work at the moment, leading to it very easy to get confused about which way to go to get to your platform and get the train. But it doesn’t help when platforms 1-3 are through this impossibly small gap – must be a squeeze to fit everyone through there at the height of the rush-hour.
This way!
When we set out to draw 3D maps of all Tube stations we soon realised that we’d have to do all the Overground and DLR too – and that meant a lot more work! So long in fact, that during that time MORE stations got added to the Overground, all the services out of Liverpool Street, but we haven’t added those onto Station Master (yet?) so there’s currently no plans to draw 3D maps for them.
But we have (finally!) finished ALL THE OTHER Overground stations when we took a trip to Watford this week, so that we could sketch out Watford Junction and turn it into a 3D map, it’ll be in the next update of the App – of course.
Yes.. yes they are! We found ourselves up in Watford recently (as Watford Junction is the last original Overground station that we had not drawn a 3D map for yet, so we went to get it done!) and whilst we were in the area, it seemed rude not to have a look and see what work was going on with the Croxley Link.
This is the view from the bridge looking east down to the old Watford Stadium Halt – there has been loads of work going on here to clear the vegetation where nature had overgrown everything, and we love the old red coloured Network South East lamps that are still here.
The new Watford Vicarage Road station will not open in the same spot – that will be to the west side of the bridge instead. When we looked there was a team of people in bright orange Hi-Vis taking photos and making notes of what they could see. So it would seem that work is being done … don’t expect it to be finished until 2020 though.
With the announcement of the new fares for 2016 by TfL, they also confirmed something that has been planned for while – Stratford station is being changed from being Zone 3 only, to be a boundary Zone 2 & 3 station.
But here’s the bit that we didn’t know about – several other stations in the area are also becoming boundary 2 & 3, that were previously just zone 3 – basically following the DLR line south, those being – Stratford International, Stratford High Street, Abbey Road, West Ham, Star Lane and Canning Town and all changing too.
But the really interesting thing, is that the stations that are currently boundary Zone2/3 in the area don’t appear to be changing. Hang on, what! Yes – they will ALSO be boundary Zone 2 and 3.
And that got us thinking. If you look at the boundary zone between 2 and 3 in a geographical way it’s currently a nice smooth curve, but when the changes happen, it will change to look like, well … this!
The Boundary of Zones 2 and 3 in the east
Tucked away on the TfL website since last week is a new Tube map … with walking times. Looking extremely similar to something that was produced independently during the last round of Tube strikes, this is the first time that TfL have ever produced their own official walking times map.
Note that it only shows walking times between stations that you can get a train between, and doesn’t show handy walking connections – e.g. between Aldgate and Aldgate East. Nevertheless it’s an interesting new map to come out, and might make you realise that a journey could be quicker if you walked it rather than enter a station and wait for a train…
Walking times
Whilst the BBC speculates that Night Tube may not happen altogether, we can bring you more exciting news – Finsbury Park station is finally getting a gateline!
It will therefore lose its tag of ‘busiest station on the network without ticket barriers’, but we bet it makes a difference to revenue figures. The main entrance (pictured below) as well as the Wells Terrace and Seven Sisters Road entrance are all getting ticket barriers. They’ve been installed, but not switched on yet – but expect it to be during November.
Finsbury Park Gateline
After three months of work, during which Trams had been terminating at Dundonald Road and not going Wimbledon, the station reopened yesterday on Monday (OK, actually it was open late on Sunday) for trams to stop there again, and there’s a brand new platform.
The work that has been done is a ‘runaround’ the same as how Overground trains stop at Clapham Junction in that the second platform is now behind the first one at Wimbledon station, and they’re now called platforms 10a and 10b.
Double track
This means that come the new year, there will be an extra four trams per hour running to the Wimbledon branch – twelve instead of the current eight which is a nice bonus to the capacity on this part of the line.
It goes quite a way …
We’ve updated out Station Master 3D map of Wimbledon to reflect this, and we just might be working on something that’s Tram specific too! Watch this space …
