We had a nice man by the name of Simon get in touch with us from Germany, who has designed his own Crossrail map. He’s taken the individual service pattern that is going to be running, and create his own map with each service shown by its own line. This is quite common he says in Germany for u-Bahn maps to be like this, and individually numbered, unlike on the TfL map where separate services aren’t shown like this. Thanks Simon.
Click on the map below for the large full size version!
We can’t believe we hadn’t stumbled on this sooner .. this was doing the round on twitter today, when it appeared as a link on the TransitMaps Tumblr, but it’s actually by the rather brilliant Max Roberts, who has created literally loads of different transit maps.
It’s a map of the tube, but done in ‘Vignell’ New York style – where the map shows the actual pattern of services. Look at how complicated Earl’s Court becomes for example – but rather beautifully shows how the service to Olympia actually is.
More over on Max’s own website here, of course.
New York style Tube Map
Last month, we were on an Overground train to Clapham Junction at the weekend which was suddenly diverted.
“This train will now be terminating at Battersea Park” announced the driver helpfully. Except .. it’s not very helpful, is it? That’s all they said – they didn’t announce any other stops that it would still be calling at or where Battersea Park is.
“This train will call at Wandsworth Road, and then go to Battersea Park instead of Clapham Junction” would have been a much more useful announcement,
So this Station Master spent time talking to people telling them where Battersea Park is on the map, because the carriage maps on the Overground doesn’t show it.
Except that it now does! As of last week, we noticed that new carriage maps have been put up individually showing all the different lines of the Overground – a bit better – but arguably more confusing because surely the carriage map of the line should pertain to the line that you’re on?
Again, it’s just added fuel to the fire that the Overground lines need to be coloured differently, and just to have the carriage maps on the lines on which the trains now actually run. But yes .. Battersea Park is shown as a pecked line ‘Limited Service’ on some in-carriage Overground maps.
Remember how when the Tube map changed back in May, an extra kink was put into the Central line (on the online and posted editions only) to make it Crossrail-ready? Well, something else has happened with the new January 2016 map.
(Also, let’s note the fact that Vauxhall has got a blue ‘accessibility blob’ even though the lift is not yet operational, and so the map is wrong – Vauxhall is not an accessible station)
The Tube map last year on the southern bit of the Overground around the New Cross area looked like this:
2015 Map
After Surrey Quays, the line went straight down to New Cross, with Clapham / West Croydon / Crystal Palace trains all following the same, then splitting with Queens Road Peckham on the Clapham branch and New Cross Gate heading straight down south.
Well, now with the new January 2016 Tube map, it’s changed and has become a ‘3-way split’, here:
2016 Map
So why have they done this, you might ask?
It can only be because of a new Overground station that’s coming between Queens Road Peckham and Surrey Quays – namely Surrey Canal Road. Well – except it isn’t any more it’s may end up being called ‘New Bermondsey‘ instead, and work was expected to have started by now, but we don’t think it has!
But that’s some forward planning by the Tube map designers to get the name of the Overground in early, just as they’ve done with moving the Central line to accomodate Crossrail when it appears on map.
Or will it be called New Bermondsey?
There’s a new document on the TfL website today, talking about the Northern Line extension upon which work has started and if it all goes to plan will be complete and open by 2020.
There’s just one odd thing we’ve noticed .. and that’s the name of the two new stations. They’ve all been marked as Nine Elms and Battersea on previous mock-up maps, but now it seems as if someone’s taken the decision to call the latter ‘Battersea Power Station‘ instead. Which is great … were it not for the fact that it’s ridiculous.
Battersea Power Station itself will not longer exist by the same the station opens, so it’ll be named after something that isn’t there (even if historically it is still known), and everyone will just call what it should be called anyway, which is ‘Battersea‘. Plus that fact that it’ll be the first tube station to have the word ‘station’ in the official names, and then you’ll be able to say in a sentence, “I’m getting the train to Battersea Power Station station”.
TfL have form for doing this though – why have a short name which fits better onto a small map, when three longer words will do instead? We can’t have ‘Vicarage Road’ on the Met as everyone will call it – no, it’s going to be called ‘Watford Vicarage Road’ instead because we’re all too stupid to know that it’s in Watford.
So … Battersea tube opens in 2020. Please remember to call it that …
(Also if we’re being really picky, we suspect that the new Northern Line will be dug deeper than the existing Victoria Line, meaning that that here it should go under the Victoria line, not on top of it. But you know … that’s really picky).
Battersea Station Station
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
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
Some visiting friends from Spain popped over to London recently, and with them they brought an old travel guide of London that they had on the shelf at home, which contained a map of the London Underground, “We can use that!” they thought. Here’s the map …
Spanish Map 1
Straight away you can see from the lack of Overground that this is an old map, but that the presence of the North London Line which goes all the way down to to North Woolwich which closed in 2006, shows that map they’re using is at least ten years old!
The station ‘blobs’ are an intruiging design themselves, as are the wide white connector blobs which is something that we’ve not seen before. Here’s a zoomed up picture of the central area:
Spanish Map 2
Here you can see some rather wonderful square-shaped terminus symbols (at Aldgate and Shoreditch) which are most unusual. What we do like though is it show how the Tube map might look if the blue-wheelchair-blobs were removed, and the wheelchair symbol just used next to the station name instead as some suggest. It looks a bit cluttered though when you realise that every station on the DLR has it.
A label saying ‘Charing Cross 100m’ rather nastily crashes into the Thames, and best of all is the most religious station on the network – look between Leicester Square and Holborn and you’ll discover Convent Garden !
As far as we can tell – this article from City Metric – has stumbled upon what may be TfL’s own internal geographically accurate London Rail map.
It contains physical features too such as London’s parks and the M25, as well as the Thames, and it does, as you would expect, let you get a real feel for how densely packed the stations are in the inner area of London as opposed to out in the suburbs.
Update:
TfL have now put this map on their own website on this page here.
