September 2009 tube map

[Deleted]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8260943.stm

Boris Johnson has ordered TfL to restore the River Thames to the map.

[Deleted]

Mr Johnson said: "I hope Londoners will imagine the Thames in place until it reappears on the maps, and will not forget their beautiful river."

Please tell me I'm not the only who laughed at that? Removing it from the tube map doesn't remove it from the city!

[Ben]

I'd like to think Beck is p*ssing himself with laughter at this whole episode.

[kewgardensteleport]

Sept 17, 2009 14:27:13 GMT @tom747 said:

Mr Johnson said: "I hope Londoners will imagine the Thames in place until it reappears on the maps, and will not forget their beautiful river."

Please tell me I'm not the only who laughed at that? Removing it from the tube map doesn't remove it from the city!

I laughed, but not for that reason... "Beautiful" isn't the first adjective that springs to mind for much of the Thames.

[21146]

The poster version, which differs in some ways from the pocket version:

www.flickr.com/photos/24772733@N05/3926392999/

[21146]

TFL are still incabable of updating the on-line vesrion.

[Deleted]

Maybe they thought it was so fail after reading this thread (I've heard the bosses in TfL read this forum) that they would re-make it before uploading it to The Great Internet.

[uzairjubilee]

Looks dead without the Thames.

[Deleted]

Not going to be remade until December though is it?

[Rich32]

BBC have a posted a pdf of the poster map.

[uzairjubilee]

Sept 17, 2009 21:39:05 GMT @tom747 said:

Not going to be remade until December though is it?

Nope

[Deleted]

TfL have tried but failed in decluttering. They should have gone the whole hog especially with the daggers and access blobs. There were many other ways of improving the diagram, some of the things they have decided to get rid of weren't clutter.

[mrfs42]

You're all probably going to think me a heathen and deserving of being thrown into the lake of fire and various nether hells for saying this; but I actually quite like this map!

[Chris M]

I like the idea behind it, and the overall look is good, but it is let down by the detail - Acton Town, Edgware Road, no index, no grid lines, no zone information at all, Canary Wharf, Paddington, access symbols...

[Deleted]

I think Paddington is now prepared for the T-Cup service

From comments over various websites I have read I am astonished to see that people thought that the diagrams we've had in very recent years were actually good designs.

[Rich32]

Sept 18, 2009 8:53:03 GMT mrfs42 said:

You're all probably going to think me a heathen and deserving of being thrown into the lake of fire and various nether hells for saying this; but I actually quite like this map!

I'm with MRFS on this - when I first saw it I thought it is a vast improvement. Granted it appears that some people are fixated by the river, or lack of, but it is so much clearer.
All it really needs now is the removal of the DDA blobs and another proof read to clear the extraneous daggers etc.

[thirstquensher]

I think it's sad that the kneejerk reaction from the press, and Boris, is likely to case a complete U-turn on this. I thought for once common sense had prevailed. All the newspaper reports fail to mention that zones did not appear on maps previous to c.2002 and was a recent development. No-one before then complained that zones weren't on the map. And just how many people actually use gridlines? I don't know a single person who does.

What I don't understand is this; how come Boris can be in charge of the Tube Map all of a sudden? Isn't this really just political meddling? After all, if every change to the Tube Map is under Boris's control, doesn't this mean that it should have been left in his 'to sign off' tray and not actioned until he returned from New York? I suspect not, because it's not supposed to be Boris's (or any Mayor's) call to directly dabble in TfL marketing affairs - I assumed (as I'm sure TfL did, quite rightly) that the MD of TfL Marketing & Communications was in charge of TfL Marketing & Communications. If that is indeed the case, Boris should simply be in a position to apply pressure but not bark an immediate 'undo this now' edict. Perhaps it is this sort of meddling that the Met Police were worried of receiving from City Hall.

[max]

Well, when we conduct usability studies looking at the actual configuration of the lines, we use a standard Underground map with all the rubbish taken off it, and station names tidied up in the absence of zone boundaries. In other words, this:

privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~mjr/reduced_tfl_c.jpg

[Dstock7080]

Sept 17, 2009 20:39:58 GMT @21146 said:

The poster version, which differs in some ways from the pocket version:
www.flickr.com/photos/24772733@N05/3926392999/

Pocket version:
cover: tinyurl.com/nud2sf
map: tinyurl.com/l558nh

Notice differences to Poster at:
Uxbridge-Rayners Lane
Epping
Woolwich Arsenal

[Deleted]

Richmond branch wasn't so cramped either.

It seems they finally removed ELL from the 'lines' list!

[Rich32]

Sept 18, 2009 13:55:30 GMT max said:

Well, when we conduct usability studies looking at the actual configuration of the lines, we use a standard Underground map with all the rubbish taken off it, and station names tidied up in the absence of zone boundaries. In other words, this:

privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~mjr/reduced_tfl_c.jpg

Exactly what I had in mind (several posts above) - Hopefully something broadly similar will appear in December.

[Phil]

Sept 18, 2009 13:27:01 GMT @thirstquensher said:

All the newspaper reports fail to mention that zones did not appear on maps previous to c.2002 and was a recent development. No-one before then complained that zones weren't on the map.

Previous to 2002 very few people, especially visitors were using Oyster PAYG and therefore asked for destinations at ticket offices etc..
It's the self topup facility that makes zones on the map a current necessity.

[Ben]

benedict.fotopic.net/p61041791.html

Started fiddling with the poster version. The only great difference atm is the straightened GobLin; so obvious an idea its bizzare how it wasn't actually done for this edition. Deffinitely a work in progress, as the river demonstrates!

[kewgardensteleport]

Sept 19, 2009 10:31:28 GMT Ben said:

benedict.fotopic.net/p61041791.html

Started fiddling with the poster version. The only great difference atm is the straightened GobLin; so obvious an idea its bizzare how it wasn't actually done for this edition. Deffinitely a work in progress, as the river demonstrates!

I like the Jubilee at Waterloo, but that has messed up the Drain.

[Ben]

Yeah. I'm either thinking of straightening out the Jub and lengthening out the ELR and DLR or putting the W&C on a seperate blob.

[max]

With Oyster, stray out of a paid zone, and you get charged a little bit extra.

With a travelcard, stray out of a paid zone, and get caught, and you get charged a lot extra. This would have been a problem right from the very first day that zones were introduced.

[norbitonflyer]

One change which is long overdue is representing the Wimbleware as a separate route. Originally the map showed who owned which line, so (for example) the Circle was not shown as a separate line, but ran over parts of the District and Met. Gradually the various services operated by the former Metropolitan Railway have been split off and given separate identities (Circle, Northern City, ELL, H&C, and "Main"), but the District colour still covers two quite distinct (albeit overlapping) routes.
Yes, Parsons Green depot serves both routes: so what, Hammersmith serves two lines
Yes, south of Earls Court they share tracks: there are plenty of other examples, some of them (Aldgate East to Barking, for example) being longer. Two show two colours to Wimbledon would hardly "clutter up" the map - on the contrary, from the aesthetic point of view, a bit more bulk in the "empty quarter" might actually improve the balance.

Historically, the route north of HSK was not part of the MDR but the Met, so there's no justification for making it green.

Yes, it uses stock common with other lines: but not with the District! It would be more logical to have it (and the Circle) coloured pink! Show them as one line, the T-cup plus branches to Barking and Wimbledon: Having only one colour at ERd would make it much less cluttered and easier to show which is the through route and which the terminators.

Now that both types of stock on the Wimbledon line look so alike to the average "normal" (the half-red fronts of the pre-refurbished D-stock having readily distinguished them from C-stock both before and after the latter was refurbished) it is harder for regular users to tell them apart at a glance.

A better name than "Wimbleware" would be needed though.

[Deleted]

I've been playing with the new map also, but thinking forward to what they may do to the circle in the next version.


I've decided to make the terminus clear by splitting the two bits of the circle at Edgware Road. I'm still not happy with the edits I made around EC, I was aiming for some symmetry between the circle and district curves there. It'd probably be better if I tweaked it back to the original 3-blob interchange, that'd also allow for the Wimbleware line suggestion as mentioned above.

[Chris M]

If you have two separate blobs for Paddington you either need two labels for it or one label positioned between both, the Bakerloo/SSR one looks more like another Edgware Road station on that map.

[Deleted]

Yes, an oversight on my part.