As you can see, he’s carried across the New York style of showing all the service patterns on the map. In New York, this is used to distinguish between local and express services, while in London, it reveals the secret inner workings of the lines that the Tube Map never really gets around to showing. For example, Metropolitan line services out to Rickmansworth and beyond don’t stop between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Moor Park.
It’s just a fact of life in London: service patterns are indicated on the platform with signs and announcements, rather than on the map. I well remember standing on the westbound District Line platforms at Earl’s Court back in 2003, watching for the arrow on the indicator board to point towards Wimbledon so I could get back to where I was staying in London at the time.
Unfortunately, if you took the Tube Map’s design principles – show the line, but not the service patterns – and applied it to New York, you’d come up with a map that everyone would decry as useless because it doesn’t show express versus local. This is probably why such a map doesn’t seem to exist.
I guess you could add extra route lines to get around this problem, but then it wouldn’t truly be in the style of the Tube Map, would it?
Edit: You can buy prints of my attempt at such a map here.
Inspired by this schematic map of the Sydney Suburban Network from 1969 (June 2012, 2 stars), I decided to create a retro-looking map of the rail network in 1950 in a similar style.
Transit Maps says:
I think you’ve nailed the look and feel of this piece quite well, although – like me with my digital recreation of a 1939 map of the Sydney network – you’ve discovered that modern computer-designed artwork can look way too clean to pass for something made over half a century ago, despite the weathered paper texture you’ve added.
The system still looks very recognisable – there’s a few more branch lines than today and the City Circle is still incomplete – but this map shows the majority of the Sydney Trains network we still use today.
Kielce is a mid-sized (200,000 inhabitants) city in Poland, well-known across transport enthusiasts for its extremely inefficient transport system, consisting of over 60 infrequent (most of them make under 10 trips each way per day) lines. Local transport authority tried to make things a little bit easier… and produced something equally awful. It’s not easy to make meaningful scheme when you have nearly fifty lines on one stop, but this map is making orientation even harder now.
Transit Maps says:
At first, I thought Kyryl was joking when he said that there were nearly 50 lines at one stop, but it turns out that he’s not. The Zytnia stop on the southern edge of the city centre handles a ridiculous 42 different routes throughout the day, which is insane. The infrequent service that Kyryl also notes could have something to do with the fact that – according to Wikipedia – the city only has around 165 buses to run these myriad routes, meaning that (on average) there can only be 2 to 3 buses assigned to each route at a time, even at peak capacity.
The map is similarly dysfunctional, and almost impossible to use. The “shield-hunting” that’s required to follow a route from one terminus to the other is just too mentally taxing, and I just gave up after a while. Things aren’t helped by all the diagonal stop labels, especially the one stop at the northeast of the central zone that has a diagonal label in all four directions. What?
The use of a white or background-coloured keyline behind the labels to separate them from the background is a good idea in theory, but the designer has forgotten to pay attention to the mitre joins, so letters with acute angles have created huge “spikes” that jut out way above or below the type. Ugly work that’s easily fixed with a little attention to detail.
Our rating: This map reminds me a lot of this terrible night bus map for London (September 2015, 0.5 stars), except it’s even worse. Almost impossible to decipher, breathtakingly hideous and fully indicative of a transit system gone totally mad. Fully deserving of zero stars and an entry into the Hall of Shame.
A lovely celebratory poster for the Metro’s opening year, showing the overall envisioned network at the time. Only a short section of the red Linea 1 was actually open initially – as can be seen running across the poster about a third of the way down – and the eventual system as built today is substantially different to this vision (March 2014, 3.5 stars).
Of particular interest are the black diamonds dotted liberally around the poster, which contain Mexico City-like icons for some 40 proposed stations on the red Linea 1 and yellow Linea 2, some of which were never constructed.
Check out the Marin County transit maps on page 110 of this thesis (source below). They’re so distinct! Maybe you’ve seen them but I couldn’t NOT send you these. Vignelli much?
Transit Maps says:
I haven’t seen these before, Denis – and you’re right: they’re absolutely fantastic. I feel that the mid- to late-1970s was a time when America actually embraced clean, modernist “European” design, especially on the West Coast. So, while I can see some Vignellian influences – “one dot, one stop” especially – I think these maps are also very much a product of the time and place they were created. I doubt that Vignelli would have appreciated the use of non-standard angles or the literal pictorial depictions of the ferries to San Francisco.
Of the two maps, I think the South Marin one is more effective: a brighter colour palette and a logical order to the diagram makes it a little better, in my opinion. The Larkspur map gets a little too clever with the “roundabout” device used to represent urban areas, and the Route 29 Canal line seems unnecessarily convoluted and cramped for space. I do like the representation of the Larkspur Ferry Terminal’s iconic triangular space frame roof, which was then only a year old.
Our rating: Lovely little diagrammatic maps, very evocative of the time and place they were made. Four stars!
As special educator, I work with a 7 year old boy who has memorised the complete Berlin S-/U-Bahn, bus and tram network. Every day, he draws exactly one section of the network (without any mistakes, of course) and gives it to me as a present. Last month I started to puzzle all the parts together into one big map on the wall of my office. The common project is not finished yet, but I encouraged him to pay more attention to the west part of Berlin 😉
I am impressed; I am very, very impressed. I’d definitely love to see this again when it’s finished!
While I was researching my redrawn Tube Map, I stumbled across the above representation of the Underground as it supposedly appears to a wheelchair user. While it’s probably meant to be more metaphorical of the fractured nature of the network than a literal representation, I find myself infuriated by it. For example, the “map” really makes it appear that if you get on at Kings Cross St. Pancras (possibly the one truly accessible station on the Underground), you simply cannot go anywhere.
There have been other maps that show the same thing more accurately, but the newest one I can find is from 2011. A lot has changed on the Tube Map since then, including adding the distinction between street-to-platform and street-to-train accessibility to the map. Seeing as I had the Tube Map to hand for my previous project, I quickly modified it to show these two different networks. Unlike previous efforts, I also modified the route lines to reflect new end points for lines: if there were no accessible stations between a certain station and the end of the line, I deleted that section of track. As a result, the maps more accurately show the extent of accessible services.
Step-free access from street to platform or better
Use the slider to show the full Underground network compared to the street-to-platform network.
This map shows stations with both of the accessibility icons from the Tube Map. If a station has some accessible platforms and some inaccessible, the inaccessible connections have been deleted. This leads to situations like the Bank and Tower Gateway DLR stations being accessible, but not connected to their respective Tube stations, or the Romford–Upminster Overground shuttle line cutting off at Emerson Park because the Overground platforms at Upminster aren’t accessible.
The only complete casualty is the Waterloo and City line: neither of its two stations are accessible. The Bakerloo line now only serves three stations between Harrow & Wealdstone and Willesden Junction, and most other lines are truncated in some form or another. The Overground continues to be a viable network, although it still loses a lot of stations.
The other main point of interest is the lack of accessible interchanges within the central “thermos flask” – Kings Cross St. Pancras, Green Park and Westminster are it. You can’t change from the Underground to the Overground/National Rail at Liverpool Street or Euston. Baker Street and Bank/Monument don’t exist. This is the biggest impediment to real accessibility on the Underground – the inability to transfer easily between lines in the most important part of the network.
Note that Greenford (the new western terminus of the Central line) is the only street-to-train accessible station on that line: this leads to a very odd situation in the (frankly horrifying) next map…
Street to Train Access Only
Use the slider to show the full Underground network compared to the street-to-train network.
Here’s the Underground network for those people who truly need step-free access from the street outside the station all the way onto the train. This means there’s no gap or height difference between the edge of the platform and the door of the train. It’s a pretty exacting standard, and the percentage of people who truly need this level of service is probably pretty low – but the map certainly doesn’t make for pretty viewing. The Waterloo and City, Bakerloo, Central and District lines have been wiped from the map entirely. The Circle and Hammersmith and City lines now just shuttle people between Hammersmith and Kings Cross St. Pancras, while the entire Overground has been reduced to a short section between Dalston Junction and Canada Water.
Only the DLR and the Emirates Air Line escape entirely unscathed. The Jubilee Line retains good accessibility in its modern eastern section, but the section that it inherited from the Bakerloo line has just one fully accessible station at Kingsbury. The Piccadilly and Northern Lines retain much of their length, but very few stations. Interchanges in central London are at Kings Cross St. Pancras and Green Park –that’s it.
Remember Greenford? Well, it may be fully accessible, but it no longer connects to a single other similar station. So it’s sitting out there all by itself with no possible route to the rest of the map: a Central line station with no Central line.
To close, I’ll note that TfL actually offers a lot of information for travellers who need accessibility information, including this insanely comprehensive step-free guide (PDF link) and more on the accessibility section of their website.
Wow! I’ve been completely blown away by the (mostly positive) response to my redrawn Tube Map. Thanks to everyone who has left me a comment or note – all of your thoughts help to inform future revisions to the map. There’s a few more parts of the map that I’m personally really happy with that I’d like to highlight in a little more detail than the already lengthy initial post allowed. Read on for the details!
The grid
As I mentioned in my initial post, the Tube Map is built up using the width of the route line, expressed as “x”. So it makes perfect sense to use an underlying grid that’s equal to “x” as the basis of the map. Except that the official map doesn’t really adhere to that grid very well. I started building my version of the map from Earl’s Court, so the zero coordinates for my grid are at the centre of the District line station marker. As can be seen, route lines and station markers are all aligned to the grid: there’s always an exact multiple of “x” between elements. The same can’t be said for the official map (top). With the zero coordinates set to the same location, it can be seen that other elements don’t consistently align with the grid. It’s perhaps a minor thing that doesn’t make a huge difference to the final look of the map, but knowing that station markers should never be closer than 5x together is a good thing to know when laying out new sections. It’s also easier to rapidly step-and-repeat station labels and markers when they lock properly to a grid. The grid gives internal logic to the map as the designer works, even though it’s invisible in the final product.
Also noticeable is that the labels for Earl’s Court and South Kensington have been pushed lower than all the other labels to accommodate the circular interchange symbols. I believe this actually goes against TfL’s own design guidelines, which specify a set distance for labels from the edge of the route line, not the station marker. Lining all the labels up horizontally along the route lines – without some bumping lower or higher – looks smoother and makes them easier to follow.
Alignment of Interchange Markers
This is a small change that I really think has a big impact to the overall look of the map. On the official map, diagonal interchange markers often drop down lower than vertical ones (or further across for horizontal ones). I tightened them up across the map so that the edges aligned consistently, no matter what the orientation of the interchange. So much neater!
Neat Non-Interchange Crossovers
There are two places on the map where the addition of Crossrail could have added some very unsightly and unnecessarily complicated-looking intersections, with three routes all crossing (but not interacting with each other) in very close proximity. In both cases, I was thrilled to be able to get everything to line up so that the route lines all crossed each other neatly at one spot. Solving potential headaches like this in a consistent and elegant manner like this really makes me happy.
The Western End of The Central, Piccadilly and Metropolitan Lines
Without a doubt, my favourite reworked piece of the map. Restoring the straight line of the Metropolitan from Preston Road all the way out to Uxbridge (last seen in the 1986 edition of the official Tube Map) required careful thought and a lot of trial and error, but it was totally worth it. Not only does it remove the nonsensical northwestern alignment of the concurrent Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines between Rayners Lane and Ruislip, but it also successfully reduces the vast amount of space between stations on the Central and Piccadilly lines as they head northwards. You can clearly see on the official map how the zone boundaries force the stations on the Piccadilly line into unnatural positions – Alperton has to be brought a long way up the line to squeeze into Zone 4, creating a huge gap between it and Park Royal. Gaps like this break the rhythm of the map, and I’ve tried to avoid them as much as possible. I will admit that my task is made easier because I’ve chosen not to show Zones – which has been a bone of contention for some commenters.
Accessibility Icon Option
Finally, addressing another controversial design choice, my use of non-literal, non-standard icons to indicate accessibility. While some praised it as elegant and simple, others pointed out that the wheelchair icon is universally understood, even by those who don’t speak English. The Tube Map does require people to refer to the map’s legend to differentiate between the two different versions of the icon, but at least the wheelchair gives some contextual clues. So here’s a “hybrid” version of the map that I’m working on that uses wheelchair icons within interchange circles without covering them completely. However, icons for non-interchange stations are still placed with each station’s label instead of replacing the station’s “tick” with a big round blob. I’ve redrawn the icon to work better at the slightly smaller size, and flipped it to face right instead of left. This works better with our left-to -right reading order, and also implies forward motion. Overall, I think it’s a good compromise, if not quite as elegant and clean as my original concept.
Design note: I did the smart thing and set the accessibility icons up as Symbols in Adobe Illustrator, so that changing them from one design to the other literally took a few clicks of the mouse.
As always, let me know what you think in the comments or via Twitter!
In case it wasn’t already clear, our Props Dept. is incredible. Here is a close up of Roan’s map of tunnels and hideouts – an old subway map.
Look closely, you can find clues to the greater world…
A “near future” combined DC/Baltimore rail transit map from the TV series “The 100″. Looks like the Wyman design of the DC map won the day when WMATA and the MTA merged. A fun prop indeed – and one that has r/The100 on Reddit talking – but seriously: what transit map doesn’t label any stations at all?
What happens when I completely redraw London’s Tube Map in the style of the Tube Map? Not an alternative map, but a rigorous reconstruction of the real thing to bring it back in line with its diagrammatic roots.
