London’s certainly come a long way since the Metropolitan Line first opened in 1863 with wooden carriages and steam engines. I wonder what a Victorian-era Londoner would think of this modern skyline, all soaring, glimmering, curving glass? Source: transportforlondon/Tumblr – link no longer active
The Underground has been around so long, and its famous Diagram so ingrained in our heads, that we tend to think of it as an immutable object: always the same, never changing. That’s absolutely not so, as this fantastic reworking of the Tube Diagram shows. Shown here are the 40-plus “ghost stations” of the London Underground – stations that once existed as part of the “Tube”, but no longer do, for varying reasons. Some stations […]
Although it seems as though at least one person thought it was… Source: Dave Gorman/Flickr
Definitely worth a look to see how a major transit agency puts together a comprehensive guide to assembling consistently designed maps. The guide deals with horizontal in-car strip maps and the vertical line maps seen on platforms, but many of the principles still hold true for the design of a full transit map. Of particular interest is the relationship between the x-height of Johnston Sans and the thickness of the route lines (they’re the same). […]
Even design classics like the London Tube map have to be flexible enough to cope with change. The escalators to the Northern and Bakerloo lines at Embankment station – yes, the very escalators that can be seen in the previously posted cutaway diagram from 1914 – are going to be completely replaced. The process is going to take 43 weeks starting on January 8 next year. During that time, Northern and Bakerloo trains will pass […]
When you have sixteen routes passing through one stop, it might be time to rethink your approach to station/interchange design. I do note that the current TfL “Buses from Elephant & Castle” spider map (external PDF link) shows this interchange with a geographical street map – a huge improvement which also has the advantage of showing you exactly where each bus stand is (there are eighteen!) and which buses stop at them. Source: Mach V/Flickr
This charming diagram produced by Transport for London is obviously targeted at tourists, but still manages to pack a lot of information in – bus routes, tourist attractions, connections to the Tube, Overground, DLR, National Rail and river ferries. That it still manages to look attractive and be easy to follow makes it all the better. Have we been there? Yes, and I even got off the Tube to catch a bus here and there. […]
