Brought to my attention by Russell Morris on Twitter, this is a new official TfL map that shows the approximate walking time between London Underground stations in Zones 1 and 2. 

While it’s nice to see that TfL has recognised the desire from the public for alternative maps of the network (see also the recent official TfL “geographic” map), this is about as low budget as a “new” map could possibly be. It’s basically Zones 1 and 2 cut out of the standard Tube map with some numbers placed halfway between each station indicating time. There’s a little “nick” cut out of the route lines where the numbers are to indicate which line the number belongs to, which is fairly unconvincing and almost unnecessary in my eyes.

The biggest problem with the map, though, is that it assumes that you only ever want to follow the path of the the Tube lines themselves. It never indicates a walking path that allows you to cut across between lines, which – as many a seasoned London commuter knows – can save a lot of time. For example:

• Covent Garden -> Tottenham Court Road: 0.4 miles, 9 minutes
• St Pauls -> Mansion House: 0.3 miles, 6 minutes
• Lancaster Gate -> Paddington: 0.4 miles, 9 minutes (this last one looks like a huge trek on the diagrammatic Tube Map, but they’re actually quite close together)

And more… heck, it even takes 5 minutes or so to get from one end of the Monument/Bank complex to the other, but that’s not indicated on the map either! Definitely a wasted opportunity to produce something really useful here, I think.