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At school we had a class called CDT which was something to do with technical drawing. Anyhoo, during our GCSE exam we had to draw a map in the style of the London Tube map. So part way through the exam after dozens of kids calling the teacher over he go fed up and stopped the exam.
"Who knows what the London Tube is?" No one answers.
"Who has seen a map of the London Underground? Where the trains are?"
You could see a room full of faces showing disbelief. Trains underground? What?
"Who has been to London." One hand goes up.
"Who has been out of Cornwall?" Three or four hands go up... And that is why I fucking love the Cornish folk.
With all due respect to the original article, and with thanks to someone just a few days ago probably on some HN story, I submit the true accurate map of the London Tube.
Having used the Lobdon Underground for several decades, I must say that is beautiful.
Interestingly after the 2014 tube strikes enough people who has been forced to find alternative routes to work stayed using the alternatives - that is they discovered for example that a line change that looks impossible on map is a few minutes walk and save 10's of minutes. Apparently enough time is saved by this to make the strikes a net benefit to London economy.
My personal example - to go from Covent Garden to Embankment by tube is three changes. Or a 500 yard walk.
As far as I can tell Covent Garden[1] to Embankment needs one change at either Leicester Square (Piccadilly then Northern) or Piccadilly Circus (Piccadilly then Bakerloo). Not sure how you'd get three changes beyond either a bizarre route (CG-> Holborn -> Oxford Circus -> Victoria -> E?), or counting entering and exiting the stations at either end as a change.
The fact that the tube map makes stations in the core appear further away then they are is an issue (see also: Lancaster Gate / Paddington). It's a bit of a tradeoff, as a geographical map makes the dense central London bits tiny, but a systematic map exaggerates the distances between those same stations. I suppose having a geographical map for the core, and a systemic map for the outer areas might be an idea, but having two maps might lead to a whole load of "now you have two problems" situations with regard to which map to use in which situation etc.[2] The current map isn't ideal, and could probably use some heavy tweaking, but some problems are hard to solve (beyond geographical / systematic you also have the the general "too many stations" issue from TfL expanding its empire).
[1] At least once the "Exit only until November 2015 etc." goes away.
[2] There is already a second map that shows all mainline stations that take Oyster cards as well as just TfL stuff. It is insane. So a geographical map is probably a third problem.
Agreed, very interesting! The original paper is available online: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/14046/paper-7.... They found that people were more likely to use a different route post-strike in areas where the tube map is more distorted.
Well that explains the enternal question of why only half the Northern line stops at Mornington Crescent.
I know also this one[1] which tries to be as accurate as it can while staying simple.
[1]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Sameboat...
Actual map, for the curious:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/224813/response/56039...
This seems like a more useful map for those who use the tube regularly. So the basic version is good for the lowest common denominator, but once you're used to where the stations are this map would help you find any geographic shortcuts.
I am sure this "new" map has been around for ages, eg in tube stations themselves. There is part of my nerdish innermost self that loves nothing more than an complex network map, the actual meaning of the nodes and connections is almost irrelevant. And this map is satisfyingly complex, since all the non-tube lines are shown too.
What I'd love to see is a comprehensive catalog of all the main metropolitan systems in the world using a common scale and set of conventions, a real apples v apples baseline. Then you could hope to finally answer the eternal question; Who has the biggest and best system of them all?
Google maps has been doing that for a while already. It will show you the route as a bezier curve between stations, but the stations themselves are 100% accurate.