Has the London Underground Map lost its way? - revisited

Yesterday's Guardian pondered what Harry Beck would do with the Tube Map today in the light of the expansion of the Oyster card & a new map to illustrate this.

"What would Beck himself have done? A man of vision as well as courage – and a pragmatist if ever there were one – he might well have recommended something drastic, even iconoclastic: tearing up his own Underground map, and suggesting that we begin again from first principles. No doubt this would be an occasion as emotionally charged as the introduction of decimal currency was nearly 40 years ago, but it might be the only rational thing to do." Thanks to richjm for the heads up.

From www.boardello.co.uk

A few years ago, I went to a talk that London Underground map expert Maxwell Roberts. He had similar thoughts. I wrote:

Max believes we've now got to the state with the map trying so desperately to please everyone (wheelchair access, station closures, partial station closures, zones, future extensions), that it has become a bit of mess. The network has grown so much that even Harry (or rather Henry) Beck would have tearing out his hair.

Now more than ever we can see the tension between the map's need to be legible, usable, attractive and simple and its counter need to convey information. The addition of Cross Rail and the Olympic Line will only make matters worse. Take a look at TfL's own projection of what the Tube Map could look like in 2016 (with Boris's arrival this projection no longer exists) and you'd need a pretty big diary map to cope with that.


What's the solution? If designers went back to the drawing board would they go curvy as Max Roberts recommends?

Max said "So, does this map 'work'? With extra railways on it, the simplicity of Version 1 (his earlier version) has been diluted, and the map needs a bit more mental effort to make sense of it (as for any complex map). I think I have shown that there may well be some mileage in designing maps in this way, but die-hard Beck fans will not be convinced. On the other hand, it's hard to know just how bad the design of the current official map has to get before they would be."


Will the design team board™ have their way with a proposed 2012 Tube map based on Olympic rings (see first image) - they say "recent usability feedback has been very positive." Would going geographical help or hinder? Has the map got so bad it needs a total re-design?

Extreme Tube Sleeping

The London Underground seems to be one of the better places to sleep in the winter if the following pictures are anything to go by.

Whatleydude snapped this guy going through Maida Vale sound asleep:


He said "What's that? No feet on seats? What about legs? They're ok, right?"

Melanie Seasons saw a pretty dishevelled man on the Victoria Line and said "I've seen people fall asleep on the Tube before, but never face down into their Metro. I don't think the poor guy even got through the second page."


Didn't realise that Metro was that boring!

If you manage to spot any other heavy Tube sleepers on your journey, you should have plenty of time to take a picture. Let me know if you do and I'll add them to this post.

Is Tube investment being cut back?

We've started, so we won't finish, should be the catchphrase at Newbury Park. Although the London Underground fare increases are supposed to "sustain vital investment", Matthew V found the opposite at his local station.


He said: "For the last few months at least Newbury Park has had major construction work to install lifts. Signs went up last week that they are halting the work due to lack of funding, and yesterday there were severe delays for a while due to 'obstruction on the tracks'.


"From the looks of things it might have been to remove some of the tools etc, but the platforms still have massive blue hoardings limiting the space available – which was bad this morning as the station, which is a major hub for the Essex and areas East of London (it's got about 500 car parking spaces), was closed for a while. I'm a little annoyed at this since having lifts would really make the station fit as a transport hub, and would mean I didn't have to keep offering to help women up stairs with buggies (there are no escalators).

Is this just a sign of the recession? Money being diverted to pay increases for drivers? Given the price hikes I've got a feeling it can't be due to general lack of money!"

Has anyone else seen any instances of this? I know that improvements at certain stations seem to take longer than planned to complete. But it seems unusual to say that work is going to be stopped because of lack of funding just before we're about to have a fare increase. Not the greatest timing.

If you can't film on the Tube....

Build your own version. This is lovely animation for Coldplay song Strawberry Swing by Matt Clark


Thanks to richjm for the heads up for this.

Should the Circle Line be renamed?

Not that the Circle Line ever looked like a circle, but from December 13th it's going to look even less like a Circle. The extension to Hammersmith will mean that a "tail" will be added to the line. An article in yesterday's Times is already calling it a tadpole. Are they right? Is there a better name for it? Why wasn't the Circle Line ever called the "Bottle Line", which is far more what it currently looks like?


Spiral, corkscrew and tea-cup have been some of the offerings on Twitter, when we were discussing a few weeks ago.


Any more suggestions welcome in the comments below. This is just for fun, as TfL have already said that the line won't be re-named. I'm not sure if they've ever renamed an entire Tube line since the London Underground existed!