London Tube Map
A low dose of photography but a heavy dose of London today.
For much of the online world, London Underground’s ‘The Tube‘ holds a strange fascination. The famous look of the Tube map was invented by Harry Beck, but Transport For London has kept the enduring design quality up to date on the web. The Official Map is supplemented by a realtime disruption map (you can even check the current temperature). As if that is not enough, London Underground publishes their vision for 2016, while other keep records back to 1908. The problem - as well as the strength - of Beck’s map is that it has little relevance to reality.
I’ve taken Simon Clarke’s geographically accurate map and overlaid it onto a NASA satellite image of London. Below is a detail and a thumbnail, click for a large (1MB) image. Unfortunately, the web resolution means it is a little difficult to read and the Jubilee line all but disappears.
Many punters have taken it upon themselves to redesign or improve the Tube map. The Great Bear and Animals on the Underground are sure to raise a smile. More useful is a map showing the walk lines between stations, and the way out map which indicates the most appropriate carriage to be in for speedy interchanges. There is even a German version of the official map. But most redesign attempts result in ugly designs like this and this.
The tube map has been put to some other uses. The Circle Line Party has hundreds of people descend onto a train and hold a disco party (unfortunately, the 3rd CLP was this week, just missed it!). The Circle Line Pub Crawl attempts to stop and have a drink nearby all 27 Circle Line stations in the same day.
Want more information? There is a good collection of information at massey.net, useful posts at edwardtufte.com and kottke.org. The last word in the blog world must go to Annie Mole’s underground journal (more bloggers can be found via the tube map at London Bloggers).
Edit: Aug 16th. I see there are gazillions of people linking to this post. For you I offer a five-minute job of the tube map onto the Nasa night time london image. Someone with more bandwidth can do the full job, I feel ;)
