New Map in September 2009

Maybe we'll find out why White City - Wood Lane is now a 250m "interchange" whilst the much nearer Bayswater - Queensway (or Cannon Street - Bank) aren't?

White City - Wood Lane is fairly useful and doesn't have an easier alternative*, whereas the other two you mention do.

(* for the average punter - I acknowledge travellers who know what they're doing would sometimes prefer Cannon Street)

Consistency. (And at present the Monument to Bank route isn't available.)

Just showing them for the sake of it will only cause confusion. And add clutter to an already busy map.

The only out of station interchanges that should be shown are ones which will appear as a suggested route on a journey planner. That is what they should be consistent with.

No one should ever need to walk between Bayswater and Queensgate unless there is some major problem at Notting Hill Gate. But White City to Wood Lane is the only way to switch between the Hammersmith & City and Central Lines without having to make some convoluted journey via Notting Hill Gate and Paddington, and potentially incurring zone 1 fares if coming from the west.

Plus if you allow the two interchanges you suggested then you also have to include Aldgate to Aldgate East, Warren Street to Euston Square, Regent's Park to Great Portland Street, the Edgware Roads, and Paddington to Lancaster Gate, and probably many others. Arguably even between stations on the same line which can be an equally short distance apart.

Ooooooooh.....dont bait me There is a limit on the amount of information per displayed item that people can grasp per time.

With regards to someones post, yeah, I agree, its all a grey area, but when Walbrooke opens, people from East London who need Waterloo will find it easier to change between Cannon Street and Walbrook for the W&C then at Monument and walk 3 times the distance in a triangle.

White City/ Wood Lane should have been built as a proper interchange, they missed an oppertunity, which will probably never be re-evaluated.

Warren Street - Euston Square is rumoured to at one time have had an interchange passage, either way it is still a valid out of system interchange, and a damn site quicker than Euston - Euston Square.

Paddington - Lancaster Gate has been identified in several older transport studies as being worthy of interchange construction, eg London Rail Study 1974.

Regent's Park - GPS will never now need an interchange; coming from the southern end of the Bakerloo, cross platform interchange with the vic at Ox Cir. means that stations are available until Kings Cross to reach without another change, and going west the stations interchange or have equivilants too.

Finally, the Edgware Roads....Well, if any of the proposed lines under the route of the Edgware Road had been built, there would have been an interchange between both stations via the perpendicular one.

So, you see, nothing is quite what it seems!

That final line was more about the interchanges mentioned previously.

Youve got my arguement in a nutshell there though. I did start an artical on my webpage about it; www.ben4towers.com

However, I would hasten to add that if information is genuinly useful and in demand then it should be intergrated with the design from the point of the designs conception. One of the reasons the tube map looks awful is that there has been no consistant form of methodology adopted. Its essentially the same design as that of 1990, thats been pulled, pushed, tweaked, and kinked practically every 3 months to incorporate new lines, get rid of old ones, and bolt as much onto it as possible.

If you did want to put out-of-station interchanges on the map, as well as the zones, the wheely blobs, a grid, all that red text by stations, and all the boxes of extra info on the maps, it should all be designed at the same time, so the style is consistant and it doesn't duplicate itself. I'm sure I mentioned it on my page, but an holistic approach is necessary, not just the 'jenga approach' currently adopted.

As a side note, and not to detract from the main thread (nor my points about tweaking!! ), I've almost finished the updating of a Beck map from 1958, however its currently being redone in illustrator. I'll put a shot up later tonight!

Cannon Street has NR, and thus another line. Bayswater-Queenswater is between Notting Hill Gate, and the also useful Lancaster Gate-Paddington connection.

Certainly in Central London, there are a lot of stations closer than the maps would have us believe, but that's all down to local knowledge, something that the average tourist doesn't have.

As for maps, I still think that it should be tube only, with a completely different version for "London connections".... Somebody made the point earlier that Joe Public only has x amount of time to grasp the information in front of them, let's not over-complicate matters when they clearly don't need to.

If you're staying in a hotel/b&b/etc near Lancaster Gate then it is much easier to walk with your luggage than negotiate the interchnages at Notting Hill Gate or Oxford Circus, much quicker too.

I would agree as to the desirability of such a geographical map, but it has the disadvantage (compared to the Tube diagram) of being only usable in a large format. And London has - in the London Bus Maps (Central and other) - essentially such a map (but complicated by having all the bus routes marked!).

Dare I suggest that your finding of the Paris diagram unusable is down to a certain unfamiliarity with it (and the complex system that it represents)? I would suggest that any such diagram (including London's!) for a 'complex' system is difficult to use until you have - to an extent - 'learnt' it.

But I would agree that a holistic approach is required - not only to the design of the Tube diagram, but to the whole wayfinding information system of which is it a part.

If the Tube+ network has out of station interchanges - as well as in station ones - then they should be consistently treated in the way they are shown, etc.

I live and learn!
Lots of interesting stuff on your website - does it include your redesigned Paris Map? - I'd be interested in seeing it. Would agree as to the difficulty of the Paris network!

Making an interchange at Wood Lane/White City would never pass cost-benefit analysis. You would have to mess around with the existing White City layout whilst spending a lot of money just to replicate the existing pavement route. What tfl could have done is put the pavement between the two under cover. edit: And added a lift at White City. Surprised Westfield didn't demand that, looking four or five decades ahead there'll be no access for the increasing numbers of mobility impaired persons via the Central Line.

I have read that the Euston Square-Warren Street interchange tunnel was destroyed when the Euston Underpass was constructed in the late 60s-early 70s.

Will post up a link to the Paris map later today. The hardest map to do is an All-London railways map of London. The problem is that with Southern (in the generic sense) performing the prime metro role in South London, it would be nice to have orderly metro-style services. South Central is the worst offender, a good map can't fix a bad network.

Edit:

And here is a link to the paris map. Breaks every design rule in the book, but you can't argue with the numbers.

privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~mjr/Paris_Curved.jpg

How will the map cope if/when CrossRail is completed? Won't the Liverpool Street* CR station actually link Liverpool Street and Moorgate stations? ISTR there is another CR station that will link two two other stations.

* Name not confirmed.

Simon