2012-05-18
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Three books by Capital Transport Publishing on the history of London’s underground maps: No Need To Ask by David Leboff & Tim Demuth, Mr Beck’s Underground Map by Ken Garland, and Underground Maps After Beck by Maxwell J Roberts.
Taken together, the three cover over a hundred years of maps of the Underground, from the different companies in the early part of the 1900s, through the pivotal 1933 Harry Beck diagram, and to the present day. The writers are all well qualified (Tim Demuth, co-author of No Need To Ask, designed the London Railways map of the 1970s; Ken Garland is a respected designer and writer; while Maxwell Roberts has designed his own maps aided by his primary study of cognition) and, despite some overlaps between the books, generally they cover the story very well.
Probably the most interesting is the middle volume, covering both the route to the Beck diagram, his many variations over the years as lines were extended (and management meddled), and the nearly decade-long fight to keep designing the map in the early 1960s. The book includes the worst diagram since 1933, the Hutchinson design, and a first look at the Garbutt diagram that came to succeed it.
The Garbutt diagram and its slow evolution (as opposed to the Cambrian explosion of variations that Beck produced) is at the heart of the final book, which I think I enjoyed more than many would; the story is one of subtle change, livened mainly by the changing landscape of the system (with the Victoria, Jubilee, and DLR lines expanding the scope of the map).
Overall, I’d recommend Garland’s book on Beck’s diagrams to anyone with even a passing interest in the Underground and mapmaking. Roberts is more for the completist, while those looking for history and more decorative design may enjoy No Need To Ask.
2012-04-05
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I’m usually picky about London tube map re-renditions (especially on black), but this one kind of works.
(via an-arrow-in-the-knee)
2012-02-23
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Metrography, by Benedikt Groß & Bertrand Clerc:
the geographical structure of transportation networks are often reshaped to provide users with more understandable transit maps. These distortions have a major influence on people’s perception of a city’s geography, to the point they get stored mentally and become the collective representation of the real world’s geography.
‘Metrography’ attempts to explore this phenomenon using the most famous of transit maps: the London Tube Map.
There’s a 150cm x 100cm lambda print, as well as a slippy-map interactive version, and videos of the deformation.
See also Matt Webb, in 2009:
Consider a true map of London. Now consider crumpling this map so that it’s all scrunched up, but a top down view is the same as the tube map, but on a different scale. Leaving aside whether this transform is possible, this yields what we’re after. As long as the crumpled true map only bends on a station (ie no peaks or trough on a line between nearest stations), then we could say 0% colour intensity was at the lowest point of the crumpled map and 100% was at the top, and show this on the tube map. Task achieved.
2011-02-28
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The Tube map’s depiction of the East London Line’s extension to Highbury and Islington, which opened today. There’s pictures and analysis at Londonist. As they put it, “not good news for those who favour a less cluttered approach”.
2011-01-11
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London Underground tube map, c1911 (by Mikey Ashworth, via diamond geezer).
One of the most interesting things, to me, is how much of the central network was in place by this point. The only tube lines built inside the Circle are the Victoria and Jubilee lines.
It’s definitely worth clicking through for the uploader’s notes on the style and the inclusion of the Brighton Railway’s Elevated Electric services, and for his set of Underground maps, including MacDonald’s Gills minimal/calligraphic sketch map.
2010-11-04
On Transport Planning
It seems to me there are three major components to planning a journey using public transport.
1. The Systematic Overview
When you arrive in a city, or if it’s a new journey, this is often what you’ll refer to first. The classic is the London Underground tube map: looking at it gives you the broad scope of the system. The NY subway map performs a similar role.
However, usually such a map only goes so far. For large cities, it tends to fail for buses and other surface transport. London distributes five geographic maps, one for the centre, and four (huge) ones for the suburbs. Meanwhile, London Connections is an admirable, but complex, diagram of the above-line railway lines. I have no idea if there’s a comprehensive map of New York’s bus system, but somehow I doubt it.
For smaller cities, such as San Francisco, the entire system (buses, light rail and all) does fit on a map, and in fact bus stops here have a system map with a downtown enlargement. The flipside to this is that there’s also a metro map, which is somewhat sparse. Looking at that, you can easily imagine the rest of the city doesn’t exist.
Nonetheless, this is something that’s often desired, but it can be hard to provide even with plenty of poster space, let alone on a small screen. (One notable example that’s been pushed into trying is the KickMap redesign of the New York subway map.)
2. Route planning
If you know your destination, you can skip the overview and ask a transport planner. Most transport agencies provide one on the web, like TfL’s Journey Planner. In some places, Google Maps has been given data to enable route planning. Either way, these services are usually also available on (smart)phones.
Route planning also takes you from “where I am” to “where the transport is”. That can be harder in some places than others, but it’s still a potential hurdle - there’s rarely a bus stop outside your door.
Unfortunately, route planning without access to the right technology is hard (although it has been tried). This partly explains why so many Londoners use the Tube: the map is right there at the station entrance, platforms and even in the carriages. By contrast, knowing where a bus route goes is either learnt (which takes time) or has to be looked up (which takes technology). Nonetheless, my guess is this will become a much more common as time goes on.
3. Service availability
Somewhat related to route planning is when the next train or bus is actually available. Again, part of the draw of the Tube is that this isn’t much of a concern: you can go down to the platform and be fairly sure that within 10 minutes at most - and more usually two or three - a train will be along to carry you off.
Unfortunately, elsewhere in the world (and on other modes of transport) that’s not true. Metro and bus frequencies are more often measured in threes or fours an hour than the twenties or forties that the Tube enjoys at peak. When there’s the chance you’ll be waiting in the rain for twenty minutes, you’d really like a way of looking up when the next bus is.
In San Francisco, NextMuni (and the apps that use its API) serve that need pretty well, as does the UK’s National Rail Live Departure Boards. Unfortunately, London’s improved Countdown bus prediction service is not yet available (it’s meant to launch next year). However, both SF and London do have bus arrival data at some stops, so even without personal technology you can just look to see what’s going on.
It’s possible to get by without service availability data, but if a system is either low-frequency or low-reliability (and traffic means that buses can be both) it’s a good way to get people happy with the system.
Summing up
There’s still something of a divide here. System overviews are most readily visible in the physical world, while route planning is best served electronically. Service availability is a mix of the two. Nonetheless, all three (or a combination thereof) provide plenty of room for experimentation on mobile devices and the real world.
2010-09-06
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2009-09-27
Decluttering
For the London Design Festival, Pentagram commissioned 20 designers to “produce an effective poster, celebrating design and the city, in only two colours”. Bibloteque did this by taking the Tube map and removing all but the black and red.
I’ve taken the same method and done something similar with the recently decluttered tube map, just because I thought it would be fairly obvious quite how successful TfL’s designers had been in eliminating frippery. I think it works; the lost scatter of daggers and aeroplanes is visible even at small scales.
(See also: Information Pollution on the Underground Map. Some of my favourites from the exhibition of posters are on ffffound. Ben Terrett has some words about them too.)
2009-09-21
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Following Transport for London’s decision to simplify the tube map and (supposedly) do away with all extraneous information - like the small matter of the River Thames and travel zones - this is Londonist’s Ultimate Uncluttered Tube Map: “Tourists are the only group of people who really need a Tube map. Locals already know their way around, and business visitors always take cabs. So if we only need to cater for John Q. Sightseer, the map condenses down to something really simple. Voila, the whole network distilled into three lines and twelve stops”.(via anunreliablewitness via megpickard)
2009-09-18
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A redesign of the Tube map from 2008 by Max Roberts, with both zones and the Thames, but also consistent station spacing.
What’s noticable about this map, when comparing it with the official one, is that Roberts is far more willing to put a line on a diagonal and let it run to its conclusion that way, rather than prizing verticals, even if they have to be kinked.
It certainly maintains the feeling of being less cluttered (although is that because it doesn’t include the wheelchair blobs?)
(As seen in the commentary on this excellent diamond geezer post summarising the last week’s map furore.)
