Tube map

Tube map is the commonly used name for the schematic diagram that represents the lines, stations, and zones of London's rapid transit rail system, the London Underground.

A schematic diagram rather than a map, it represents not geography but relations; it considerably distorts the actual relative positions of the stations, but accurately respresents their sequential and connective relations with other stations along the various lines of the system as well as their placement within its zones. The basic design concepts, especially that of mapping topologically rather than geographically, have been widely adopted for other route maps around the world.

The current version of the map is on Transport for London's website, but it cannot be included here for copyright reasons.

Development

How Zone 1 of the tube map would look if it showed the correct locations of the tunnels.

The original map [1] was designed in 1931 by Underground employee Harry Beck, who realised that, because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered. This approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams; while these were not the inspiration for Beck's diagram, his colleagues pointed out the similarities and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical-circuit symbols and names with terminology: "bakelite" for "Bakerloo", etc. In fact, Beck based his diagram on a similar mapping system for underground sewage systems.

To this end, he devised a vastly simplified map, consisting of only named stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or at 45 degrees.

The Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal — it was an uncommissioned spare-time project — and tentatively introduced it to the public in a small pamphlet. It was immediately popular, and its successor is now used throughout the Underground on poster-sized maps and pocket journey planners.

Today

Alterations have been made to the map over the years. In particular, marking stations that have interchanges with surface trains has changed, as it was never resolved to Beck's satisfaction. Similarly the colours used to depict some lines have changed. The map was taken out of his hands towards the end of his career. Recent designs have skilfully incorporated changes to the network, such as the Jubilee Line Extension, while remaining true to Beck's original scheme.

A facsimile of Beck's original design is on display on the southbound platform at his local station, Finchley Central.

Many other transport systems use schematic maps to represent their services, maps undoubtedly inspired by Beck's. The bus operator First Group uses a system of coloured bus routes, such as "red line", "blue line", and so on, collectively named "Overground".

Cultural references

The design has become so widely known that it is now instantly recognisable as representing London. It has been featured on T-shirts, postcards, and other memorabilia.

A map of the fictitious Island of Sodor inspired by Harry Beck's design.

In Tate Modern hangs The Great Bear by Simon Patterson, a subtle parody of Beck's original design, in which the station names on the tube map have been replaced by those of famous historical figures. In 2006, The Guardian published a map based on the tube map, purporting to show the relationships between musicians and musical genres in the 20th century. The map is discussed by its creator, Dorian Lynsky, on the Guardian's Culture vulture Blog. David Booth's The Tate Gallery by Tube (1986) is one of a series of publicity posters for the Underground. His work showed the lines of the map squeezed out of tubes of paint.

Jason Finch has the Zone 1 section of the map tattooed on his back in full colour, complete with station names. The map also is a popular target for parody, in particular the Tube anagram map.

Technical aspects

The designers of the map have tackled a variety of problems in showing useful information as clearly as possible over the years and have sometimes adopted different solutions.

Line colours

The table below shows the changing use of colours since the first Beck map, some of which had been used for the appropriate lines on earlier maps. Earlier maps were limited with the number of colours available that could be clearly distinguished in print. This is less of a problem now and the map has coped with the identification of new lines without great difficulty.

The line colour indicates a limited service by using coloured outlines with a white centre to the line.

Lines under construction are indicated by intervals of colour separated by white (hatching), with the colour outline.

Line	Current Colour!History
Bakerloo	Brown
Central	Red
Circle	Yellow	Originally part of the Metropolitan and District Lines, green (black outline) from 1948, yellow (black outline) 1951-1987
District	Green
East London	Orange	Originally white (thick red outline), part of the Metropolitan Line (green, then purple) until 1970, white (thick purple outline) until 1990
Hammersmith & City	Pink	Part of the Metropolitan Line until 1990
Jubilee	Silver	The northern end was part of the Bakerloo line until 1979
Metropolitan	Purple	In the 1930s and 1940s the District and Metropolitan Lines were shown combined, in green
Northern	Black
Northern City	Now a Network Rail line	Originally white (thick purple outline), black as part of the Northern Line, white (thick black outline) from 1970
Piccadilly	Dark blue
Victoria	Light blue
Waterloo & City	Cyan	Part of British Rail until 1994, white (black outline)
Docklands Light Railway	White (thick dark green outline)	White (thick dark blue outline) until 1994
Network Rail (Selected lines only - see below)	White (Black outline)	Orange from 1985, white (orange outline) 1987-1990

Station marks

An important symbol that Beck introduced was the 'tick' to indicate stations. This allowed stations to be placed closer together while retaining clarity, because the tick was only on the side of the line nearer the station name (ideally centrally placed, though the arrangement of lines did not always allow this).

From the start, interchange stations were given a special mark to indicate their importance, though its shape changed over the years. In addition, from 1960, marks were used to identify stations that offered convenient interchange with the main-line railway network (now National Rail. The following shapes have been used:
* Empty circle (one for each line or station, where convenient) - standard default mark
* Empty circle (one for each station) - 1938 experimental map
* Empty diamond (one for each line) - early 1930s
* Empty square - interchange with main line, 1960-1964
* Circle with dot inside - interchange with main line, 1964-1970

Since 1970 the map has used the British Rail 'double arrow' beside the station name to indicate main-line interchanges. Where the main-line station has a different name from the Underground station that it connects with, since 1977 this has been shown in a box.

Some interchanges are more convenient than others and the map designers have repeatedly rearranged the layout of the map to try to indicate where the interchanges are more complex, e.g. by making the interchange circles more distant and linking them with thin black lines. However, sometimes the need for simplicity overrides this goal; the Bakerloo/Northern Lines interchange at Charing Cross is not very convenient and passengers would be better off changing at Embankment, but the need to simplify the inner London area means that the map seems to indicate that Charing Cross is the easiest interchange. Since there is such inconsistency in the map, it is unclear how many people would expect to draw inferences about the ease of interchange from the map.

Lines or services

The map aims to make the complicated network of services easy to understand, but there are occasions when it might be useful to have more information about the services that operate on each line.

The District Line is the classic example; it is shown as one line on the map, but comprises services on the main route between Upminster and Ealing/Richmond/Wimbledon, the service between Edgware Road and Wimbledon, and the High Street Kensington to Olympia shuttle service. For most of its history the map has not distinguished these services, which could be misleading to an unfamiliar user. Recent maps have tried to tackle this problem by separating the different routes at Earl's Court.

Limited-service routes have sometimes been identified with hatched lines (see above), with some complications added to the map to show where peak-only services ran through to branches, such as that to Chesham on the Metropolitan Line. The number of routes with a limited service has declined in recent years as patronage recovered from its early 1980s low point, so there are now fewer restrictions to show, but where they remain they are now mainly done through accompanying text rather than special line markings.

Non-Underground lines

The map exists to help people navigate the Underground, but it has been questioned whether it should play a wider role in helping people navigate London itself. Thus, the question has been raised as to whether main-line railways should be shown on the map, in particular those operating in the Inner London area. London Underground has largely resisted such pressures, and a different map is in circulation showing London Connections to complement the Tube Map.

The Underground publishes the Travelcard zones map showing National Rail lines within its area, as well as DLR and Tramlink, with National Rail lines in grey outline. The Association of Train Operating Companies publishes the London Connections map, which shows London Underground lines in their usual colours (and DLR abnd Tramlink), and National Rail lines colour-coded to distinguish between the Train Operating Companies. This map can be downloaded from the National Rail website, but even printed on A3 paper is hard to read, containing almost 700 stations. It is available in National Rail stations in A2 size (folded) with a map of railways in the South East on the reverse.

Over the years some non-Underground lines have appeared on the tube map:
* North London Line, from Richmond to North Woolwich (originally to Broad Street), is a radial route offering useful connections that avoid central London. Now part of Silverlink Metro. However, the service frequency is less than the Underground and many of the stations do not directly connect with the Underground or main-line services.
* Northern City Line, originally part of the Underground but transferred to British Rail in the late 1970s for use by inner-suburban electric trains that previously ran to Kings Cross.
* Thameslink, opened in 1988, having been closed for many years. It offers some relief to the Northern Line as it connects the main line north of King's Cross St Pancras to London Bridge. Since about 2006 Thameslink has been called First Capital Connect.
* Waterloo and City Line, the only tube line operated by a main-line railway company rather than the Underground, it has appeared on most Tube Maps (except the earliest Beck examples). In 1994 it was taken over by the Underground and given its own line colour (see above).
* Docklands Light Railway, the automatic light-rail system in the London Docklands area.

Currently the only non-Underground lines shown are the Docklands Light Railway and the North London Line.

External links

*London Underground anagram map
*Tube maps
*National Rail maps including London Connections
*Tube map history
*Interactive historical and geographical tube map of Zone 1 (requires Macromedia Flash)
*H2G2 article on the tube map
*Trivia, history and facts on the London Underground Tube map contains more history on the tube map plus alternative designs of the map from Dr Who Conventions and Simon Patterson's The Great Bear
* More on Harry Beck
* The London Tube Map Archive has a collection of Tube maps, showing the growth of the system and the changes in the style of the tube map
* TfL's suggestion for what the tube map could look like in 2016 (PDF file), including trams, tracked buses, and some current overground routes.
*Mapper's Delight - all kinds of variations and further information on tube maps
*Robert Reynolds Subway Page - links and photos of most world subway system maps, many of which use Beck-inspired design principles
*Satellie Image Tube Map - uses Google maps to easily find tube stations by zone and/or lines

Tube map: Encyclopedia BETA

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