Tube Stations Renamed – Plausible Alternatives For All 270

alternatetube

Click the map above for the full version

A few weeks ago, Tube Challenge World Record Holder, Geoff Marshall, came up with the brilliant idea of renaming all of London’s 270 tube stations with other plausible names. He made the request via the Londonist, and I suspect got a few more responses than he was expecting.

He’s now sifted through the more than 300 comments and distilled them into the map above. Having walked to all of them, I think he’s done a pretty good job selecting the new names, although I do have a few disagreements. I made the following suggestions and am happy to see that several (in bold bellow) made the cut.

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What The Tube Map Could Look Like In 2050

tubemap2050

You’ll want to click on the map above to see a full resolution version

The map above was created by Brian Butterworth at Uk Free TV and is an attempt to include all current and future planned upgrades to TFL’s services on one map.

On first glace it looks a bit of a mess. However, looking a little closer you’ll find a few interesting things such as:

  • High usage stations have a slightly larger font size and are highlighted in yellow.
  • Stations outside of Greater London are shown with a lighter text colour.
  • The Map includes Crossrail 1 & 2, High Speed 1 & 2, Thameslink, the R25 and even the Northern City Line but not the current Tram services in South London or the Emirates Air Line.
  • Distances between out-of-station interchanges are shown
  • A slew of new stations have been added including: Battersea, Nine Elms, Cassiobridge, Watford Vicarage Road, Junction Road, Old Kent Road, Camberwell and I’m sure lots more.
  • Euston-King’s Cross-St. Pancras looks like it will be one crazy interchange station.
  • The River Lea is included along with the Thames (not sure why)
  • The Beckton curve is shown on the map

I doubt a map like this would ever be used by TFL as it’s simply too complicated. However, I think Brian has done an incredible job highlighting the issues that TFL will (hopefully) soon have to address. Mainly how much more can you add to the current map before it becomes unreadable.

The genius of Beck’s 1933 Tube Map was that it made everything simple. While the map above uses Beck’s techniques of straight, vertical and 45 degree diagonal lines, there are simply too many of them and geographical accuracy is further sacrificed. When all these services do open, it will take another genius like Beck to help use navigate our way around them. Until then, this is a great attempt in my opinion.

What do you think?