I think it was a wasted endeavour, although it looks better than the original, due to its geographical accuracy. That is of no value when your underground, there are no land mark by which to navigate by, excepted that of the next station, and which lines connects with which other lines.
The debate about the necessity of geographic accuracy of subway maps will probably never finish... Personally, I don't think the rules that work with regular travel apply to the underground. The person travelling from Waterloo to Kingsbury hardly needs to see any landmarks on the map or see exactly how many turns there are in the tunnels: he needs to see the easiest way to get from point A to point B. People interested in landmarks will normally see them on the city map, where the nearest Tube station will also be marked, so again, they only need the Tube map to tell them which line to take and where to change. The only reason they may want to know the exact distance between stations is to walk from one to the other - but in that case, they don't need a tube map! So I agree with Joe - a wasted effort; the current map performs a lot better. Some amazing examples of underground maps here: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm?domain=Transportation%20Networks
I think it was a wasted endeavour, although it looks better than the original, due to its geographical accuracy. That is of no value when your underground, there are no land mark by which to navigate by, excepted that of the next station, and which lines connects with which other lines.
ReplyDeleteYep, good point about lack of landmarks
ReplyDeleteThe debate about the necessity of geographic accuracy of subway maps will probably never finish... Personally, I don't think the rules that work with regular travel apply to the underground. The person travelling from Waterloo to Kingsbury hardly needs to see any landmarks on the map or see exactly how many turns there are in the tunnels: he needs to see the easiest way to get from point A to point B. People interested in landmarks will normally see them on the city map, where the nearest Tube station will also be marked, so again, they only need the Tube map to tell them which line to take and where to change. The only reason they may want to know the exact distance between stations is to walk from one to the other - but in that case, they don't need a tube map! So I agree with Joe - a wasted effort; the current map performs a lot better. Some amazing examples of underground maps here: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm?domain=Transportation%20Networks
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link Olga.
ReplyDelete