Reaction to the new September 2009 tube map can perhaps best be described as "limited furore". The Evening Standard hasn't complained, and nobody in Scotland gives a damn, but a vociferous online minority has been clamouring to have its say. Most people like the changes, apart from the changes they don't like, although others absolutely hate the removal of something and will not be placated until it is replaced. The usual semi-consensus, then.
Here's what people appear to have been talking/shouting about the most...
1) Zones: London has spoken, and London is not happy. How can anyone with Oyster pay-as-you-go know how much they're going to be charged if all of the capital's fare zones are invisible? "Ah never mind," say some, "because a journey costs what a journey costs." But we're not all made of money. Some of us only want to travel as far as our pre-pay allows, and this change reeks of potential profiteering. It's therefore essential that zonal information is still available somewhere, and if that's not on the map itself then we need to be able to find it easily elsewhere. It could appear in the map's index (if there was one). Or there needs to be a London Connections map (or similar) on every station platform, so that those with zonal queries can refer to this instead. But the zones can't go back onto the main map, surely, or else all those lovely simplifying straightenings will have to be undone. Verdict: something will have to be changed, because passengers need to know where the zones are.
2) River: Amongst those who care, there is general consternation about Thameslessness. Surely it's an essential part of any London travel map? How will people ever navigate their way without the river? Quite easily, I'd suggest. The Thames may be a barrier to cross-London travel, but not if you're in a train. Verdict: be bold, keep the river out.
3) BIN THE BLOODY BLOBS: There's still considerable residual anger about something that hasn't changed. When so many things on the map have been simplified and decluttered, why on earth haven't TfL gone the whole hog and removed the ugly blue wheelchair blobs as well? They publish a separate step-free tube map which is much more useful, so why don't people with limited mobility print that out and use it instead so that the rest of us can enjoy our real tube map in peace? I know, not very politically correct is it? But these blobs are an illusion anyway, depicting only that one aspect of a journey is step-free, and absolutely no guarantee of a flat journey. Verdict: the other changes on the map may be radical, but we're an ungrateful bunch and we're going to keep on moaning about these lumps until they disappear.
4) East London Line: Why is it still on the map at all, when it isn't still there in real life? Verdict: good question.
5) Daggers drawn: Not so many complaints about these † additional symbols, probably because they only appear on the card map and not on the poster. But there seems to be no rational reason why some daggers are included and some aren't, nor necessarily any easy way to determine which particular special arrangement each dagger actually represents. Verdict: Max and I would love nothing better than to force the TfL mappers to explain, one by one, why each dagger is absolutely essential. And then cull the unjustifiable.
6) Footnote: There's a line at the bottom of the new tube map which says "Correct at time of going to print". Verdict: made me laugh, that did.
A final aside... I was trying to take the District line home at the weekend, even though planned engineering works and line closures meant that trains were travelling no further east than Tower Hill. At Temple a group of foreign tourists stood patiently on the platform, waiting for a Circle line train that would never appear. Our train driver took pity on them, and leaned out of his cab to ask where they were going. "Kings Cross," came the eventual reply. For these visitors, it seemed, the existing tube map was far too difficult to comprehend. But they had inwardly digested the Circle line, and were intent on chugging slowly round to reach their destination rather than taking a more efficient more direct route. "Hop on," said the driver, helpfully. "You can change at Monument for the Northern line". So they hopped on. And at Monument they hopped out, and discovered they couldn't change to any other lines because of escalator work, and so faced a lengthy street level slog via Bank to get down to the Northern line platforms only a few yards away. And this story has three very important conclusions. i) No tube map can reflect every difficulty that travellers will face. ii) Whatever Londoners think of the new map, it's definitely more accessible for tourists. iii) However radical the new map, it's only true five days a week.
1) Zones: London has spoken, and London is not happy. How can anyone with Oyster pay-as-you-go know how much they're going to be charged if all of the capital's fare zones are invisible? "Ah never mind," say some, "because a journey costs what a journey costs." But we're not all made of money. Some of us only want to travel as far as our pre-pay allows, and this change reeks of potential profiteering. It's therefore essential that zonal information is still available somewhere, and if that's not on the map itself then we need to be able to find it easily elsewhere. It could appear in the map's index (if there was one). Or there needs to be a London Connections map (or similar) on every station platform, so that those with zonal queries can refer to this instead. But the zones can't go back onto the main map, surely, or else all those lovely simplifying straightenings will have to be undone.
