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You've Got Mail
A number of the Crossrail stations in West London have special purple roundels on the floor of their ticket halls. Each is embedded in a mat that passengers walk across and includes the name of the station written across the central strip. They're a very nice bespoke design feature.
Here's the roundel mat at Acton Main Line which is located just behind the gateline. It's easiest seen by those exiting the station, although they can only read it upside-down because the writing faces the other way. It's most probably designed as a welcome to those entering, although it's so close to the barriers that only those entering one of the central gates get the full effect.
But what's most unexpected about this roundel is that they've spelt the name of the station wrong.
It says acton mail line. This is an unlikely and somewhat embarrassing error. At some point in the design process an incorrect station name has wormed its way into the manufacturing process and the company responsible has just gone ahead made it anyway. Then they've shipped it, then someone's installed it, and all with a glaring L where an N should be. This takes a certain level of obliviousness.
What's more, this is the second time they've done this. The mat also said acton mail line when the new station entrance opened in March 2021. I didn't see it myself but my Acton correspondent has sent me a dated photo which includes exactly the same spelling error plain as day. That mat was later replaced with the correct spelling because staff are not fools, but last month after two years of wear and tear it was replaced and hey presto the incorrect spelling is back. It requires particularly poor processes to make the same embarrassing error twice.
You'd expect staff to be aware of this, given they stand a few metres away engaging with customers several hours a day. Indeed it may be that a replacement is due, it's just that this duff mat needs to stay in place until something else can fill the gap. But on the off chance that nobody at TfL is yet aware let me just say "You've got Mail", and fingers crossed it'll soon be Main.
No Way Westway
While we're on incorrect signs here's a cracker at Ladbroke Grove station. It's positioned above the exit and is designed to be read by anyone looking to find their way to Portobello Road Market.
The directions are initially fine. You should indeed "cross the road at the traffic lights" and the arrow is indeed pointing in the correct direction. But you cannot "follow the path under the motorway" because there is no motorway in the vicinity and hasn't been for years.
When the Westway opened in 1970, carving brutally across the streetscape of Paddington and North Kensington, it had official motorway status. Its 2½ mile length was designated the A40(M) and had all the official blue signs and everything. But when the road was transferred to the newly fledged Transport for London in 2000, an administrative oversight meant TfL weren't legally allowed to be in charge of a motorway so it had to be downgraded. It's been the mere A40 ever since.
The other motorways which lost out in 2000 were the M41 and the A102(M). The M41 bore off from the A40(M) at the elevated Westway interchange, pictured above, and headed three-quarters of a mile south to the Holland Park roundabout. It is perhaps just as well it got downgraded otherwise Westfield wouldn't have been allowed to add a junction in the middle to link to their multi-storey car parks. Meanwhile the former A102(M) doglegged from Old Ford to Temple Mills via Hackney Wick and is now merely part of the A12.
All of which means the sign above the exit at Ladbroke Grove station has been technically incorrect for the last 23 years. It's hard to imagine anyone's been inconvenienced by this error, because any potential market shopper confronted by a giant concrete flyover will immediately assume it's the right way to go and will follow the correct path. But it is technically very incorrect indeed and must make many a pedant tut. I wonder how many more years it'll remain untouched in situ.
Hire bikes appear on the tube map!
We've had the cablecar, we've had trams, we've had river services and we've had Thameslink, but now for the very first time London's hire bikes have been shoehorned onto the tube map. How can there be space, you may cry, after all the other superfluous additions which have overwhelmed the iconic map? Harry Beck, in line with all obligatory tube map clichés, must be spinning in his grave.
Don't worry, the bikes don't appear on the paper tube map except as an advert on the back cover. But they do appear on the new poster map, i.e. the map you'll find on platforms, where a bright red stripe promotes the cheapness of the hire bike scheme. And halfway along that stripe a helmeted rider pokes up onto the map itself, somewhere between Hackbridge and Coulsdon South, obscuring a small part of zones 4, 5 and 6. Voila - a hire bike on the tube map.
You may be disappointed by that reveal, indeed I may have been overexaggerating the impact for tabloid effect. No important parts of the map have been covered over and nobody's journey planning is being hindered. But this really is the first appearance of the bike hire scheme on the actual tube map, and if the designers are willing to start intruding in this way then who's to say what they might squeeze in next?
