Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

The Poke has come up with the solution to the Daily Mail’s secret editorial formula, which dictates the content of the newspaper each day.

It’s tremendous stuff, with my favourite stations being “Immigrant Cancer”, “That Meerkat”, and “Romp”. For what it’s worth, I live at “Sex Education”.

This live tube train map is just phenomenal. It shows the position of trains across the whole tube network, relative to each station, and updates live as they move through the tunnels. The yellow pins are stations, and the red ones are trains.

I remember a few years back seeing a similar map for a random Swedish town’s bus service, which showed the exact position of every bus, so that you could wait until the last second before leaving your house and going out into the cold.

This kind of thing really is the future, and surely it can’t be long before there’s something like an iphone app so people can access it on the go. Whilst you never have to wait more than a couple of minutes at most stations in central London, for those living at the outer fringes of London, with a less frequent service, this kind of live map is ideal. No more waiting for 10 minutes on a platform…

Randomly, the current satellite view of Wimbledon Common on Google Maps caught a little funfair in residence at the bottom end of the Common. I can’t even remember when that funfair was there, to be honest!

That little area to the right of the funfair, surrounding the pond, is always full of people on the weekends at this time of year. There are picnics everywhere, frisbees in the air, and all handily close to a pub…

This is a map of the Tube network showing passenger crowding during the morning rush hour. It’s measured in people per square metre of floor space, with grey being less than 1, green 1-2, orange 2-3, red 3-4, and black a somewhat mind-boggling more than 4 people per square metre.

It’s taken from a report (PDF) by the Mayor of London on future transport strategy, which details how they hope to alleviate this over-crowding by 2031. Only 20 years to wait then!

It’s a pretty cool visualisation of how Tubes fill up as they get closer to central London, and you can really pick out the hotspots/bottlenecks. Diamond Geezer points out the busiest zones, but I can definitely testify from personal experience that the area round Earl’s Court is always rammed, as is the Northern line from London Bridge through Bank to Moorgate.

There’s a corresponding map for overland rail services, and I can similarly recommend trying to avoid my usual route between Putney and Waterloo. Getting on the train is usually pretty easy, but I can count on one hand the number of times each month I manage to get a seat (including the return journey at the end of the day).

I broke out my running trainers for the first time in forever this evening, being guilt-ridden at not being able to get to the gym at lunchtime, and upon seeing the girlfriend aerobicising to a DVD in our living room when I got home I figured it was time to get out there.

Of course, it was a bit of a struggle, but I’m glad that I got out there. No doubt I’ll be dying tomorrow, but three miles isn’t bad for a re-start. No idea how long it took me, but it was good to be out in the fresh air again.

I went round my local corner of Wimbledon Common (pictured), and you can see on the right-hand side of the map how close the Wimbledon tennis courts are to where I live. It’s a nice part of the world.

I’ve rarely objected to having my travel times written in on my maps, but this presents an exciting alternative.  I could only imagine this as a useful tool for someone who is traveling entirely by plane or train and thus didn’t have to worry about getting utterly lost.

My favorite thing about this map is how well it illustrates how rural areas in one country are becoming, at least in a certain sense, further away from the cities they support than major cities in other countries.  I’ve heard arguments that it makes more sense to view the modern world primarily in terms of urban/rural divides rather than a national ones.  This chart doesn’t even account for the difficulty or comfort of travel, which makes such rural areas appear even further.  I think there is a compelling argument to be made.

chartbum

Yes, I can see that this map is 30 years old, but I love the visualisation it portrays, and how it warps the British Isles. It’s a great example of how physical geography isn’t always strictly realistic when it comes to travelling times.

It reminds me of that London tube travel time map, which is a really fun tool, and quite surprising.

Zooming out from my last post, it’s pretty easy to see why the London Tube map is quite heavily stylised [PDF] nowadays. It’s damn messy geographically…

I live just off the bottom of the green line as it leaves the map to the left of centre.

Wait, when did Google Maps turn on the Tube map in central London as standard? Handy!