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

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…

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).

Piccadilly Circus cutaway view (via magpie-moon and @BibliOdyssey)

Via fmass, blandben, and hannahcooper

I love this kind of thing. I posted something similar about King’s Cross a while back, and it’s as equally confusing as it is awesome.

I like to think that I have a very good sense of direction, and pretty much always know which way I’m facing when walking, driving or on a train, but Tube stations just completely throw me. Anything which involves turning a corner once underground and I lose all sense of which way I came in and whereabouts I am relative to the streets above.

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!

Via my Twitpic.

A rogue apostrophe, spotted at King’s Cross station last night.

Sigh.

It’s not just the Tube map (PDF) that can be a bit daunting for anyone coming to London. It’s also a mystery for many how to get from one platform to another whilst changing lines at a particular station.

Some stations are ridiculously easy to interchange at (Earl’s Court, for example), whereas others lead you on a seemingly endless sequence of never-ending corridors, turning left, then right, up, then down, before plonking you on the correct platform (Bank, I’m looking at you).

Whilst seasoned Tube users know the quickest routes within a Tube station from one platform to another, it is very easy to have no real sense of direction, nor an overall picture of how they’re all linked.

This is why I like diagrams such as this one (found via London Reconnections), because you can really see just how compact even the biggest interchange stations are, and start to piece together the station’s layout.

Yes, I’m a Tube geek.

Today’s Times carried a report about the hottest areas of London’s Tube network, measured by the temperature at rush hour on the platforms. The survey was carried out on one of the hottest days of last year, with temperatures at street level hitting 30 degrees.

Unfortunately, not a whole lot has changed since this survey was carried out. Tube trains still don’t have air conditioning (and most never will, owing to the extra size needed in the tunnels to accommodate units), and the platforms are pretty unventilated. Some semi-permanent fans have been installed in a couple of stations (King’s Cross Victoria line springs to mind), but they don’t have a huge effect.

I try to avoid the Tube during the summer, because it’s just unbearably hot. I’m a sweater, and always seem to get to the other end absolutely dripping. On my daily commute to/from work, I get the overland, proper train, which is usually air-conditioned, and if not is above ground for fresh air through the opened windows. It’s positively enjoyable, to be honest, especially when it’s roasting outside and cold inside.

I had to get the Tube this Saturday to get to the Arsenal game, and owing to a number of closures it was inevitably absolutely rammed. I got on the Piccadilly line at Leicester Square (in the middle of the black X at the centre of this map), and took it north-east to Arsenal. Busy doesn’t even begin to describe…

Now, this is shown as yellow on the heat map, but it was hot. I know it was an exceptional occasion, with more people than usual travelling, but it’s not uncommon for it to be that busy on a normal rush hour. I got through my bottle of coke in double-quick time, and the fresh air couldn’t hit me quickly enough when I got off.

And that was only travelling for seven stops. God knows what it’s like for people on it for longer, especially if they’re going across central London.

And I speak from experience when I say that the Central line is even worse. That’s the left-to-right line in this map, coloured bright red. It’s the closest one to my office, and I occasionally take it after work when I’m heading off to meet someone.

It’s definitely not worth it. So fucking hot, even in winter time. Always busy, always a pain in the ass.

But yet I find myself agreeing with something diamondgeezer wrote a few months back (that I can’t find now!): the money that Transport for London could spend on air conditioning for Tubes, and this runs into the billions, should be spent on simply improving capacity. More trains = less waiting on platforms, fewer passengers on each train, and so less heat overall. Simple.

I’ll leave the last word to Charlie Brooker’s column today:

On the platform, morose expressions laminated by a thin sheen of grime and sweat; hangdog mugs smeared with London. There’s no air-con on the underground, so on a hot day people quickly resemble clothed piglets trapped in a can, waiting for the air to run out.