Removed Network Rail lines from the 'all stations' map of Gt Britain to see what London Underground / Overground looked like. Horrible! Needs a lot of work.

This is the one all the fuss is about - no river or zones.

But it just looks thin, weak and poorly. The opportunity should have been taken to beef up the line thickness.

Why is the under construction East London line shown to Shoredith High Street and not Dalston?

This excercise started because I’ve always been unhappy with the interchange symbol. For example, why should Green Park be one blob but Mile End two, when the first has long walks between distant platforms, the latter has cross-platform interchange. And the interchange symbol is too big for its boots, visually that is, affording too much importance to unimportant locations.
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Brilliant background network with the Central and Northern lines straight as they should be; and much better NLL and Goblin routes; much better east London line and DLR.

The only criticism is that the map is just a bit tight - a bit more space and less efficiency would improve it.

I believe it was a design classic, but unfortunately no longer, for the following reasons.

Beck was lucky that he had the Circle Line and a reasonable matrix of central London deep level tubes for which his formula of line weight, curve and station symbols worked. Extensions to the East have made it lose its simplicity.

His formula doesn’t work for many other systems, the Paris map using the Beck formula is no more helpful in planning a journey than the geographic one, because the actual system is unplanned. A bit like the Southern Region, I don't think a map can be made to make sense of it - I haven't seen one yet.

It’s only a design classic in the UK, because Londoners have grown up with it, its a cultural thing. Show a Parisian the Beck style Paris metro map and they think you’re mad - surely it’s better to have the streets in the background they say.

The interchange symbol is the biggest problem, giving the impression that it is more difficult to change, for example, from the Central to District at Mile End than it is from the Bakerloo to the Victoria at Green Park, whereas you have cross platform interchange at the former and a very long passageway at the latter. This is done just for the designers cartographic convenience rather than helping the user plan a journey using the least physical effort. There are many examples of the confusion caused by this, Earl’s Court etc. This is because of the limitation caused by the simple interchange symbol that can’t encompass many lines, the map would be better using elongated loops like the German maps of Munich or Cologne. Another example is where the northern circle has three routes in parallel but only two interchange symbols as shown here on a sign at King's Cross - does the Metropolitan stop at Moorgate? A symbol should mean something consistent, here it doesn’t.

Four problems here.

Obviously the interchange symbol (flogging a dead horse here) - doesn't mean at Embankment that it is easier to change from the Circle & District to the Bakerloo than the Northern line.

Horrible Waterloo - why the extended interchange link to the Jubilee line? And why is the Jubilee line so bendy? Also, incidentally, weaving up and down between the Bakerloo and Northern lines.

Overstretched Waterloo & City / Jubilee / Northern lines with hardly a station on the south side of the Thames! This is due to previous distortions elsewhere.

Why do lines go over the Thames with white divider? Tube lines cross without this divider.

There is so much that is wrong with this horrible, horrible map, but picked out here is the treatment of the closed East London line.

Is it necessary to show the three separate replacement bus services with all those full-sized interchange symbols? Add the bus symbols, ELW, ELP and ELC and the dagger symbol! Far too complicated.

And as the supporting text becomes increasingly patronising, we now get:

This section of track is part of the National Rail network. London Overground services will operate on this line from 2010. Oyster pay as you go is not currently valid on this line.

Just leave it all off!

And now they've introduced the new disabled symbol, is it a station or an interchange station? It just emphasises the problem and draws the eye to the DLR. Bank, Woodford and Waterloo look terrible. A very dubious bit of graphics this - there are so many other ways of doing this. For example, just use black ticks (better than using line colour anyway) and circles for inaccessible stations and red ticks and circles for those with disabled access.

There are many poor layouts. For example, stations on radial arms are reasonably consistently spaced, whereas the stations between Morden and Stockwell are the most closely spaced, this is because their is too much space given to the Victoria-Stockwell-London Bridge triangle - all the stations in this area are more widely space than the central London area. Why does the Victoria line have to be so stretched here and why does the Jubilee line drop down so much for Southwark, it could quite easily be closer the Thames. What is the benefit in dropping the Central Line down at Bank and destroy the beautiful simplicity of a straight horizontal line? It is not like that geographically or necessary diagrammatically. The river could be brought closer at Blackfriars as there is a riverboat connection shown. The designer is working hard to keep station captions within zones, but this means double stacking some captions when they'd be more readable on one line (Hounslow East for example) and squeezing stations together (Kilburn Park to Warwick Avenue for example - although double stacking would have solved this - inconsistency of solution).

There are lots of other poor renditions, bad alignment of interchange symbols at Waterloo, the New Cross Gate branch coming off the East London line without using the transition curve used elsewhere, an unnecessary bend in the DLR above West India Quay. Why drop the Hammersmith & City Shepherd’s Bush station down so far away from the Central Line station? This raises the issue of stations with the same name on different lines - what is the significance of the gap at Hammersmith compared with gap at Paddington? Why flush right Kensington Olympia over the station when centering is used elsewhere? You can't see the yellow tick at Aldgate - surely this is an interchange station just like Edgware Road? Farringdon should be slightly further down to look evenly spaced.

The network should be the 'Underground', not the 'Tube' - or 'Metro'.

All respect to wheel chair users, but this is getting ridiculous.

A very bad design idea - confuses the original doctrine of ticks equal stations, circles equal interchange. A useless halfway house.

Beginning to think that a wheelchair turns up instead of a train...

Four problems here.

Both the Euston and Baker street routes share the same lines yet are shown differently. Jubilee and Met are set so far apart that a new extended interchange symbol is used, particularly weird at Wembley Park. The North London line wrongly dips up and down at West Hampstead. The readability clash between the brown and hollow orange colours is self inflicted.

Unsure how Compare Infobase can claim copyright as it is a copy of the TfL version except lines are thinner and non-interchange stations are shown as red blobs - and confusingly on only one route where multiple routes exist, eg Euston Square. Full of mistakes and bad typography, Liverstreet Street, Edgiware Road etc etc...

Interesting idea to make London a bit more London-shaped and outer areas more geographic but the adherence to 45º makes it look like its had an electric shock. Also interesting idea to show tunnel portals, a bit like the Crossrail map.

I love this map, such a creative solution all those years ago. Notice London is an oval.

You would think that curves would be used so that what goes on at junctions would be clear.

An attempt to use just one symbol at interchanges.

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This excercise started because I’ve always been unhappy with the interchange symbol. For example, why should Green Park be one blob but Mile End two, when the first has long walks between distant platforms, the latter has cross-platform interchange. And the interchange symbol is too big for its boots, visually that is, affording too much importance to unimportant locations. This is particularly obvious in locations where a double symbol and hatched line connection make that location look so much more important than they are (Finchley Central, Chalfont & Latimer, Woodford, Kennington...)

Alex Gollner kindly allowed me to use his file for this excercise and although I’ve tried to leave his map pretty much alone, I have made curves softer, notably at Angel (which has a space penalty but provides a less angular, more relaxed looking map). I’ve also dropped most Network Rail and other connectional symbols for the moment just to be able to concentrate on the task in hand.

Also two types of station symbol although I can’t make my mind up, to left to right.

I also don’t like the London Overground double orange line which doesn’t work when in parrallel to another line (ie Queens Park - Harrow & Wealdstone). 

I’ve spent far too long on this and now appreciate what a very hard map this is to design, so a lot of respect for everyone that has tried. One thing can be sure, most of the alternatives are better than TfLs!

Other changes: East London & docklands closer in, west London stretched out including a wider Earls Court.

I thought my solution to King’s Cross was good (subsurface, tube and Thameslink complexes) but no good as there is still an implication that to get from Met to Thameslink you have to go via the tube.

Current map is poor as it mixes systems: tube are named lines, Overground four unidentified lines. (Names have been suggested for these including the ‘Brunel’ line for the East London line.)

Points:
• Shouldn’t split ‘Caledonian’ & ‘Road’ into two lines so this becomes the most difficult caption, beating Ravenscourt Park.
• Alignment of lines to simplify overall appearance.
• I’ve always preffered not to have a key, as during cross-referencing one can lose one’s place and is time consuming. • Also dropped zones and the river

Distortions:
• Have brought docklands closer to the city;
• Couldn’t keep the Central line straight;
• London Bridge
• Met Uxbridge branch drops down to rduce distortion on Piccadilly and Central.

Have joined together lines that actually share the same formation, so Bakerloo & Met, District & Prccadilly, but does Canning Town - Stratford?

Got the two Watfords closer together;

City loop smaller; south side of circle closer to top;

Alignment: Watford branch & Pic, Watford DC line & WLL, Central & Circle, Jubilee and District, Bakerloo & Victoria and Piccadilly & Victoria at Green Park, NLL and Thameslink,