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Some notes about the dotted lines on the new diagram ( Tube map finally shows walkable interchanges (IanVisits))
I thought I would test the assumption that the 23 dotted lines were all of an easy walk, well signposted and out-of-station interchanges.
Much to my surprise, you can make rather ridiculous trips that are mainly lot of walking. I did Stratford-Forest Gate-Wanstead Park-Walthamstow Queens Road-Walthamstow Central, Seven Sisters-South Tottenham-Upper Holloway-Archway-Camden Town-Camden Road OK and later Finchley Road-Northwick Park, Kenton, West Hampstead Overground, West Hampstead Tube, Swiss Cottage OK and then South Hampstead-Euston-Euston Square-Hammersmith D&P-Hammersmith H&C-> Wood Lane-White City-Stratford OK.
Most interesting is that Swiss Cottage to South Hampstead isn’t and OSI. My travel terminated and restarted using this connection. This connection is also notable because South Hampstead has National Rail status on the on-street signs until right outside the station.
I wouldn’t have known where to go from Northwick Park to Kenton if I hadn’t already made the trip before. There’s nothing between the stations in terms of signage.
Ditto for Finchley Road and Frognal to Finchley Road. Unless you knew where Finchley Road tube is you would have to spot some very, very tiny indicators on public maps.
The Seven Sisters to South Tottenham walking route, which you can do directly these days, has no signage at all. I know you walk into the seemingly dead-end road to get there, but the only sign at steet level is a road sign which points the wrong way.
There’s nothing from the Overground gate line at Euston to show you where you might go for Euston Square. You would have to know to ignore the Underground signs and then walk confidently out of the station to the right and spot the over-optimistic signs.
The Walthamstow inter-station route is marked, but it’s very blind these days, but at least there is only one way to go.
It interesting that the routes via the cable-car don’t count as Out Of Station interchanges, even though 20 of the 23 do.
I think that someone at TfL should walk all these routes and ensure they all have good signage…
@BB
Hear hear Brian.
In 1969 one of my jobs was to be the secretary of the LT ‘road-rail co-ordination committee’. We had various reps from different parts of the LT organisation and went around London checking signage (or lack of) and considering new and improved routes for interchange.
We even caused there to be signage, previously non-existent, between Blackhorse Road Vic Line and BR stations, in the days when the BR station wasn’t shown as an interchange on the tube train diagrams or the LU map.
Places such as Old Street roundabout were considerably more complex to sign usefully for passengers, whether street to bus, or bus to bus only, or tube/BR to/from bus.There was a huge amount to do, I suspect we only scratched the surface. Sounds like more significant work is still needed, Google Maps won’t do it all.
Can anyone come up with a journey for which South Hampstead-Swiss Cottage is the best route? TfL’s Journey Planner can’t so far as I can see! I’ve tried all the obvious ones and always get sent a different way however hard I try to skew the preferences.
(and good luck finding any useful journeys via the cable car that aren’t quicker and cheaper by another route, except O2 to ExCel)
@Brian B
Google Streetview from Feb 2018 shows a large map outside Finchley Rd & Frognal station, covering the area as far as Finchley Rd (Met) and beyond. Granted it doesn’t face you when leaving the station, but compared to a lot of walks between stations, it’s pretty straightforward.
For a good example of how to mark an unobvious route, Bedford Midland station to the bus station uses footprints on the pavement for people to follow (see here https://goo.gl/maps/gqmnhUdmn4P2 between the two cars and to the left of the postbox).
Interesting to see that large US companies are now looking for public transport access to their main buildings. For some years, property developers in London have been saying that a good urban environment is an essential element for any site they might be tempted to develop. That, too, is looking for less traffic and better public transport, walking and cycling access. Some bits of the development chain, though, still need to catch up.
@Traveller
Bedford Midland to bus station is an elegant solution. I recall being pleased with the on building signage to the Tate Modern (pre-Wobbly Bridge) from Southwark Tube when the former first opened. No idea if the signage still exists. I also really like the in-station Tube connexion floor lines in Paddington mainline station (yellow and green for Circle & District lines respectively) – worry free wayfinding!
@Ralph Ayres
I did once do it, coming from Highbury & Islington and going to Green Park (at a time when NLL services were being diverted via Primrose Hill because the Hampstead Heath tunnel was being repaired) but that’s obviously not the recommended route. I would imagine most potential routes would be better done via Baker Street (from Euston Square) or West Hampstead. Even for St Johns Wood to Kilburn High Road, the recommended route on Journey Planner is via Baker Street to Kilburn Park and walk from there.
Finchley Road to Finchley Road & Frognal is an odd one. If you are coming from the Met then surely changing at Wembley Park and West Hampstead will be much easier and at least identical times. And changing from the NLL to go south again West Hampstead is a much better choice… Would it be the longest OSI?
@ LBM
I agree re the lines on the ground, that is a fool-proof low-tech and low cost solution
Lines on the ground work very nicely as long as they are rare. But they could become confusing and useless if there were too many. They also may not be quite as cheap as they seem, if they need frequent repainting.
My impression of Victoria station. passing through it last year, was that a good idea had been overused: there were too many coloured lines to be useful and, if I recall correctly, some of the colours had to serve more than one purpose, adding to the confusion.
@Malcolm, Ronnie MB
The lines are tape, so quick to lay and replace. Like signage, too many is as bad as too few.
At Victoria there are only three Underground lines (Circle/District being practically the same one here), and three different train operating companies (Southern, SouthEastern and Gatwick Express). So it should be straightforward to keep the line confusion to a minimum. Perhaps it was an initial installation, and will hopefully be improved on.
Ronnie MB, what were the different purposes of the colours? (direxions to the loos??)
Reading the Butterfly Bay Bridge article, it was instantly recognisable as the model in the boardroom scene in “Die Hard”.
I was mentally preparing a show off comment accordingly. Then the article spoils it by mentioning it!
The “London Rail and Tube Services Map” with the dotted walk lines has been uploaded.
https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/images/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.gif
Additional marked walking interchanges (compared with the new tube map) are:
Sudbury Hill – Sudbury Hill Harrow
Putney – East Putney
Whyteleafe – Upper Warlingham
Penge West – Penge East
Beckenham Road – Kent House
Beckenham Road – Clock House
Catford – Catford Bridge
Bowes Park – Bounds Green
Harringay – Harringay Green Lanes
West Hampstead Thameslink – West Hampstead
Stratford International – Stratford International
Fenchurch Street – Tower Hill
Blackfriars NR is now shown as south of the Thames (but Southwark is nowhere near for an interchange to be marked). Marylebone is two blobs, rather than one now, but no dotted line to Baker Street is on there.
@LBM
The route from Southwark tube to Tate Modern is now shown by having the lamp columns painted orange.
@ Herned “If you are coming from the Met then surely changing at Wembley Park and West Hampstead will be much easier and at least identical times.”
A 5 minute walk along the Finchley Road vs changing at Wembley Park vs West Hampstead being a 1 minute walk along West End Lane (according to Google).
Harrow-on-the-Hill to West Hampstead on Monday evening is 23 minutes via a change at Wembley Park. Add a 1 minute walk along West End Lane (which is more in the peak as the large amount of both road traffic and foot traffic compete for a small amount of space) for 24 minutes.
HotH to Finchley Road is 15 minutes, and a 5 minute walk along the Finchley Road (time from Google) is 20 minutes.
Of course, changing at Finchley Road puts West Hampstead at 19 minutes from Harrow, so equal times from the train pulling in to Finchley Road. Except Frognal is a minute further east on the NLL, so you might reach Stratford 8 minutes earlier if you just make the train, rather than just miss it at West Hampstead.
It’s a useful interchange, though whether it needs to be on the map (especially if it adds a kink), rather than just the line diagram, is a different matter.
Speaking of the new “London Rail and Tube Services Map” though, it’s awkward that TfL failed to place the Lewisham branch of the DLR percisely on the boundary of Zones 2 & 3. And HEX, as always, makes one wonder whether it takes up a completely different rail path, while it does not.
But yes, having Camden Town & Camden Road finally connected together is nice. I do wonder how TfL’s gonna deal with nearby Zone 1 stations. Perhaps show nothing at all for the sake of cleanness?
TommyL4
Zone 1 – yes – it’s already very crowded.
Pity in a way, since there are cut-offs like Queensway/Bayswater, Paddington/Lancaster Gate, Euston Sq/Warren St, etc
Let’s not even think about the St Pauls/Bank/Monument/Cannon St complex, shall we?
@LBM – The problem, from (non photographic) memory, was that they seemed to be trying to use coloured lines to lead to everything: TOCs’ services, the underground, buses, ticket machines, taxi ranks, cash machines, the lot. It all seemed a bit overenthusiastic!
Some more “real-world” testing of the dotted lines on the new tube map.
Shepherds Bush Central Line to Overground is so close I can’t really see why it’s shown as a dotted line. It’s literally one zebra crossing away, over bus station. The logo on the other entrance is huge.
Clapham High Street to Clapham North is signposted perfectly but does require the crossing of a busy road.
However, the idea that South Wimbledon to Morden Road is an interchange is fanciful. For a start it almost a 1km walk, there are literally no Morden Road signs on the route, and those trams there are point to Merton Park “Tramlink” station. You must cross a busy “motorway” of traffic too.
But at West Croydon, you can literally jump off the front of the tram into the Overground station barriers! And there are loads of signs too.
Canary Wharf DLR to the Jubilee Line isn’t well signed. The on-route signs all seem to try and trick you to go into a shopping mall, rather than change trains. Perhaps that is actually an accident.
I did most of the remaining ones in the last year (New Cross to New Cross Gate, Shadwell DLR to Overground, Tower Gateway to Tower Hill, Bow Road to Bow Church) and they are reasonably short, and sign posted well enough.
The cable-car is signposted to/from both North Greenwich/Royal Victoria, but on some occasions the building works have made the signed route longer than it needs to be.
I forgot to say that the trip I made on Friday, that the Camden Town to Camden Road route is almost invisible. I couldn’t exit Camden Town in the way that the tiny overhead sign suggested and there is nothing at all over route to suggest you are going the right way.
I think that the issue with the Tram to non-Tram interchanges is that the tram is charged as a separate system where you can’t do anything other than pay £1.50 for the tram. So, these interfaces are the same as the cable-car, where you also get charged a non-interchange fare.
Better on-street signage is needed at Northwick Park, Camden Town, Seven Sisters, Canary Wharf DLR.
And South Wimbledon isn’t anywhere “near” any London Tram stop.
@TRAVELLER the Finchley Road and Frognal to Finchley Road route no longer has the signage at the Overground station as this has been removed by the building works of new flats next to the station.
One of the issues with the otherwise gold-standard Google Streetview is that the cars can’t take photos from a pedestrian point of view.
“Canary Wharf DLR to the Jubilee Line isn’t well signed.”
I’m not clear why tfl insist on showing that link on the map, whereas everyone who does that transfer know that Herons Quay DLR to Jubilee is a simpler and quicker route. DLR staff actively make announcements that Herons Quay is an easier connection.
@ISLANDDWELLER
“I’m not clear why tfl insist on showing that link on the map, whereas everyone who does that transfer know that Herons Quay DLR to Jubilee is a simpler and quicker route”
Indeed. At lot of trouble would have been saved if the three stations in Canary Wharf had three names, say “North” and “South” for the DLR and “Central” for the Jubilee Line. But then you would have to repeat the same name “Canary Wharf” on the map three times, with two dotted lines.
A few stops along there is “Stratford High Street”, “Stratford International” and “Stratford”. The DLR passenger assistants do sometime add the word “Regional” to the last one in announcements, but that never appears on anything official. Quite why it was never re-named “Stratford Central” I don’t know.
Perhaps there is a secret committee of sadists that monitors the number of people getting of at the wrong Stratford and Canary Wharf stations?
* I guess one of the pleasures of London travel is knowing that that Victoria, Piccadilly and Hammersmith are the names of lines and station on those lines – but not exclusively. North, West and East Acton are on the Central Line, but none of Acton Central, Finhley Central or Hendon Central are. &c,
…………..although I have heard the Overground station referred to as “Acton Central Line Station”
Walthamstow Central and Hounslow Central aren’t on the Central Line either, and neither Oxford Circus nor Piccadilly Circus is on the Circle Line – (although Clapham North is on the Northern Line). (And Crossrail won’t serve either King’s or Charing, although XR2 might serve Waltham X)
In addition to Piccadilly, Victoria and Hammersmith, Waterloo station is possibly unique in having given its name to two of the lines serving it.
To the further confusion of tourists, none of the Stratford stations are anywhere near Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, the famous zebra crossing is nowhere near Abbey Road station, and Regents Park Zoo is an awfully long walk from Regents Park station (although probably more pleasant than the shorter walk from Camden Town.
@timbeau – I’m not sure it really helps to complain that some tourists get confused – there will always be some, no matter how carefully you try and differentiate station names. You probably can’t help the hapless. Most – probably well in excess of 90% – know that Liverpool Street doesn’t have trains to Liverpool or that Leyton Midland Road has nothing to do with getting to the Midlands. Acton is one of the very few places anywhere in the UK which has so many stations that there is a shortage of suitable differentiators, although even there locals (having lived in the area myself long ago) have no problem. Possibly the only serious example is the complex of Sudbury/Hill/Harrow/Road names where the frequent repetition of the same elements in different combos does confuse the unwary – and not helped by the obscurity and infrequency of some the services that stop there.
@GH
Who says I was complaining?
Fair enough; perhaps better phrased would be to say it doesn’t really matter if a very small number of tourists get confused. (It may not be possible to help them easily … I once found myself running for a westbound Met train at Liverpool St only to find the open doors blocked by a large group of tourists inquiring which was the quickest train to Greenwich. )
Graham H: If you would forgive the intro-oral word insertion, I wonder if an even better phrasing would be something like “confusion among a limited number of tourists seems to be unavoidable”. Your “It doesn’t matter if…” sounds a bit callous, though I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way. Total absence of confusion (among tourists and all other users) would be nice, but probably no city achieves such nirvana.
@ Brian Butterworth 17 Dec at 10:20 – “But at West Croydon, you can literally jump off the front of the tram into the Overground station barriers! And there are loads of signs too.”
Perhaps so but if one wants to get to the Overground platform from the tram stop, one has to walk along Platform 4 towards the main entrance/exit, climb a lengthy ramp at the country end of the station, cross the tracks on the overbridge and then walk down the stairs on the other side and back along Platform 3 (Platform 2 no longer exists as such) to reach Platform 1 and the Overground trains, to a point in fact about opposite those barriers you mention. It’s a bit of an obstacle walk. The other platforms are served by Southern trains.
@GF
A fairly recent change that caught me out when I went to make that exact change recently. Although Overground departures actually used platform 3, so the back door was more useful for people changing from OG to tram. (Centrale Tram Stop is almost as close to the main entrance)
@Malcolm Of course – for various reasons I won’t elaborate on, I was feeling somewhat saturnine yesterday. (BTW, I realise in retrospect that my post ran the risk of sparking a tsunami of competing suggestions as to how to travel expeditiously from LST to Greenwich, for which I apologise).
@GRAHAM FEAKINS
It’s interesting that you mention the rather long over-line bridge at West Croydon. It’s listed as a 4-minute interchange in the NRE* data-set, along with 101 national rail stations in Greater London. There are 176 stations with 5-minute interchanges too, but you can’t see on any of the maps that some stations are longer:
15 minutes: Euston, Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, St Pancras, Victoria, Waterloo.
10 minutes: Blackhorse Road, Clapham Junction, London Bridge, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Marylebone.
7 minutes: Charlton, Fenchurch Street, Stratford.
6 minutes: Barnes Bridge, Chessington North, Chessington South, Chiswick, Earlsfield, Fulwell, Hampton Wick, Isleworth, Kew Bridge, Malden Manor, Mortlake, New Malden, Raynes Park, Surbiton, Syon Lane, Whitton, Wimbledon.
And some are shorter:
3 minutes: Chelsfield, City Thameslink, Dalston Kingsland, Earls Court, Farringdon, Farringdon Crossrail, Harrow-On-The-Hill, Hayes & Harlington, Kensal Rise, Kilburn High Road, Blackfriars, Tulse Hill, West Ealing, West Ruislip.
2 minutes: Bromley North, Catford, Catford Bridge, Clock House, Enfield Chase, Enfield Town, Forest Gate, Hackney Central, Harringay, Harringay Green Lanes, Ilford, Newbury Park, Norwood Junction, Penge East, Penge West, Queenstown Road (Battersea), South Tottenham, Walthamstow Queens Road, Wanstead Park,
1 minute: Crayford, Ealing Broadway, Finchley Road, Northwood, Slade Green, Wembley Park.
Does this help with the dots?
* NRE is National Rail Enquires
@Brian Butterworth: What on earth does that measure, that interchange value? Crayford is listed as 1 minute. 1 minute to what exactly? It won’t get you to the nearest thing to interchange with: The 492 (Crayford Station stops L & H). There are no other lines to connect with unless you mean another train on the same platform.
@ Brian B – I am a tad flummoxed by your last post about interchange times. There is no way on earth that it can take 2 minutes to interchange at South Tottenham. First question is what interchange? There is no “within the station” interchange so the implication is that it is an interchange to somewhere else. It can take you two minutes to get out of the station depending on where you alight from a train and how easy you find stairs etc. You then have to cross Tottenham High Road and then walk via one of two possible routes to, I assume, the NR end of Seven Sisters station. That is never achieveable in two minutes. You’d do very well to take two minutes from the S Sisters Rd entrance of Seven Sisters station to the London Overground platforms given you’ve got ticket gates, a ramp and then stairs or an escalator to traverse in possibly crowded conditions. I dare say you know all this but it makes me wonder what NR Enquiries are referring to.
Furthermore 10 mins at Blackhorse Rd? Possibly if you are very slow on your feet and alight from the rear of a n/b Vic Line train and then walk, use the escalator and then need to use the ramps / lifts to reach the Overground station. An average person would make the interchange in about 3 minutes. I’ve been known to alight from a GOBLIN train and make it to the bus stop by the car park in about 3 mins but I was running (well sort of) like a lunatic to achieve that (not a within the station interchange though). If you dash you could possibly get between LO and the Tube in just under 2 mins but that requires a clear run and an ability to throw yourself down stairs “safely”.
I think it is very hard to give realistic interchange times because there is so much potential variability amongst passengers. That variability covers physical speed / health, knowledge of the railway, knowledge of stations, confidence about using the railway, if people are encumbered or not etc. Good signage helps but it’s far from being the only thing that is needed to ensure people can interchange effectively – whether within a station, between adjacent stations (eg London Victoria NR to tube) or where it involves a walk between stations.
@ Brian Butterworth
Without seeing the database you refer to and any explanatory text (is there a url?) it’s difficult to make any sense of those times
@SH(LR)
A connection might be made at Crayford between, say, a Gravesend to Charing Cross train and a “roundabout” train heading for Woolwich off the Sidcup line. Whether you can get from one platform to t’other in one minute is debatable.
@ SOUTHERN HEIGHTS (LIGHT RAILWAY)
@ WALTHAMSTOW WRITER
OK, let me explain properly…. I have been working on a project funded by the RSSB that involves a special journey planner for autistic people. For this I have gone back to the very basics of using Dijkstra’s algorithm to do special routes based the concept of “stress minutes”, rather than the usual ideas of cost, speed or distance.
For this process I have been using the raw timetable data, which includes the details of stations, train services as well as all the associated ticket pricing information.
The timetable data contains a master stations list that contains a two-digit field “Change Time” which is “Change time in minutes”. That is the value that I have listed about and is supposed to show how long it takes to interchange between platforms. At least that my interpretation of http://data.atoc.org/sites/all/themes/atoc/files/rsps5041%20-%20Timetable%20Data.pdf
I’ve put a Excel-compatible copy of the table data here as it’s in a very 1960s data format…
https://ukfree.tv/styles/images/2018/MasterStationsNames.csv
I agree that some of this source data is hard to justify. I was mainly using it to compare with the meaning of the new dotted lines on the tube map.
@ Brian B – OK that sort of explains the numbers and their source. It does seem bizarre, though, in some instances. There’s no logical reason why people would want to change between platforms at somewhere like South Tottenham other than if they have overridden the station they wanted and need to head back from whence they came. For larger stations where there are clear interchange opportunities between different rail services then fair enough but diddy places like Blackhorse Rd or Penge West??
@ Brian
The numbers do seem a bit weird – Chessington South is the most glaring outlier, it only has one platform, and yet interchange takes 5 minutes longer than at Ealing Broadway which has 9!
@timbeau and @grahamh
I do remember seeing, and overhearing, an American from a city where the inclusion of “street” or “road” was optional. He couldn’t understand how “Edgware” and “Edgware Road” could be different places. LU’s ticket seller – and he was a human, and not a bank of coin machines – was very polite and very patient, in the face of someone who thought he knew better.