AH Challenge: make London Underground-style maps the industry standard

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make London Underground-style maps the industry standard for urban public transit, with a POD no earlier than 1929.
 

Thande

Donor
What is a "London Underground-style map"?

Circuit board ones which make no attempt to show where the lines lie in real life, but sets out the stations conceptually so the mind finds it easy to distinguish them.
 

Thande

Donor
Here is a comparison of the Tube map of the type Dan means

TubeMapZ1_TFL.png


and what that area actually looks like in reality

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/London_Underground_Zone_1.svg
 

Markus

Banned
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make London Underground-style maps the industry standard for urban public transit, with a POD no earlier than 1929.

In case you actually mean the kind of map Thande has posted I got news for you: This already is industry standard!
 

Thande

Donor
In case you actually mean the kind of map Thande has posted I got news for you: This already is industry standard!

That's not true. Look at this modern one of the New York subway system for comparison.

407px-NYC_subway_map.png


Or this one of the Paris Métro:

653px-Paris_Metro_map.gif


They don't use the Tube map system at all.
 
that is just about identical to the maps they use here in Boston, only the ones here are even simpler. that NYC one looks horrible complicated and hard to understand, but that might just be me.

it would probably take a different committee / whoever designed the maps, to see that the London ones are easier to understand and emulate it for their own subway.
 
that NYC one looks horrible complicated and hard to understand, but that might just be me.

The NYC metro map is indeed hard to understand, but the public complained the last the time the MTA tried to move to a better map because it wasn't as geographically accurate as the old/current one.
 
Those sorts of maps seemed to be the standard when I was traveling around Paris, but they're not used for the bus systems here. I think they have similar maps for the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco.

I thought it was the industry standard.
 

randomkeith

Banned
I found using the New York subway system, impossible i just couldnt work out where i was or which route i was taking, where as in London and Moscow where they have the same style of maps it was easy. Hell in Moscow it was a little bit harder but that was just because of the Cryllic alphabet.

New York underground was deffinatly the most confusing
 
Hmm....the two systems I know best already use this style. So maybe it is the industry standard, and New York and Paris are just being difficult?

(I'm afraid postulating either New Yorkers or Parisians who aren't intentionally difficult belongs in ASB. :p )
 
That's not true. Look at this modern one of the New York subway system for comparison.

First time I see an underground map like that. I've not been in New York nor Paris, but my limited underground tourism tells me that Madrid, Rome and Tokyo use the "British" system.
 
How strange.
I too have only ever seen London style ones.

Are you sure that's the correct Paris map? Not just a alternative version of their map? I don't remember a weird map on their metro...
 
Those sorts of maps seemed to be the standard when I was traveling around Paris, but they're not used for the bus systems here. I think they have similar maps for the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco.

I thought it was the industry standard.

Yeah, the BART uses British style circuit diagram maps as does Singapore's MRT. Singapore also adheres to the fine British tradition of giving misleading names to places as can be seen from the station named One North which is not on the North line but is in fact at the Southern loop of the Circle Line which is, itself, not a circle! :D

singapore.gif
 
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