Five tube stations now have new circular tube maps | Hacker News Reader

Five tube stations now have new circular tube maps

ianvisits.co.uk

26 pointsadmp28 comments

All right, I was already stuck in King's Cross next to this monstrocity. I was looking for a map, and I could only find these things that look like fake maps (because they are ads). Little did I know that unlike other campaigns with invented tube stations, I could trust this one?

The ad told me to just "Circle it", but there is no internet signal in most of the underground!

The map is also terrible. How do you spot the _shortest_ way from King's Cross to Paddington on these?

I consider the suggestion it might stay as nothing but flamebait. I am already saddened to hear that apparently this ad replaced a real map, which is so crucial to navigating the internet-free London underground.

I am dreaming of a future where brain implants allow us installing adblockers into our head. Until, we should contition ourselves against flamebait and other harmful practices distorting our life, those are not in the interest of those paying big money for it (the customers together). In fact it is agitating for us, misleading and manipulating us, robbing us, injurious to us. Let me be an object lession how not to do, first of clicking on the article, and second, writing a long comment. Should not deserve any attention! Shall fall onto our blind spot permanently.

The idea of the ad itself is just slightly approaching the entertaining zone - the only aspect that can be mentioned in favour of established marketing practices - but with a distinct smell of all the sweat used to come up with it for such a pity 'innovation' or 'function'. I feel the force of desperation in it.

I admire your optimism, but think it's more likely they will show ads instead.

Regrettably. Yes, it was a very very optimistic dream.

The real killer app for the Vision Pro. Automated Ad detection and blocking.

I’d buy one today and never take it off.

I wish for all advertising on the tube to die. It's terrible and confuses the hell out of tourists.

Raises a tiny percentage of income. That said seeing static posters for west end shows on the escalators is hardly the worst advert. The trend to do “event” adverts which do confuse people (James Bond Street etc) certainly should be stopped.

Ultimately though people wont pay the extra 20p on their journey to get rid of adverts

Advertising income was £130 million for last year [1], where passenger income was £4398 million[2], so around 3%. (Minus costs of running commercial advertising?)

I can see many people wouldn't want a 3% fare rise, but it shows smaller changes to the policy — like no longer having these whole-station or other excessive campaigns — wouldn't be a problem.

[1, PDF] https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-advertising-annual-report-aug...

[2, PDF] https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/s19826/TfL%20Budget%20202...

I hope these numbers aren't correct. Only 3% for being bombed by ads? (And bombing the whole city with ads on buses as well?)

I would gladly pay 20% and maybe even 50% more if they could stop with the ads.

I am conscious of those with more limited budgets. Rises of just 1-2% above inflation are already avoided if possible.

I'd be fine with increasing the subsidy part of TfL's income to get rid of the adverts — then the cost falls mostly on those who can afford it.

From memory the entire ad income for sky was about 1/10th of their income as a whole. That includes all that damaging gambling adverts in football matches.

People are far too accepting of adverts imo, it’s a horrendous industry

I'm surprised Google maps doesn't have ad detours yet (to show you new places).

Ohh that's so evil! I love it! (me, as Google executive)

I appreciate them trialling new designs. Although I think the absolutely most confusing thing about the undergound (especially as a visitor or a newbie) is how incoming trains are labelled if there are multiple branches on a line.

These will be labelled with the terminology terminus via midpoint of branch. Now this is fine to know, but sometimes there are station closures, redirections, early terminations which can cause new and confusing labels for a train you usually get.

Visiting family seem to persistently get this wrong or confused. Northbound via Northern line, they need to get off at "Tufnell Park". 9/10 times this train is labelled as "High Barnet". So they look for that as I've explained, but this train might also be labelled "Mill Hill East" or 11 other labels it could possibly go to based on the terminating station.

Going the other way they are equally confused. Going to "King's Cross" they need to catch "Morden via Bank", but to determine the name of the train you need you basically need to do a full scan of a fairly abstract diagram, find where you are, find where you need to go, then look beyond that for any possible terminus and the midpoint of the branch you need to take. I understand their initial confusion.

They should split the northern line in two, really. Edgware - Bank - Morden and High Barnet - Charing Cross - Battersea.

A bold move. Lots of people are going to be mildly inconvenienced.

It’s a temporary advertising campaign, not an official redesign. It doesn’t actually include every line, notably the new Elizabeth Line.

Great lesson in bad design. Use the prime real estate in the middle of the map for something useless

This is an article about an advertisement campaign which features a odd-looking and incomplete (Elisabeth line) map which adds injury to insult by requesting unsuspecting tourists to use mobile data on their smartphone, which practically never works because the subway is, well, deep under ground.

I feel like this should be flagged as spam, and it certainly includes the highly intrusive flavour of tacking common for low-quality pages. But I'm hoping someone can convince me that this is useful content to engage with?

> use mobile data on their smartphone, which practically never works because the subway is, well, deep under ground.

I find surprising that London hasn't deployed a cell network under ground like Stockholm's tunnelbana has. I'm sure there are technical differences between the systems but the tunnelbana has spotless mobile data even deep underground in the bedrock.

They have (it's work in progress) https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/station-wifi

Reminds me of this Moscow metro map turned inside out: https://www.bagaevka.ru/foto.pl?pid=1431

About as useful as the special “features” of a Samsung phone.

Now the whole tube is the Tokyo Yamanote Line!

A shame the circle line is no longer topologically a circle.

Already hate it.

This is spam.

It is very sad that I have not been to London for many many years.

you cannot buy a train ticket with cash and I absolutely refuse to purchase a personal tracker oyster card, pay via my bank account. buy a ticket online or pay via contactless payments.

I have not driven into London for many years because of the added cost of, and money making scam that the Congestion Charge, ULEZ and LEZ charges have become.

I loved London when I was a young man.

From the Punks in Kings road Chelsea to the front line in Brixton. The depth of culture used to be world leading. No More!

The Art galleries, the house music venues, the rock band venues.

This is my Home town that does not want me any more.

Far too old to read a damn stupid brainless circular map of the tube

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