The famous Beck Tube map is iconic, beautiful, and substantially misleading about distances. Here is what to use instead, and when
By Fiona MacLeod. With travel insight from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The London Underground map, originally designed by Harry Beck in 1931 and refined across nearly a century of incremental updates, is one of the most successful pieces of information design in modern history. It is also, as a tool for actually navigating London as a tourist, slightly misleading in ways that almost nobody mentions in the standard travel guides. Tourists who rely on the Beck map for trip planning frequently end up making decisions that they would not have made if they had been looking at a map calibrated to actual geographic distances.
I have lived in London for fourteen years, having moved here from Edinburgh in 2012 to work in travel publishing. I have, across that time, watched a substantial number of friends and family members visit and try to navigate the city using the Beck map as their primary reference. Most of them have made the same set of small but consequential errors. The errors are all preventable if you know which maps to use and when. This article is the version of that conversation I have had approximately 47 times across the past decade.
Why The Beck Map Misleads
The Beck map is a topological diagram, not a geographic one. Its design genius is that it shows the network connections between stations clearly, with stations spaced for visual readability rather than geographic accuracy. The choice was deliberate and, for the purpose of helping you understand which lines connect to which other lines, the choice is correct. The choice does, however, mean that distances on the Beck map have almost nothing to do with distances in the real world.
The most consequential single example is the journey between Leicester Square and Covent Garden on the Piccadilly Line. The two stations appear on the Beck map as a normal one-stop journey. They are, in actual physical space, approximately 260 metres apart, which is a three-minute walk. Tourists who take the Tube between them are paying for an Underground journey that is, in operational terms, slower than walking, owing to the time required to descend to platform level, wait for a train, ride one stop, and ascend again at the other end.
The Leicester Square-Covent Garden case is the most famous. It is not the only one. Bank-Monument is, in physical space, approximately 100 metres. Embankment-Charing Cross is approximately 200 metres. Tower Hill-Tower Gateway is approximately 150 metres. Several other pairs of central London stations are similarly close in geographic terms while appearing as conventional Tube journeys on the Beck map.
For ongoing London travel guidance, see Visit London.
What To Use Instead
What you should use, in addition to the Beck map, is one of the geographically-accurate Tube maps that Transport for London also publishes. The most useful for tourists is the Tube map with walking distances overlaid, which shows you which station pairs are close enough to walk between. The map is available through the TfL website and through the official Citymapper app. It is not as visually beautiful as the Beck map. It is, for trip-planning purposes, substantially more useful.
The walking-distance information will, in practical terms, save you a meaningful amount of money across a typical week-long London visit. The standard Tube fare in central London is currently 2.90 pounds per journey. A typical tourist takes approximately 18 to 22 Tube journeys across a week. If five of those journeys are journeys you would not have taken if you had known how close the stations were in physical terms, you have spent approximately 14.50 pounds on Tube journeys you did not actually need. Across a family of four, the figure approaches 60 pounds.
The Other Map You Need
The other map you need, which almost no tourist uses but which I have been recommending to visitors for years, is the London bus network map for whatever zones you are spending time in. Buses are substantially more useful for short central London journeys than the Tube is, in nearly every case. Buses are also, in operational terms, substantially more pleasant. You can see where you are going. You can adjust your route on the fly. You can get off at the next stop if you want to investigate something you see out the window. None of these things is possible on the Tube.
The principal reason tourists do not use buses is that the network is, in its full form, substantially more complex than the Tube network and is correspondingly harder to navigate without local knowledge. The complexity is real. The complexity is also, in operational practice, substantially manageable through Citymapper or Google Maps, both of which will tell you which specific bus to take from your current location to your intended destination.
The bus network has the additional advantage that the standard fare is 1.75 pounds per journey, regardless of distance, with the daily cap kicking in after a small number of journeys. Bus travel in London is, in absolute terms, substantially cheaper than Tube travel in London. The difference matters across a typical tourist visit.
The Specific Times To Use The Tube
The specific times to use the Tube are when you are travelling distances of more than approximately three kilometres in zones 1 and 2, when you are travelling outside zones 1 and 2 to specific destinations served well by the Tube network, when you are travelling during peak commuter hours and need to avoid road traffic, and when you are travelling at night when bus frequencies on many routes are substantially reduced.
The specific times not to use the Tube are when you are travelling distances of less than approximately one kilometre in zones 1 and 2, when you are travelling between specific central London locations whose Tube journey involves substantial transfers, and when you are travelling in nice weather at any pace that allows you to actually see London on your way to wherever you are going.
The Walking Question
The walking question deserves explicit attention. Central London is, in absolute terms, substantially smaller than tourists typically realise. The straight-line distance from the British Museum to Trafalgar Square is approximately one kilometre. The distance from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey is approximately 700 metres. The distance from Tower Bridge to Borough Market is approximately 400 metres. All of these are easy walks in good weather, take you past substantial London amenities along the way, and are, in operational terms, often faster than the equivalent Tube journeys.
An ongoing analysis at Time Out London has covered walking routes in detail.
The walking advantage compounds across a typical tourist itinerary. Tourists who walk substantial portions of their central London travel see substantially more of London than tourists who take the Tube for everything. The seeing is, in the end, why most people visit London. The Tube does not, by design, support the seeing. Walking does.
What I Tell My Visiting Family
What I tell my visiting family, when they arrive and ask how they should plan their travel, is approximately the following. Use the Beck map to understand which lines exist and where they go. Use Citymapper or Google Maps for actual route planning, with the walking-distance data and the bus-route data both visible. Plan to walk anything under one kilometre. Plan to take buses for journeys between one and three kilometres in central London. Plan to take the Tube for journeys longer than three kilometres or for journeys to outer London destinations.
Plan to make exceptions to all of the above when the weather is genuinely terrible, when you are tired, when you are running late, or when you have specific reasons to use one mode rather than another. The plan is not a rule. It is a starting point. Adjust as your visit unfolds.
The Final Thing To Know
The final thing to know about navigating London as a tourist is that the question of which transport mode to use is, in operational practice, less important than the question of how much time to allow for any specific journey. London transport, across all modes, has substantial variability in actual journey times relative to nominal journey times. Plan for that variability. Add 15 minutes to any journey time you see in any planning app. Allow extra time for any journey that involves the Northern Line, the Central Line, or any bus route that crosses Oxford Street.
The extra time will, in nearly every case, make your visit substantially more pleasant. London is more enjoyable when you are not rushing. The transport network supports rushing only intermittently. Plan accordingly. More from Fiona MacLeod.
Related at The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/london-tube-maps-actually-useful/
