
Lies on the London Underground [video] - joosters
http://www.tomscott.com/lies/
======
blowski
Another good reason for odd connections is that it's easier to guide people on
common routes. For example, around Bank and Monument, it's often quicker to
walk above ground - but only if you already know the route. If you're a
tourist, you're herded underground with very clear signs.

It's like progressive disclosure in software. By requiring some level of
expertise even to see the options, you help to ensure that novices can't
accidentally break things (in theory, at least). Imagine what would happen if
TfL did this explicitly with signs saying:

<\-- Quick route that way :: Easy route that way -->

They're making the decision for you, assuming that if you're not sure, then
you need the easy route.

Other examples of this in the physical world:

* The 'Black diamond' lane in airports (especially when they weren't advertised)

* Special unadvertised rates in hotels

* Theme parks with tickets for bypassing queues, though when these are advertised, they're more like price discrimination than progressive disclosure.

~~~
thinkersilver
The signs aren't always very clear. King's Cross being the worst culprit.
Arriving on the Northern Line then changing to the Circle line, will take a
few minutes or almost 10 depending on which end of the train you get off. This
happened to me a few weeks ago when I blindly followed the signs right in
front of me. The directions are different depending on which end of the train
you get off.

------
petercooper
You often get these sorts of "lies" on the road network. Signs will attempt to
send you on a lengthy jaunt around the outside of a town even if the road
through town is major and quicker.

Google Maps and sat nav devices tend to send you the more direct route,
however, so I wonder if this technique may prove useless in future and force
significant redesigns or even laws to prevent navigational devices making
these suggestions.

A memorable one for me is the A6/A7 through Lyon (France). The signs are
adamant you should take a 10 mile detour to head south of Lyon despite the A6
(solely marked as "Lyon Centre") going in a straight line under the city
without interruption. August is probably the only time it makes sense and even
then the entire A6 is blocked as it is..

~~~
michaelt
Users generally want the fastest route, which is congestion-dependent. If they
directed everyone down the shortcut it would become congested, and wouldn't be
the fastest route any more, and you'd be asking why they directed everyone
down it :-)

~~~
joosters
A good moment to plug the book 'Traffic' -
<http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/the-book/>

A good (geeky) read about all kinds of traffic issues including routing.

------
Nursie
The best thing about London underground, now that I no longer live in London,
is that it's not me with the long, grey, miserable face any longer.

Next time you're on the tube, especially at commuter time, take a look up and
down the carriage at all the miserable sods slumped there, and try to smile.

I find it hard to suppress outright laughter these days.

~~~
tragomaskhalos
Possibly the most annoying thing in the entire world is standing on a tube to
work and have some bastard breeze into the carriage, obviously on holiday, and
loudly declaim how miserable everyone looks and how glad they are that _they_
don't have to do this every day.

~~~
dasil003
You know what's worse than commuting by tube? Commuting by public transport
anywhere in America. I mean sure you can always get a seat on the Caltrain,
but if you miss it you have to wait _one whole hour_ for the next one. Oh and
if someone voluntarily or involuntarily commits suicide at one of the many at-
grade crossings (for bullet trains) you will be 3 hours late because _there is
no alternate route_.

Granted, I cycle to work because commuting by tube is not the most pleasant
experience, but I _love_ being able to get anywhere in the city at the drop of
a hat without the burden of car ownership.

------
laumars
I thought this was going to be about the hidden stations, defunct tunnels and
some of the ghost stories surrounding the London Underground (not that I'm in
any way trying to undermine the point of that video either).

The London Underground fascinates me. The number of older rail networks (there
was once a stretch of tunnels that were little wider than a crouched person
and used either for mail or money - i forget which). The tunnels used during
WWII as Churchill's bunker. The closed stations that feel like eerie to walk
around. The hidden tunnel that were dug at Tottenham Court Road purely as a
way to displace the other dirt due to the logistics of the location of the
station. The experiments with spiral escalators...and so on.

It's a great marvel to think what the Victorians gave us Londoners more than
100 years ago. They saw out the old century with a world pioneering transport
network. Then 100 years on, a technologically superior country decides to
celebrate it's century with a big, ugly dome. :(

~~~
Yhippa
Pardon my ignorance but what is this dome you speak of?

~~~
corin_
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome>

Now privately owned as the O2 Arena:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_O2_Arena>

------
alexkus
There are various "walking tube maps" that show you where it's quicker to walk
between two stations:-

[http://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/images/tube_walklines_fin...](http://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/images/tube_walklines_final_lm.gif)

------
lifeisstillgood
When I was a fresh-faced student in London, I had to go from the Strand to
Covent Garden. This is about 500 yards.

Or three changes on the tube. Guess which one I took?

Eventually one works this all out, you know which doors to stand at to be
close to the exit on your next station, why going up down stairwells is a
popular pasttime, that St Pauls and the City are warrens of short cuts,
something that is not possible in boringly grid like cities such as Manhattan.
Really guys. I have walked across half of Manhatten and just counted the
streets and never gotten lost. I can get lost in ten minutes in central
London. Stumbling across random streets you have never seen in twenty years of
living in London - that's what I call a "proper" city.

------
JDGM
Thanks so much for posting this. I was wondering why since the redesign my
movement at Kings Cross was taking so much longer than the route my parents
would take with me as a kid going to London for day trips to the Science
Museum or zoo.

If I lived in London I'd like to think I would make a project out of finding
all the shortcuts and hacks like this applicable to my routine. I'm sure the
video is only the tip of the iceberg (especially as Tom Scott generally really
knows how to make his stuff short and sweet - anyone else feel the video was
edited to pretty much perfection?).

~~~
philbarr
> I would make a project out of finding all the shortcuts and hacks like this
> applicable to my routine

I'm often amazed at how often people don't do this. The last place I worked
was always a nightmare to get to because of traffic, so I worked out all the
possible shortcuts I could take depending on where the congestion was. I
thought everyone did, until I was discussing this with colleagues who then
revealed they just set off for work earlier.

One of them even _lived_ right nearby and didn't know some of these shortcuts
- all you needed was google maps.

------
CJefferson
I don't understand the "lie". So, there are times you can walk faster between
tube stations than you can travel on the tube. The map doesn't seem to claim
otherwise.

~~~
balabaster
The lie isn't that you can walk faster between two points on the map than by
taking one or more trains... the lie is that by following the signs, you can
get from one train to the next in the most efficient manner. People expect
signs to take them on the most efficient route... they don't expect to be
routed half way around London to get from one train to the next when a short
escalator ride to the surface and through 2 doors you can achieve your same
goal...

... though it is a low tech solution to an otherwise extremely costly redesign
of the station.

~~~
tezza
I think they have sacrified efficiency for no crushes or stampedes.

I don't class it as a 'lie' to quietly favour crowds flowing in a safe manner
over the quickest route. They are the experts in what is safe for peak crowds,
not some bloggers.

Of course I regard it a 'lie' that the platform crowding at places like Bank
is very safe at all.

~~~
simonw
Did you watch the video all the way through? Their closing conclusion is that
London Underground are experts in what is safe for peak crowds.

Calling it a "lie" is effective headline writing.

~~~
tezza
Actually I had to piece it together from other commentators... My employer
sensibly bans youtube videos.

I responded to the comment and the 'lie' title

~~~
wnight
But you're allowed to post on HN?

Besides, watch videos and stuff at work on a phone over your own data
connection.

------
lukethegeek
I've often taken the Kings Cross exit towards the trains and wondered why the
hell it was so long.. Now I know better >:)

------
boothead
Thank the Lord that thus far I haven't had to get a tube as part of my
commute! The overground every day is bad enough, and I almost always get a
seat and can look out of the window there. Roll on the day where working from
home as a developer is the default rather than a rare privilege!

------
corin_
One thing they didn't mention about the last example - which way to go on the
Victoria platform at KX, is that if you get off down the other end of the
platform, exit signs do point the shorter way - they divide it up so 20-30% go
the quick way, the rest get pointed the longer route.

------
Foomandoonian
Relevant: 'Here’s how central London would look if the Tube map was
geographically correct' <http://www.mapfodder.com/london.html>

~~~
tommorris
And Wikipedia has a geographically accurate tube map:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Underground_f...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Underground_full_map.png)
;)

~~~
arethuza
For some reason I find that map quite disturbing - like I'm very very drunk
and looking at a "proper" Tube map.

------
peteri
The Kings Cross example is in part due to the new Eurostar terminal at St
Pancras. The newer exit is much nearer to St Pancras so if the test had been
the Eurostar entrance then I'm not sure who would have won.

Given the location of the new concourse this is not as bad as it used to be. I
suspect it would however be better if they sign posted the old exit onto the
Euston Road as being for the buses stops, otherwise you end up walking for 5
minutes in the wrong direction and have to double back when you get above
ground.

------
mseebach
So, people are "on to" the lies. At my local station (Archway), at the bottom
of the escalators, there are two paths to the platforms, and they are routed
one way to correspond well with the direction of the escalators. Except,
people will happily walk into the wrong direction in their quest to one-up the
system, often causing other passengers to have to dodge oncoming traffic, even
at off-peak times.

But I get it, I measured it out once. One of the tunnels is 12 steps longer
than the other.

------
zng
While people are generally discussing their discomfort with using the tube I'd
just like to chip in my main concern with it being around 50 Celcius
constantly year round down there.... (yes, I exaggerate slightly, but not by
much!)

------
ziko
Tube map doesn't say it's scaled so therefore the argument 'look how close
these two stations are on the map' isn't valid.

------
sambeau
Bank is the Hogwarts of tube stations.

~~~
sdfjkl
It took me 2 years to learn the warren that is the Bank/Monument complex and
figure out efficient shortcuts (by purposely ignoring the signs).

Then someone made this: <http://stations.aeracode.org/#bnk>

------
workbench
This is dumb, you're not meant to use it to go 5 minutes up the road.

------
mbesto
First, get this off of HN please. I don't see the direct relevance.

Second, if this does have some relevance to HN with regards to usability, then
this is a usability success, not a failure. Are there more efficient ways for
_one_ person to navigate the tube system. Absolutely. Does this means it will
be efficient for all. No.

~~~
swombat
You seem unreasonably grumpy... take a breath, chill out. I enjoyed the video
and upvoted it - as did many others, clearly. It's of interest to hackers. Tom
Scott is also "one of us" - a geek comedian. Probably one of the reasons why
others have been upvoting this.

You might enjoy this excellent video of his talk at Ignite a few years back:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMdOT8YJgY>

~~~
arethuza
"You seem unreasonably grumpy"

Probably came into work via the Tube :-)

~~~
mbesto
Hehe, fair enough. Sorry if you thought my tone was a bit off! I don't know
who the author is or what he does, I'm just getting increasingly frustrated
with the content that's upvoted on this site.

 _as did many others, clearly_

I, like many longstanding active members here, care about the community and I
don't see the relevance. It has nothing to do with hacking, entrepreneurship,
or is generally all that interesting. But the author got my click, my eyeballs
and my response, so he wins.

ps - Didn't take the tube in, I work from home :) I think the tube is very
well maintained actually.

